No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
Malcolm GladwellRead
Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else's and says, angrily, 'I don't buy it.' Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head—even if in the end you conclude that someone else's head is not a place you'd really like to be.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Good writing should engage readers and provoke thought rather than just persuade them.
In this quote, Malcolm Gladwell expresses his frustration with readers who react negatively to writing that challenges their views. He argues that the true measure of good writing lies in its ability to engage and provoke thought within the reader, offering insights into different perspectives, regardless of whether they ultimately agree with them or not.
Themes
WritingEngagementPerspectiveThoughtLiterature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a writing workshop to encourage participants to focus on engaging their readers.
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
I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.
Alice HoffmanRead
Exile (being where we don't want to be with people we don't want to be with) forces a decision: Will I focus my attention on what is wrong with the world and feel sorry for myself? Or will I focus my energies on how I can live at my best in this place I find myself?...'I will do my best with what is here.'
Eugene H. PetersonRead
Others may try to feed our ego, but it is up to us to constrain it.
AesopRead
Speak your heart. If they don't understand, the message was never meant for them anyway.
Yasmin MogahedRead
Opportunity often comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.
Napoleon HillRead
My experience has taught me that a man who has no vices has damned few virtues.
Abraham LincolnRead