Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

You don't talk quite like a girl who has had no advantages.

We have this myth that if you work hard, you can accomplish anything. It's not a very American thing to say, but I don't think that's true. It's true for a lot of people, but you need other things to succeed. You need luck, you need opportunity, and you need the life skills to recognize what an opportunity is.

My mom was a model. She met my dad when he was building the Ritz-Carlton in Colorado and she was modeling there. Although we were very blessed, my parents never wanted us to believe we didn't have to work. They didn't want us to think that our situation would get us through life.

I had a unique privilege to have a good start in life and a chance to develop my talents.

Ariana Grande is a billionaire before she's been an artist. You have to work to be able to appreciate what you have... what work did she ever have to do in her life?

Writing can be taken up at any point. But you need to remember that the arts are fundamentally unfair. Hard work and diligence won't necessarily take you all the way. Talent, nepotism, influence, and pure luck play a huge part.

I didn't grow up with a lot of money, but I grew up with a lot of opportunities that many people don't have.

After a point, it doesn't matter where you come from. There are many star kids who haven't done well in the industry and rank newcomers who have done amazingly well.

I learned you work for what you get, and I feel sorry for people who haven't had that upbringing.

I'm the daughter of one of the most long-standing senators in politics, and I have been given every opportunity that anyone could possibly dream of. I was given those opportunities as a result of the hard work from both sides of my family.

You can't control where you are born, and when you're growing up, until you've seen something else, you're just living your life.

I'm not saying none of these guys are talented, but people think Ed Sheeran crawled off a couch and lived on the street or something, but him, Ellie Goulding... they all come from Suffolk, Surrey, Richmond... they come from support.

I wondered if sometimes the difference between a psychopath in Broadmoor and a psychopath on Wall Street was the luck of being born into a stable, rich family.

I’m a believer in luck and think the social conditions you’re born into provide the opportunity for you to prove your luck. And I suppose I’ve been lucky.

I have a personality defect where I sort of refuse to see myself as an underdog... It's because of my parents. They raised me with the entitlement of a tall, blond, white man.

Knowledge of the past and an optimistic view of the present give you great opportunities.

I think to be successful you have to work really hard but you also have to have a little bit of luck.

When you’re a housekeeper’s daughter, you see the world through a half-open door.

My career could've been anything, I just wasn't that good at other things. I'd say it was fairly easy starting out as I did in LA, meeting some great friends and musicians and landing a record deal. That's where the hard work began though.

Look at the mother of Washington! She raised a boy that could not tell a lie--could not tell a lie! But he never had any chance. It might have been different if he had belonged to the Washington Newspaper Correspondents' Club

Superstar lawyers and math whizzes and software entrepreneurs appear at first blush to lie outside ordinary experience. But they don't. They are products of history and community, of opportunity and legacy. Their success is not exceptional or mysterious. It is grounded in a web of advantages and inheritances, some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky - but all critical to making them who they are. The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.

Being a doctor at Johns Hopkins does not make me any better in God's sight than the individual who has not had the opportunity to gain such an education but who still works hard.

I've been so lucky to have my mum and dad because they've worked to give my brother and I everything. We're not spoilt children.

I started out in life with two great advantages: No money and good parents.

I just feel fortune just to have been lucky enough, and worked hard enough, and blessed.