David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

by Malcolm Gladwell

Eitan Hirsch, a ballistics expert with the Israeli Defense Forces, recently did a series of calculations showing that a typical-size stone hurled by an expert slinger at a distance of thirty-five meters would have hit Goliath’s head with a velocity of thirty-four meters per second—more than enough to penetrate his skull and render him unconscious or dead. In terms of stopping power, that is equivalent to a fair-size modern handgun.

There is an important lesson in that for battles with all kinds of giants. The powerful and the strong are not always what they seem.

“Quien no lo tiene, lo hace; y quien lo tiene, lo deshace” (“he who doesn’t have it,

does it, and he who has it, misuses it”).

Conventional wisdom holds that a disadvantage is something that ought to be avoided—that it is a setback or a difficulty that leaves you worse off than you would be otherwise. But that is not always the case.

“desirable difficulties.”

Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.

We often think of authority as a response to disobedience: a child acts up, so a teacher cracks down. Stella’s classroom, however, suggests something quite different: disobedience can also be a response to authority. If the teacher doesn’t do her job properly, then the child will become disobedient. “With

The powerful are not as powerful as they seem—nor the weak as weak.