Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

Everyone praises Harvard 'for the students.' But what makes Harvard's students so great is that they are, in many ways, a cross-section of the larger world. They are normal people who happen to be excellent, and this sets them apart. People who go to Yale go because they want to attend Yale. People who go to Harvard go because they can.

Duke is in extremely competitive environment. In my high school, I think I got one B my whole four years. I was used to being the smartest kid in every class I was in, and then I went to Duke and suddenly I was the dumbest kid in every class. Everybody there is up to something.

I had no confidence at school. I was not a good student and I really thought I was pretty stupid. Just dumb.

My high school was a private school where you went to an Ivy League. That's just what was expected of you and nothing less. So I grew up never being okay with a 'B' because a 'B' was not good enough.

I was always the youngest person in class, skinny, scrawny, no good at sports. I asserted myself by being smart. But then I got to college and started to get C's and D's. That was fantastic. I no longer had to be the smartest person in the room.

Competition among schools is always a great motivator.

I did not like prizes at school. I didn't like tests or exams, or the 11+, or O-levels. Later I hated B.A.s and M.A.s. The reason I hated them is that I don't like being tested, failed or falsely praised by anyone.

I went to a public school through sixth grade, and being good at tests wasn't cool.

Yale students want to impress you with what they're doing. Harvard students want to impress you with how cool they look while doing it.

The innovators' spirit of America still exists. However, there is a narrative in America which goes like - you must go to MIT to get your calling card. Or you go to Harvard and then you drop out and then you've made it.

I was a good student when I was a kid, and I did everything I was supposed to do, and I got A's.

I went to Columbia University because I knew I wanted to go to a school that was academically rigorous. I prided myself on getting good grades, but I also hated it.

I had an all right high school, even though I hated school. I wasn't massively popular, but I was okay. But I wouldn't want to do it again.

I don't come from an Ivy League school or anywhere else.

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.

I wasn't a good student in high school. I wanted to go to college, but they weren't exactly beating down my door to offer me admission, and it's so expensive in the U.S. If you join up for a period, the army will pay your school and provide a stipend.

I think I can be pretty focused, but as I say, it was more wanting to be the good student, seeing myself as a good student, and also, my parents had expectations. They wouldn't have cared if I got a B or a C or even a D.

I was kind of shy as a kid. I was a pretty good student. I was a wallflower, or nerd, if you will.

You still remember your SAT scores. And everybody else does too. Everybody's forgotten everything about themselves, everything else about high school. They remember their SAT scores.

I'm having a great career, though I think I'm not as good as your little scenario makes me out to be.

Even a lot of kids who are gifted can be kids who feel like wimps or nerds.

It's about a young girl who will stop at nothing to be the valedictorian of her class. It's very dark and very wicked, but it's got a great part for a kid, and a great part for an older woman.

It drove me as a kid. I couldn't bear the idea that I wasn't the smartest. Then I got put in a B stream for four years at my school. And that was the making of me in a weird way.

Competition has not worked in education because it has never really been tried.

The Scholastic Aptitude Tests do not predict success any better than the socio economic status of the parents.