Malcolm Gladwell is a renowned journalist, best-selling author, and public speaker. He has penned five New York Times best-selling books and has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list. As an internationally respected thought leader, Gladwell definitely has something to say, and we think his thoughts are worth listening to.
Here, we’ve compiled some of Gladwell’s most poignant and thought-provoking quotes from his most acclaimed and popular audiobooks.
The Tipping Point
1. “Emotion is contagious.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
2. “A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
3. “Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
4. “We have, in short, somehow become convinced that we need to tackle the whole problem, all at once. But the truth is that we don’t. We only need to find the sticky Tipping Points.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
5. “As human beings we are a lot more sophisticated about each other than we are about the abstract world.” — Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
6. “Character isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn't a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.”— Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point
Talking to Strangers
7. “We have a default to truth: our operating assumption is that the people we are dealing with are honest.”— Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
8. “Defaulting to truth is a problem. It lets spies and con artists roam free.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
9. “If suicide is coupled, then it isn’t simply the act of depressed people. It’s the act of depressed people at a particular moment of extreme vulnerability and in combination with a particular, readily available lethal means.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
10. “We are bad lie detectors in those situations when the person we’re judging is mismatched.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
11. “Puzzle Number One: Why can’t we tell when the stranger in front of us is lying to our face?” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
12. “Don't look at the stranger and jump to conclusions. Look at the stranger's world.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
13. “The people who were right about Hitler were those who knew the least about him personally. The people who were wrong about Hitler were the ones who had talked with him for hours.”— Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
14. “That’s the consequence of not defaulting to truth. If you don’t begin in a state of trust, you can’t have meaningful social encounters.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
15. “Sometimes the best conversations between strangers allow the stranger to remain a stranger.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
16. “We think we can transform the stranger, without cost or sacrifice, into the familiar and the known, and we can’t.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
17. “The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Talking to Strangers
Blink
18. “In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
19. “There can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
20. “When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
21. “Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
22. “The real me isn't the person I describe, no the real me is the me revealed by my actions.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
23. “The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
24. "We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we really don't have an explanation for." — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
25. “We need to accept our ignorance and say ‘I don’t know’ more often.” — Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
