Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

The whole world is covered in graffiti. No one cares. It's just part of urban noise.

One unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

Broken Window Theory: Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars.

No one knows what it's like ... to be a dustbin ... in Shaftesbury ... with hooligans.

There is nothing more foolish, nothing more given to outrage than a useless mob.

As we saw in the Queen's Speech, anti-social behaviour - a phenomenon that I believe to be a genuine worry that is also being fed by a lot of scare stories - is the political theme of the moment.

Anti-social behaviour still blights lives, wrecks communities and provides a pathway to criminality.

There is no greater evil than anarchy.

Anarchy is as detestable in grammar as it is in society.

I remember Detroit feeling really unsafe, feeling scared a lot. Our house was broken into, our car was stolen, we had to get a watchdog, we would get beat up in the street, I had my bike stolen. There was just a lot of real anarchy on the streets and sidewalks.

I just think it's really upsetting when you see a community just go out and burn down stores and trash cars.

See, New York is over the hill. It's swallowed up in its own garbage. And the people - I can't stand the people.

The Bowery station on the J line is what happens to a neighborhood once politicians realize the people who live there don't vote.

It would be amazing if people listened to it when they needed shelter; it would be lovely if they didn't spit on it.

Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place.

No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps, and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.... That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.

(The city is being) destroyed by thugs who in a very senseless way are trying to tear down what so many have fought for, tearing down businesses, tearing down or destroying property, things that we know will impact our community for years.

Until the first blow fell, no one was convinced that Penn Station really would be demolished, or that New York would permit this monumental act of vandalism against one of the largest and finest landmarks of its age of Roman elegance. Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed

Sadly, anarchy has gotten such a bad name. We don't really see much evidence of it because people associate it with reckless abandon.

The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I'm outside Ajay's newsagent's. I'm on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I'm massive on Handie's furniture shop, King's Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I've possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout.

What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up?... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way.

The pigeons are shitting on George M. Cohan. I shoo them off. They fly up and perch on his hat. Cohan would've never given his regards to Broadway if he saw how dirty they kept his statue in Duffy Square. New Yorkers walk right by. Nobody cares.

Part of that is ordinary African-Americans, you come out of your house and you see the conditions in your neighborhood and you see, folks in your neighborhood doing certain things that, are irresponsible. You know, the thing I always think about, you get up early in the morning to go to work and there's some dude outside drinking and you come home and the same dude is outside drinking hanging on the corner. And then this engenders a level of anger I think and a level of shame.

Obviously murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes. But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other.