About

“Outliers” illustrates why the concept of the “self-made man” is a myth and what genuinely lies behind the achievement of the finest individuals in their area, which is typically a succession of fortunate occurrences, uncommon chances, and other external variables beyond our control.

Are those regarded as great achievers distinct from the rest of the world? Malcolm Gladwell answers this question, and more, in a book that puts the backgrounds of those outstanding achievers into context. Being that type of person, he claims, is about much more than what you are like. 

 

Notable quotes

• “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”
• “Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from.”
• “Those three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
• “It is those who are successful, in other words, who are most likely to be given the kinds of special opportunities that lead to further success. It’s the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It’s the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And it’s the biggest nine- and ten-year-olds who get the most coaching and practice. Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.”
• “No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.”
• “Achievement is talent plus preparation”
• “It’s not how much money we make that ultimately makes us happy between nine and five. It’s whether or not our work fulfills us. Being a teacher is meaningful.”
• “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”
• “Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.”
• “I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don’t work. People don’t rise from nothing…It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn’t.”
• “Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social, and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.”
• “We overlook just how large a role we all play–and by ‘we’ I mean society–in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.”
• “Success is not a random act. It arises out of a predictable and powerful set of circumstances and opportunities.”
• “Hard work is only a prison sentence when you lack motivation”
• “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.”
• “To build a better world we need to replace the patchwork of lucky breaks and arbitrary advantages today that determine success–the fortunate birth dates and the happy accidents of history–with a society that provides opportunities for all.”
• “Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung…We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.”
• “My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.”
• “The values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are.”
• “It wasn’t an excuse. It was a fact. He’d had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses — ever makes it alone.”