No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
Malcolm GladwellRead
There is an important idea in psychology: The 'just world theory,' which says that it is very important for us to convince ourselves that the world is just and things happen for a reason. That there is some elemental fairness in everything, which creates the illusion of justice.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote discusses the 'just world theory' in psychology, highlighting the human need to believe in fairness and justice in the world.
Malcolm Gladwell's quote on the 'just world theory' emphasizes a significant psychological concept where individuals strive to perceive the world as fundamentally fair, believing that events occur for specific reasons. This conviction creates an illusion of justice, helping people cope with life's unpredictability and the inherent unfairness that often exists, by reassuring them that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people.
Themes
JusticeFairnessPsychologyBeliefReality
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about fate and fairness in life, this quote can illustrate why people believe in justice.
More from Malcolm Gladwell
All quotes →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
Perhaps there should be a box on the census form that says, 'I'm a criminal.' Everyone who has ever committed a crime would be required to check it. If everyone were forced to acknowledge their own criminality, maybe we, as a nation, would second-guess our apparent zeal for denying full citizenship to those branded felons.
Michelle AlexanderRead
The river flows at its own sweet will, but the flood is bound in the two banks. If it were not thus bound, its freedom would be wasted.
Vinoba BhaveRead
A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
George OrwellRead
I cannot imagine a context that would some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11 an understandable or comprehensible political act
Jurgen HabermasRead
America is the noisiest country that ever existed. One is waked up in the morning, not by the singing of the nightingale, but by the steam whistle.
Oscar WildeRead
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
Henry MillerRead