“Achievement is talent plus preparation.”

— Malcolm Gladwell , book Outliers

Outliers: The Story of Success
Variant: Achievement is talent plus preparation

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Malcolm Gladwell 70

journalist and science writer 1963

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.99

“Self-discipline without talent can often achieve astounding results, whereas talent without self-discipline inevitably dooms itself to failure.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

Pieces of Eight (1982)

“What men want is not talent, it is purpose,—in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labour.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803–1873) English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician

Lucretia, Part II, Chapter XII
Context: The most useless creature that ever yawned at a club, or counted the vermin on his rags under the suns of Calabria, has no excuse for want of intellect. What men want is not talent, it is purpose,—in other words, not the power to achieve, but the will to labour.

“My family had a lot of characteristics—achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations—that all seemed to be recessive in me.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

“I’ve known a lot of talented people but the people that really, really, achieve success – there is ambition, focus and drive behind it.”

Anna Sui (1964) American fashion designer

Financial Times Interview (July 14, 2017)

“If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

“The young audience of today defines Rajinikanth solely by his popular — and populist — roles, conveniently forgetting that, like his contemporary Amitabh Bachchan, it takes talent to make a formula work and something much more than mere talent to transcend it and achieve greatness.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Naman Ramachandran The Other Rajinikanth (5 January 2014) http://www.dailypioneer.com/sunday-edition/agenda/150th-anniversary-issue/the-other-rajinikanth.html

“However extensively Lenin was prepared to creatively develop the Marxism he inherited, he was not prepared to ‘skip stages’ in achieving socialism. Socialism required, as prerequisite, the modernization and industrial development of its economic base. To create the missing material prerequisites, Lenin was prepared to fall back on a centrally supervised market-influenced program of state capitalism.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

Source: Marxism, Fascism & Totalitarianism: Chapters in the Intellectual History of Radicalism, (2008), p. 56

“You know, if you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything, wouldn't you, at any time? And you would achieve nothing!”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for Press Association (3 May 1989) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107427
Third term as Prime Minister

“Art must take reality by surprise. It takes those moments which are for us merely a moment, plus a moment, plus another moment, and arbitrarily transforms them into a special series of moments held together by a major emotion. Art should not, it seems to me, pose the “real” as a preoccupation. Nothing is more unreal than certain so-called “realist” novels — they’re nightmares. It is possible to achieve in a novel a certain sensory truth — the true feeling of a character — that is all.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Paris Review interview (1956)

“Achievement is talent plus preparation.”

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Malcolm Gladwell 70

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