“I want to convince you that these kinds of personal explanations of success don't work. People don't rise from nothing…. It is only by asking where they are from that we can unravel the logic behind who succeeds and who doesn't.”
Source: Outliers: The Story of Success
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Malcolm Gladwell 70
journalist and science writer 1963Related quotes
“Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.”
Kenneth Boulding (1971) "The diminishing returns of science" in: New Scientist. (March 25, 1971) Vol. 49, nr. 744. p. 682
1970s
Context: Perhaps the most difficult ethical problem of the scientific community arises not so much from conflict with other subcultures as from its own success. Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.

“I don't anticipate success. We're not asked to be successful, we are only asked to be faithful.”
2000s, Progressive magazine interview (2003)
Context: If all of the issues that I have worked on were depending on some measure of success, it would be a total failure. I don't anticipate success. We're not asked to be successful, we are only asked to be faithful. I couldn't even tell you what success is.

“I don't fail. I succeed at finding what doesn't work.”
The Fifth-Annual End-of-the-World Tour (2007)

Statement to the students of East Los Angeles' Garfield High School (5 May 1988)

that's a very ignoble reason to be good. Instead - be good for good reasons. Be good for the reason that's you've decided together with other people the society we want to live in: a decent humane society. Not one based on absolutism, not one based on holy books and not one based on sucking up to.. looking over your shoulder to the divine spy camera in the sky. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ&t=59m29s
Richard Dawkins vs. Jonathan Sacks - BBC's RE:Think Festival (2012)

“I don't want anyone who doesn't want me.”
UCLA Thurgood Marshall Lecture. (2008). Thurgood Marshall Lecture on Law and Human Rights. [Online Video]. 17 April. Available from: http://forum-network.org/lecture/education-liberation-black-panther-party. [Accessed: 13 March 2012].