Thursday, April 9, 2015

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

"If you have the ability, the vast network of scouts and talent spotters will find you, and if you are willing to work to develop that ability, the system will reward you."

"Our hero is born in the modest circumstances and by virtue of his own grit and talent fights his way to greatness"



"This is not a book about tall trees. This is a book about forests."

"Selection, streaming and differentiated experience"

"Teachers are confusing maturity with ability."

"It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely given kinds of special opportunities."

"Success is the result of what sociologists like to call a cumulative advantage."

"We make rules that frustrate achievement."

"Achievement is talent plus preparation."

"Once a student has enough ability to get into a top school, the thing that distinguishes one student from another is how hard he or she works."


"He has talent by the truckload. But that's not the only consideration. It never is."

"Programming with cards did not teach you programming. It taught you patience and proofreading."



"The intellect and achievement are far from perfectly correlated."

"He'd had to make his way alone, and no one--not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires and not even geniuses--ever makes it alone."

"Word "luck" fails to capture the work and the efforts and the imagination and the acting on opportunities that might have been hidden and not so obvious."

"Autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward--are the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately make us happy between 9 - 5. It's whether our work fulfills us."


"The critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn't the intellectual rigor you get from studying. It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching your father sell aprons on the street."

"Groups of people living in circumstances pretty similar to their ancestors act a lot like their ancestors."

"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 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."

"Korean air did not succeed--it did not right itself--until it acknowledged the importance of cultural legacy."

"If a man works hard, the land will not be lazy."

