Outliers: The Story of Success

Outliers are those who have been given opportunities—and who have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.

The sense of possibility so necessary for success comes not just from inside us or from our parents. It comes from our time: from the particular opportunities that our particular place in history presents us with.

Success is the result of what sociologists like to call 'accumulative advantage.' The professional hockey player starts out a little bit better than his peers.

The tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight.

People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage.

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.

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact.

The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication.

No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich.

If a man works hard, the land will not be lazy.

The outlier, in the end, is not an outlier at all.