Blink Quotes

“The military had been transformed, and with that, the Pentagon confidently turned its attention to the real Persian Gulf. A rogue dictator was threatening the stability of the region. He was virulently anti-American. He had a considerable power base from strong religious and ethnic loyalties and was thought to be harboring terrorist organizations. He need to be replaced and his country restored to stability, and if they did it right — if they had CROP and PMESI and DIME — how hard could that be?”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“If you get too caught up in the product of information, you drown in the data. [...] The big giant is tied down by those little rules and regulations and procedures. And the little guy? He just runs around and does what he wants.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“What screws up doctors when they are trying to predict heart attacks is that they take too much information into account.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“You've got to let people work out the situation and work out what's happening. The danger in calling is that they'll tell you anything to get you off their backs, and if you act on that and take it at face value, you could make a mistake. Plus you are diverting them. Now they are looking upward instead of downward. You're preventing them from resolving the situation.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Klein studied nurses, intensive care units, firefighters, and other people who make decision under pressure, and one of his conclusions is that when experts make decisions, they don't logically and systematically compare all available options. That is the way people are taught to make decisions, but in real life it is much too slow. Klein's nurses and firefighters would size up a situation almost immediately and act, drawing on experience and intuition and a kind of rough mental simulation. To Van Riper, that seemed to describe much more accurately how people make decisions on the battlefield.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Your unconscious, in the sense, was acting as a kind of mental valet. It was taking care of all the minor mental details in your life. It was keeping tabs on everything going on around you and making sure you were acting appropriately, while leaving you free to concentrate on the main problem at hand.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“... this is why Gottman has couples talk about something involving their marriage — like their pets — without being about their marriage. He looks closely at indirect measures of how the couple is doing: the telling traces of emotion that flit across one person's face; the hint of stress picked up in the sweat glands of the palm; a sudden surge in heart rate; a subtle tone that creeps into an exchange.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Gottman is far more selective. He has found that he can find out much of what he needs to know just by focusing on what he calls the Four Horsemen: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“La región ventromedial desempeña una función crucial en la toma de decisiones. Establece contingencias y relaciones, y organiza la montaña de información que recibimos del mundo exterior para priorizar y señalar las cosas que exigen atención inmediata. Quienes sufren alguna lesión en esta zona están plenamente capacitados para el pensamiento racional y pueden ser muy inteligentes y funcionales, pero carecen de capacidad de juicio.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Inteligencia intuitiva. ¿Por qué sabemos la verdad en dos segundos?

“The problem is that buried among the things we hate is a class of products that are in that category only because they are weird. They make us nervous. They are sufficiently different that it takes some time to understand that we actually like them.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“This is the gift of training and expertise—the ability to extract an enormous amount of meaningful information from the very thinnest slice of experience.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“por qué las mejores decisiones suelen ser las más difíciles de explicar?”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Inteligencia intuitiva. ¿Por qué sabemos la verdad en dos segundos?

“The results from these experiments are, obviously, quite disturbing. They suggest that what we think of as free will is largely an illusion: much of the time, we are simply operating on automatic pilot, and the way we think and act—and how well we think and act on the spur of the moment—are a lot more susceptible to outside influences than we realize. But”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“When we make a split-second decision,” Payne says, “we are really vulnerable to being guided by our stereotypes and prejudices, even ones we may not necessarily endorse or believe.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Hey, say you are looking at a chess board. Is there anything you can’t see? No. But are you guaranteed to win? Not at all, because you can’t see what the other guy is thinking.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly turns out to be like the rule of agreement in improv. It enables rapid cognition.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Our world requires that decisions be sourced and footnoted, and if we say how we feel, we must also be prepared to elaborate on why we feel that way.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“are in perceptions of the taste and quality of the”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Soros”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“Human Rights Watch: “Nationwide, the rate of drug admissions to state prison for black men is thirteen times greater than the rate for white men. In ten states black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at rates that are 26 to 57 times greater than those of white men in the same state. In Illinois, for example, the state with the highest rate of black male drug offender admissions to prison, a black man is 57 times more likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than a white man.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“When I saw the kouros for the first time," he said, "I felt as though there was a glass between me and the work.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“We don’t know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don’t always appreciate their fragility.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“The key to good decision-making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“The task of making sense of ourselves and our behavior requires that we acknowledge there can be much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“skin. This is the real lesson of Blink: It is not enough simply to explore the hidden recesses of our unconscious. Once we know about how the mind works—and about the strengths and weaknesses of human judgment—it is our responsibility to act.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“How hard does he work? Is he a good teammate? Does he stay out all night drinking and doing drugs, or does he take his job seriously? Is he willing to learn from his coaches? How resilient is he in the face of adversity? When the pressure is greatest and the game is on the line, how well does he perform? Is he someone likely to be better over time or has he already peaked?”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“big computer in our brain that handles our unconscious is at its best when it has to juggle many competing variables.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“On straightforward choices, deliberate analysis is best. When questions of analysis and personal choice start to get complicated—when we have to juggle many different variables—then our unconscious thought processes may be superior.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“the second lesson of Blink: understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

“When you are in the product development world, you become immersed in your own stuff, and it’s hard to keep in mind the fact that the customers you go out and see spend very little time with your product,”
― Malcolm Gladwell, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking