Malcolm Gladwell

“Contagiousness is an unexpected property of all kinds of things.”

“The most common form of giantism is a condition called acromegaly, and acromegaly is caused by a benign tumor on your pituitary gland that causes an overproduction of human growth hormone. And throughout history, many of the most famous giants have all had acromegaly.”

“The underdog winning is the romantic position.”

“The entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous. They shouldn't have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn't at all be surprised that Pepsi's dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world. Why not? Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.”

“We form our impression not globally, by placing ourselves in the broadest possible context, but locally, by comparing ourselves to people in the same boat as ourselves.”

“There will be statues of Bill Gates across the Third World. There's a reasonable shot that - because of his money - we will cure malaria.”

“People assume when my hair is long that I am a lot cooler than I actually am. I am not opposed to this misconception, by the way, but it is a misconception.”

“Consistency is the most overrated of all human virtues... I'm someone who changes his mind all the time.”

“So why don’t Americans cheat? Because they think that their system is legitimate. People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you that tomorrow you won’t be treated radically different from how you are treated today. Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice and predictability, and the U.S. government, as much as Americans like to grumble about it, does a pretty good job of meeting all three standards. Pg. 293”

“The best example of how impossible it will be for Major League Baseball to crack down on steroids is the fact that baseball and the media are still talking about the problem as 'steroids.'”

“The paradox of endurance sports is that an athlete can never work as hard as he wants, because if he pushes himself too far, his hematocrit will fall.”

“Books about spies and traitors - and the congressional hearings that follow the exposure of traitors - generally assume that false-negative errors are much worse than false-positive errors.”

“The great accomplishment of Jobs's life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies - his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness - in the service of perfection.”

“I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.”

“We should be firing bad teachers.”

“The older I get, the more I understand that the only way to say valuable things is to lose your fear of being correct.”

“I've had the most untraumatic life a human being can have. But I've always been drawn to those who have had far more complicated histories.”

“The willingness to be self-critical in England is much greater than the willingness to be self-critical in America.”

“Countless religious innovators over the years have played the game of establishing an identity for themselves by accentuating their otherness.”

“The power of positive thinking will overcome so many things”