Malcolm Gladwell Quotes

The second we see somebody on the street or meet someone, we make snap judgments about them, about who they are and why we wouldn't necessarily sit with them or why we would or what's cool or not cool.

It's interesting, because I tend to trust a man with big ears.

Man knows much more than he understands.

You never get to pick how you get pinned and how people perceive you.

There is no such thing as women's intuition. You all just have crap poker faces.

I could be completely mad and sound like David Icke, but I just find people with blue eyes colder, less passionate, and more calculated people.

Maybe you don't know who a person is just based on the way they dress. I know that's a really simple thing you're supposed to be taught really young, but sometimes you can forget.

I judge by appearances. People tell me I shouldn't.

We perceive through our senses a person, a situation or an event, and in an instant, we project our mental models - our fears, background and experiences - onto that perception. This often results in cognitive errors, which means we judge and respond incorrectly.

Whether it's because of how somebody looks or because of what they're wearing, you kind of assess a person in the first five minutes before they even speak.

With me it's always about first impressions.

If people are failing, they look inept. If people are succeeding, they look strong and good and competent. That's the 'halo effect.' Your first impression of a thing sets up your subsequent beliefs. If the company looks inept to you, you may assume everything else they do is inept.

In all our perceptions, from vision to hearing, to the pictures we build of people's character, our unconscious mind starts from whatever objective data is available to us - usually spotty - and helps to shape and construct the more complete picture we consciously perceive.

Except for some effects that I attribute mostly to age, my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made a study of these issues.

Even the most analytical thinkers are predictably irrational; the really smart ones acknowledge and address their irrationalities.

Whether you want to admit it or not, people begin to judge you the minute you walk in the door.

I think the problem I have is that first impressions are the ones that stick with people. And people's first impressions of me are obviously from the film, from 'Gregory's Girl.'

Just as our brains fill in the details of an image our eyes record only roughly, so, too, do our brains employ tricks we are unaware of to fill in details about people we don't know intimately.

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.

When you have a label stuck on you, people tend to believe it. If someone calls you suave and debonair, you only get offered parts in a suit and a collar and tie. It just so happens I wear them reasonably well.

You judge people as you meet them.

Far from being a loathsome aberration that ought to be purged from our behavior, it turns out that stereotypes are essential life tools, are accurate much more often than not.

The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don't even know you're making.

If something happens that reinforces your stereotype, it’s a big deal.

If you see voters as rational, you'll be a terrible politician. People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.