Malcolm T Gladwell - Collected Quotes

"But the world of the Tipping Point is a place where the unexpected becomes expected, where radical change is more than possibility. It is - contrary to all our expectations - a certainty." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"Epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"Epidemics tip because of the extraordinary efforts of a few select carriers. But they also sometimes tip when something happens to transform the epidemic agent itself. This is a well-known principle in virology. The strains of flu that circulate at the beginning of each winter's flu epidemic are quite different from the strains of flu that circulate at the end." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"Epidemics are another example of geometric progression: when a virus spreads through a population, it doubles and doubles again, until it has (figuratively) grown from a single sheet of paper all the way to the sun in fifty steps. As human beings we have a hard time with this kind of progression, because the end result - the effect - seems far out of proportion to the cause. To appreciate the power of epidemics, we have to abandon this expectation about proportionality. We need to prepare ourselves for the possibility that sometimes big changes follow from small events, and that sometimes these changes can happen very quickly." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"It takes only the smallest of changes to shatter an epidemic's equilibrium. [...] There is more than one way to tip an epidemic, in other words. Epidemics are a function of the people who transmit infectious agents, the infectious agent itself, and the environment in which the infectious agent is operating. And when an epidemic tips, when it is jolted out of equilibrium, it tips because something has happened, some change has occurred in one (or two or three) of those areas. These three agents of change I call the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context."  (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"Simply by finding and reaching those few special people who hold so much social power, we can shape the course of social epidemics. In the end, Tipping Points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"The theory of Tipping Points requires, however, that we reframe the way we think about the world. [...] We have trouble estimating dramatic, exponential change. [...] There are abrupt limits to the number of cognitive categories we can make and the number of people we can truly love and the number of acquaintances we can truly know. We throw up our hands at a problem phrased in an abstract way, but have no difficulty at all solving the same problem rephrased as a social dilemma. All of these things are expressions of the peculiarities of the human mind and heart, a refutation of the notion that the way we function and communicate and process information is straightforward and transparent. It is not. It is messy and opaque." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"The three rules of the Tipping Point - the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, the Power of Context - offer a way of making sense of epidemics. They provide us with direction for how to go about reaching a Tipping Point." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"The world - much as we want it to - does not accord with our intuition. This is the second lesson of the Tipping Point. Those who are successful at creating social epidemics do not just do what they think is right, They deliberately test their intuitions." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"There are times when we need a convenient shortcut, a way to make a lot out of a little, and that is what Tipping Points, in the end, are all about." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"These three characteristics - one, contagiousness; two, the fact that little causes can have big effects; and three, that change happens not gradually but at one dramatic moment - are the same three principles that define how measles moves through a grade-school classroom or the flu attacks every winter. Of the three, the third trait - the idea that epidemics can rise or fall in one dramatic moment - is the most important, because it is the principle that makes sense of the first two and that permits the greatest insight into why modern change happens the way it does. The name given to that one dramatic moment in an epidemic when everything can change all at once is the Tipping Point." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"This is the first lesson of the Tipping Point. Starting epidemics requires concentrating resources on a few key areas. The Law of the Few says that Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen are responsible for starting word-of-mouth epidemics, which means that if you are interested in starting a word-of-mouth epidemic, your resources ought to be solely concentrated on those three groups." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"This possibility of sudden change is at the center of the idea of the Tipping Point and might well be the hardest of all to accept. [...] The Tipping Point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"Tipping Points are moments of great sensitivity. Changes made right at the Tipping Point can have enormous consequences." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)

"To make sense of social epidemics, we must first understand that human communication has its own set of very unusual and counterintuitive rules." (Malcolm T Gladwell, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference", 2000)