quotes by Malcolm Gladwell

"We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We're a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don't really have an explanation for. "
— Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)

"The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter. "
— Malcolm Gladwell (Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking)

"I have never forgotten these visitors, or ceased to marvel at them, at how they have gone on from strength to strength, continuing to lighten our darkness, and to guide, counsel and instruct us; on occasion, momentarily abashed, but always ready to pick themselves up, put on their cardboard helmets, mount Rosinante, and go galloping off on yet another foray on behalf of the down-trodden and oppressed. They are unquestionably one of the wonders of the age, and I shall treasure till I die as a blessed memory the spectacle of them travelling with radiant optimism through a famished countryside, wandering in happy bands about squalid, over-crowded towns, listening with unshakeable faith to the fatuous patter of carefully trained and indoctrinated guides, repeating like schoolchildren a multiplication table, the bogus statistics and mindless slogans endlessly intoned to them. There, I would think, an earnest office-holder in some local branch of the League of Nations Union, there a godly Quaker who once had tea with Gandhi, there an inveigher against the Means Test and the Blasphemy Laws, there a staunch upholder of free speech and human rights, there an indomitable preventer of cruelty to animals; there scarred and worthy veterans of a hundred battles for truth, freedom and justice--all, all chanting the praises of Stalin and his Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It was as though a vegetarian society had come out with a passionate plea for cannibalism, or Hitler had been nominated posthumously for the Nobel Peace Prize."
— Malcolm Gladwell

"To be a successful decision-maker, we have to edit. When we thin-slice, when we recognize patterns and make snap judgements, we do this editing unconsciously.... I think we get in trouble when this process of editing is disrupted - when we can't edit, or we don't know what to edit, or our environment doesn't allow us to edit."
— Malcolm Gladwell