Malcolm Gladwell

An incredibly high percentage of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. That's one of the little-known facts.

Rarely do we stop and consider whether the most prestigious of institutions is always in our best interest.

If you go to an elite school where the other students in your class are all really brilliant, you run the risk of mistakenly believing yourself to not be a good student.

Age-class running, as you know, is completely unreliable. It's based on this artificial thing, which is that people who are the same age have the same level of physical maturity. Which just isn't true.

If Harvard is $60,000 and University of Toronto, where I went to school, is maybe six. So you're really telling me that education is 10 times better at Harvard than it is at University of Toronto? That seems ridiculous to me.

You don't want to be first, right? You want to be second or third. You don't want to be - Facebook is not the first in social media. They're the third, right? Similarly, you know, if you look at Steve Jobs' history, he's never been first.

If I was President of the United States, I'd rather be right than interesting. If I was CEO of a company, I'd rather be right than interesting. But I'm a journalist - what journalist would rather be right than interesting?

I have never read any Tolstoy. I felt badly about this until I read a Bill Simmons column where he confessed that he'd never seen 'The Big Lebowski.' Simmons, it should be pointed out, has seen everything. He said that everyone needs to have skipped at least one great cultural touchstone.

If my books appear to a reader to be oversimplified, then you shouldn't read them: You're not the audience!

The willingness to be self-critical in England is much greater than the willingness to be self-critical in America.

In my mid-adolescence, my friend Terry Martin and I became obsessed with William F. Buckley. This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization. Buckley seemed impossibly exotic.

We aren't, as human beings, very good at acting in our best interest.

Of the great entrepreneurs of this era, people will have forgotten Steve Jobs.

If you think advantage lies in resources, then you think the best educational system is the one that spends the most money.

My books have contradictions all the time - and people are fine with that.

I don't think I will ever write about politics or foreign policy. I feel like there is so much good writing in those areas that I have little to add. I also like to steer clear of writing about people whom I do not personally like.

From medieval tapestries, we know that slingers were capable of hitting birds in flight. They were incredibly accurate.

My rule is that if I interview someone, they should never read what I have to say about them and regret having given me the interview.

The two contemporary writers whom I consider as role models are Janet Malcolm and Michael Lewis.

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.