No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.
Malcolm GladwellRead
The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Being nice can sometimes mask deeper issues and prevent necessary conversations about dissent.
In this quote, Malcolm Gladwell highlights the idea that societal expectations to maintain niceness can often serve to suppress valid grievances and feelings of anger. This pressure to conform to a pleasant demeanor may silence dissenters and discourage open dialogue about issues that require critical discussion and resolution.
Themes
NicenessCriticismDissentAngerSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about social issues, one might quote Gladwell to advocate for honest discussions over superficial pleasantries.
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.
Malcolm GladwellRead
The people at the top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
Malcolm GladwellRead
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.
Malcolm GladwellRead
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.
Malcolm GladwellRead
Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.
Malcolm GladwellRead
Similar quotes
The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary; the commonplace unique; the everyday eternal.
George A. SheehanRead
How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding ; How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile.
Henry David ThoreauRead
I think for it to be hip to be idealistic is weird, you know? I mean, even all the best rebels to me, had some sense of hope in them.
Tom PettyRead
It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
Eric HofferRead
Creating some god for one's inspirations was always a good way to avoid accusations of pride should the scheme succeed, as well as the blame if did not.
Margaret AtwoodRead
Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.
Pema ChodronRead