No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
There is an important idea in psychology: The 'just world theory,' which says that it is very important for us to convince ourselves that the world is just and things happen for a reason. That there is some elemental fairness in everything, which creates the illusion of justice.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote discusses the 'just world theory' in psychology, highlighting the human need to believe in fairness and justice in the world.
Malcolm Gladwell's quote on the 'just world theory' emphasizes a significant psychological concept where individuals strive to perceive the world as fundamentally fair, believing that events occur for specific reasons. This conviction creates an illusion of justice, helping people cope with life's unpredictability and the inherent unfairness that often exists, by reassuring them that good things happen to good people and bad things to bad people.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about fate and fairness in life, this quote can illustrate why people believe in justice.
More from Malcolm Gladwell
All quotes →People are in one of two states in a relationship,” Gottman went on. “The first is what I call positive sentiment override, where positive emotion overrides irritability. It’s like a buffer. Their spouse will do something bad, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, he’s just in a crummy mood.’ Or they can be in negative sentiment override, so that even a relatively neutral thing that a partner says gets perceived as negative.
The people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
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.
When I go to my health club, and it's in the basement, you have to take the elevator down. And this drives me crazy. Why can't there be a stairway? At least make it as easy to exercise as it is to not exercise. It's in society's interest for me to take the stairs.
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
Similar quotes
There is power in naming racism for what it is, in shining a bright light on it, brighter than any torch or flashlight. A thing as simple as naming it allows us to root it out of the darkness and hushed conversation where it likes to breed like roaches. It makes us acknowledge it. Confront it.
Listen to the sound of silence.
You're captives of a civilizational system that more or less compels you to go on destroying the world in order to live. … You are captives—and you have made a captive of the world itself. That's what's at stake, isn't it?—your captivity and the captivity of the world.
Most of the great books on prayer are written by 'experts' - monks, missionaries, mystics, saints. I've read scores of them, and mainly they make me feel guilty.
It was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.
I'm very emotional; I think I may go mad in several years' time.