Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

It's funny, because there are so many stereotypes out there about actors and movie stars in general, but I've had a great opportunity to meet a lot of them, and maybe it's just because they don't behave that way around me, but I rarely see that kind of abuse of power.

Vulnerability is the strongest state to be in. How boring would it be if we were constantly dominant or constantly submissive?

Think for yourself and question authority.

I'm not allowing my perspective to be dictated by the dominant culture.

David and his followers taught no new doctrines, in their dispersion or when they came to power, that can be brought to countenance thee at all in shaving off thy beard.

Reggae music is not an easy music to like when it comes to the power in society. 'Cause it talks about changing society. You won't find it readily accepted.

We all assume that if you're weak and poor, you're never going to win. In fact, the real world is full of examples where the exact opposite happens, where the weak win and the strong screw up.

Being able to provoke a different point of view to the standard current ideological or political perspective as played out in conventional newspaper or radio reportage is what a public intellectual does. But it's not merely about being oppositional, because that's too negative.

Too often a story is examined through biased eyes, without a sensitivity for everyone who forged it. It's seen from the point of view of the great white savior, and rarely is the perspective of the slave a part.

I'm doing this play right now, the new David Mamet play. It's called 'Race,' and it's very interesting how people really leave the theater filled with the desire to talk about the play and the issues and the characters, and how they're all navigating their personal views around race.

Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth.

It is important that students bring a certain …, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

In every respect the burden is hard on those who attack an almost universal opinion. They must be very fortunate well as unusually capable if they obtain a hearing at all.

I don't think we ought to base our policy on what the conventional wisdom is.... The conventional wisdom usually is wrong.

I allow the public to believe that I have more influence with the King than I do in reality.

Political philosophy has always only held up a mirror to contemporary times.

We ought to remain skeptical of our own institutions.

Our image has undergone change from David fighting Goliath to being Goliath.

Foucault is one of many who want a new conception of how power and knowledge interact. But he is not looking for a relation between two givens, 'power' and 'knowledge.' As always, he is trying to rethink the entire subject matter, and his 'knowledge' and 'power' are to be something else.

Do not read 'Hard Choices' if you seek a nuanced analysis of the people who run the world's foreign policy, let alone any juicy gossip.

I sometimes think that we underestimate Trump, but that's just my opinion. I always like to tack the other way, I guess.

I don't see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

I always want to take on the giants.

Even criticism is more interesting when the writer's authority does not only come through this omniscient narrator, but through questions, ambivalence, vulnerability. A mind questioning and on the move, not just settling down and declaring - that's one of the most interesting possibilities.

I laugh all the time about our investigation, especially about making a fool of David Duke, who likes to think I don't have the intelligence of an ape because he thinks I'm genetically inferior.