Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

I'm generally a very pragmatic person: that which works, works.

My own style is one of not much effort.

Never send interim reports only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.

I'm pragmatic.

If you see something that doesn't make sense, ask. Change it. Think about dollars, think about your soldiers' time, think about efficiency.

You can be both progressive and want to get things done - they're not mutually exclusive and that's what I bring.

Never do anything complicated when something simple will serve as well. It's one of the most important secrets of living.

Over the summer we chatted one night while Angie stripped a bed, changed wet sheets, comforted and repajamaed a toddler, and chased down a car of speeding teenagers while shaking a brick at them, never once interrupting the conversation or setting down her margarita. The only reason this woman isn't president of General Motors is because she's chosen not to be.

Slaying the dragon of delay is no sport for the short-winded.

You can do only one thing at a time. I simply tackle one problem and concentrate all efforts on what I am doing at the moment.

It is a mistake to hire huge numbers of people to get a complicated job done. Numbers will never compensate for talent in getting the right answer (two people who don't know something are no better than one), will tend to slow down progress, and will make the task incredibly expensive.

I pretty much know that directing means that you have to answer about a thousand questions every day and you have to answer them quick.

Why bother with a cunning plan when a simple one will do?

It will take you less time and effort to do a thing the difficult way than it will to buy, try and discard all the shortcuts.

No matter how smart you are, you're smarter if you take the easy ways when they are available.

All solutions are temporary, so why not go for duct tape?

Avoid fragmentation: Find your focus and seek simplicity. Purposeful living calls for elegant efficiency and economy of effort-expanding the minimum time and energy necessary to achieve desired goals.

Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie.

The secret of the truly successful, I believe, is that they learned very early in life how not to be busy. They saw through that adage, repeated to me so often in childhood, that anything worth doing is worth doing well. The truth is, many things are worth doing only in the most slovenly, halfhearted fashion possible, and many other things are not worth doing at all.

Always run to the short way; and the short way is the natural: accordingly say and do everything in conformity with the soundest reason. For such a purpose frees a man from trouble, and warfare, and all artifice and ostentatious display.

In the ordinary business of life, industry can do anything which genius can do, and very many things which it cannot.

If it is stupid but it works, it isn't stupid. (a Shin'a'in saying)

The most successful people have the same twenty-four hours in a day that you do.

Never confuse activity with accomplishment.

Necessity does everything well.