Mark > Mark's Quotes

“Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Who we are cannot be separated from where we're from.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Those three things - autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“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.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing....It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“The lesson here is very simple. But it is striking how often it is overlooked. We are so caught in the myths of the best and the brightest and the self-made that we think outliers spring naturally from the earth. We look at the young Bill Gates and marvel that our world allowed that thirteen-year-old to become a fabulously successful entrepreneur. But that's the wrong lesson. Our world only allowed one thirteen-year-old unlimited access to a time sharing terminal in 1968. If a million teenagers had been given the same opportunity, how many more Microsofts would we have today?”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“We overlook just how large a role we all play--and by 'we' I mean society--in determining who makes it and who doesn't.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“It's not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky--but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success--the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history--with a society that provides opportunities for all.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“...If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Those three things - autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward - are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying. It is not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It's whether our work fulfills us.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

“Do your best and let God do the rest.”
― Ben Carson

“If you hear how wonderful you are often enough, you begin to believe it, no matter how you try to resist it.”
― Ben Carson

“People are simply not willing to look at their problems honestly and admit that they have problems.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

“When we are confronted by failure and mistakes, we can leave them behind and go on with our lives.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

“I am convinced that knowledge is power - to overcome the past, to change our own situations, to fight new obstacles, to make better decisions.”
― Ben Carson, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
― W. Somerset Maugham