Malcolm Gladwell Powerful Quotations

What we do as a community, as a society, for each other, matters as much as what we do for ourselves. It sounds a little trite, but there's a powerful amount of truth in that, I think.

Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.

Acquaintances represent a source of social power, and the more acquaintances you have the more powerful you are.

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.

What is learned out of hard work and trial is inevitably more powerful than what is learned easily.

There's this powerful phrase in the legal world, "Difficult cases make bad law." The exception is the difficult case. You can't generalize them by definition. So although they are fascinating, they don't solve any problem because they're so one of a kind.

I interviewed one of the most powerful lawyers in the world and he told me, "At the time, it was the worst thing in the world not to be able to get a job at a fancy law firm, but it's the greatest thing that ever happened in my life." It was a humble acknowledgment of how forces much larger than himself shaped his career. I really wanted to bring that point home.