I have just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s masterpiece Outliers: The Story Of Success. The definition of an outlier is something or someone that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body. In other words, outliers are the top performers in their area of discipline. They are different and more successful than anyone else.
Gladwell’s findings are there are patterns as to why successful people are so. After reading the following 30 leadership quotes from the book you will feel the same.
- “If you have ability, the vast network of hockey scouts and talent spotters will find you, and if you are willing to work to develop that ability, the system will reward you. Success in hockey is based on individual merit.”
- “Success is the result of what sociologists like to call ‘accumulative advantage.”’
- “We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.”
- “Once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works…They work much, much harder.”
- “What truly distinguishes their (Bill Gates and Bill Joy) histories is not their extraordinary talent but their extraordinary opportunities.”
- “To have a high IQ, you tend to specialize, think deep thoughts. You avoid trivia.” – Christopher Langan
- “Once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, having additional IQ points doesn’t seem to translate into any measurable real-world advantage.”
- “Practical intelligence includes things like ‘knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect.”‘ – Robert Steinberg
- “The wealthier parents were heavily involved in their children’s free time.”
- “If you are someone whose father has made his way up in the business world, then you’ve seen, firsthand, what it means to negotiate your way out of a tight spot.”
- “Outliers always have help along the way.”
- “As is often the case with outliers, buried in setback is golden opportunity.”
- “The problem with hostile takeovers is that they were hostile.” – Steve Brill
- “For twenty years he (Joe Flom) perfected his craft at Skadden, Arps. Then the world changed and he was ready. He didn’t triumph over adversity. Instead, what started out as adversity ended up being an opportunity…they had a skill that they had been working on for years that was suddenly very valuable.”
- “The first lesson is that (Ted) Friedman was willing to work hard, take responsibility for himself, and put himself through school. But the second, perhaps more important lesson is that he happened to come along at a time in America when if you were willing to work hard, you could take responsibility for yourself and put yourself through school.”
- “Even the most gifted of lawyers, equipped with the best of family lessons, cannot escape the limitations of their generation.”
- “Three things – autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward – are, most people agree,the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
- “Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.”
- “Jewish doctors and lawyers did not become professionals in spite of their humble origins. They became professionals because of their humble origins.”
- “The survival of a farmer depends on the cooperation of others in the community. But a herdsman is off by himself.”
- “Cultural legacies are powerful forces.”
- “Plane crashes are much more likely to be the result of an accumulation of minor difficulties and seemingly trivial malfunctions.”
- “The typical accident involves seven consecutive human errors.”
- “That’s what happens when you’re tired. Your decision-making skills erode. You start missing things – things that you would pick up on any other day.” – Suren Ratwatte
- “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard to make sense of something that most people would give up on.”
- “Schools work. The only problem with school, for the kids who aren’t achieving, is that there isn’t enough of it.”
- “Success follows a predictable course.”
- “Outliers are those who have been given opportunities – and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.”
- “They (outliers) 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.”
- “The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.”
I cannot recommend Outliers enough. Click here or on the image above to purchase the book and learn the secrets of success today.
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