# Outliers  ## Metadata - Author: [[Malcolm Gladwell]] - Full Title: Outliers - Category: #books ## Highlights - Success is the result of what sociologists like to call “accumulative advantage.” ([Location 327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=327)) - Achievement is talent plus preparation. The problem with this view is that the closer psychologists look at the careers of the gifted, the smaller the role innate talent seems to play and the bigger the role preparation seems to play. ([Location 413](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=413)) - Their research suggests that 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. That’s it. And what’s more, the people at the very top don’t work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder. ([Location 432](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=432)) - Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good. ([Location 459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=459)) - Their success was not just of their own making. It was a product of the world in which they grew up. ([Location 750](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=750)) - “Knowledge of a boy’s IQ is of little help if you are faced with a formful of clever boys.” ([Location 898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=898)) - He’d had to make his way alone, and no one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses—ever makes it alone. ([Location 1257](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=1257)) - Those 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. ([Location 1640](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=1640)) - Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig. ([Location 1651](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=1651)) - if you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. ([Location 1656](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=1656)) - Jewish doctors and lawyers did not become professionals in spite of their humble origins. They became professionals because of their humble origins. ([Location 1670](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=1670)) - Planes are safer when the least experienced pilot is flying, because it means the second pilot isn’t going to be afraid to speak up. ([Location 2124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=2124)) - Who we are cannot be separated from where we’re from—and when we ignore that fact, planes crash. ([Location 2400](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=2400)) - Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds. ([Location 2670](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=2670)) - The extra time gave Corcoran the chance to make mathematics meaningful: to let his students see the clear relationship between effort and reward. ([Location 2853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=2853)) - What is being asked of her is the same thing that was asked of the Korean pilots. To become a success at what they did, they had to shed some part of their own identity, because the deep respect for authority that runs throughout Korean culture simply does not work in the cockpit. ([Location 2889](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=2889)) - Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them. ([Location 2910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001ANYDAO&location=2910))