is a renowned journalist, best-selling author, and public speaker. He has penned five New York Times best-selling books and has been included in the TIME 100 Most Influential People list. As an internationally respected thought leader, Gladwell definitely has something to say, and we think his thoughts are worth listening to.
Here, we’ve compiled some of Gladwell’s most poignant and thought-provoking quotes from his most acclaimed and popular audiobooks.
The Tipping Point
1. “Emotion is contagious.” — Malcolm Gladwell,
2. “A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.” — Malcolm Gladwell,
3. “Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push—in just the right place—it can be tipped.” — Malcolm Gladwell,
4. “We have, in short, somehow become convinced that we need to tackle the whole problem, all at once. But the truth is that we don’t. We only need to find the sticky Tipping Points.” — Malcolm Gladwell,
5. “As human beings we are a lot more sophisticated about each other than we are about the abstract world.” — Malcolm Gladwell,
6. “Character isn't what we think it is or, rather, what we want it to be. It isn't a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context.”— Malcolm Gladwell,
Talking to Strangers
7. “We have a default to truth: our operating assumption is that the people we are dealing with are honest.”— Malcolm Gladwell,
8. “Defaulting to truth is a problem. It lets spies and con artists roam free.” — Malcolm Gladwell,
9. “If suicide is coupled, then it isn’t simply the act of depressed people. It’s the act of depressed people at a particular moment of extreme vulnerability and in combination with a particular, readily available lethal means.” — Malcolm Gladwell,
10. “We are bad lie detectors in those situations when the person we’re judging is mismatched.” — Malcolm Gladwell,
