No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
Malcolm GladwellRead
Shallow communities are relatively easy to build.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Building superficial connections is simple, but meaningful communities take more effort.
Malcolm Gladwell's quote highlights that while it is easy to create a community with shallow ties among its members, genuine, deep connections that foster a strong, resilient community require more work and commitment. This speaks to the essence of what makes relationships meaningful and lasting, suggesting that quality trumps quantity in communal bonds.
Themes
CommunityRelationshipsConnectionsDepthMeaning
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a speech about building stronger neighborhoods.
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
Frequent worshippers are also significantly more active citizens. They are more likely to belong to community organizations, especially those concerned with young people, health, arts and leisure, neighborhood and civic groups and professional associations.
Jonathan SacksRead
Invitation is not only a step in bringing people together, it is also a fundamental way of being in a community. It manifests the willingness to live in a collaborative way. This means that a future can be created without having to force or sell it or barter for it. When we believe that barter or subtle coercion is necessary, we are operating out of a context of scarcity and self-interest, the core currencies of the economist.
Peter BlockRead
We must delight in each other, make others conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.
John WinthropRead
The Universe is circles within circles, and everything is one circle, and all the circles are connected to each other. Each family is a circle, and those family circles connect together and make a community, and the community makes its circle where it lives on the Earth. It (the community) cares for that part (of the Earth) but cares for it as a circle - which is to say in a cooperative and egalitarian way, where everybody is cared for, and everybody is respected.
Black ElkRead
We need better neighbors, neighbors that care about the schools in their neighborhood whether they have kids in them or not, because they know that the health and vitality of that neighborhood depends on it.
Thomas FriedmanRead
We are a nation of communities... a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.
George H. W. BushRead