QuoteProject
If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening.
Malcolm Gladwell
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Reading enhances understanding, and when it's taken away, we learn to pay attention and listen more closely.

Malcolm Gladwell's quote emphasizes the importance of both reading and listening in the learning process. By suggesting that taking away the ability to read can cultivate a stronger skill in listening, he highlights how different forms of communication can cultivate our understanding and perceptions. This reflects a deeper connection between various modes of learning, where one enhances the other, revealing the value of active listening as a critical skill in a world often dominated by reading and written communication.

Themes

ReadingListeningCommunicationEducationUnderstanding

In practice

Example use cases

In a book club discussion, one might say, 'As Malcolm Gladwell points out, if you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening, which is vital for understanding different perspectives.'

More from Malcolm Gladwell

No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
Malcolm GladwellRead
People are in one of two states in a relationship,” Gottman went on. “The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It’s like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s just in a crummy mood.’ Or they can be in negative sentiment override, so that even a relatively neutral thing that a partner says gets perceived as negative.
Malcolm GladwellRead
The people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
Malcolm GladwellRead
Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play.
Malcolm GladwellRead
When I go to my health club, and it's in the basement, you have to take the elevator down. And this drives me crazy. Why can't there be a stairway? At least make it as easy to exercise as it is to not exercise. It's in society's interest for me to take the stairs.
Malcolm GladwellRead
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
Malcolm GladwellRead

Similar quotes

Said Hufflepuff, "I'll teach the lot, And treat them just the same.
J. K. RowlingRead
At O'Reilly, the way we think about our business is that we're not a publisher; we're not a conference producer; we're a company that helps change the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.
Tim O'ReillyRead
I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor.
Kailash SatyarthiRead
So much about big-time college sports is criticized. But the worst scandal is almost never mentioned: the academic fraud wherein the student-athletes, so-called, are admitted without even remotely adequate credentials and then aren't educated so much as they are just kept eligible.
Frank DefordRead
So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.
Roald DahlRead
Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.