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Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know QUOTES

Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know QUOTES

1 " If you knew my father, you would have seen him in other stressful situations, and you would have come to understand that the “frightened” face, for whatever reason, was simply not part of his repertoire. In crisis, he turned deadly calm. But if you didn’t know him, what would you have thought? Would you have concluded that he was cold? Unfeeling? When we confront a stranger, we have to substitute an idea—a stereotype—for direct experience. And that stereotype is wrong all too often. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

2 " You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

3 " To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative - to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception - is worse. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

4 " The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

5 " The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly. The same convictions can make us reluctant to take advice from others who cannot know our private thoughts, feelings, interpretations of events, or motives, but all too willing to give advice to others based on our views of their past behavior, without adequate attention to their thoughts, feelings, interpretations, and motives. Indeed, the biases documented here may create a barrier to the type of exchanges of information, and especially to the type of careful and respectful listening, that can go a long way to attenuating the feelings of frustration and resentment that accompany interpersonal and intergroup conflict. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

6 " The first set of mistakes we make with strangers—the default to truth and the illusion of transparency—has to do with our inability to make sense of the stranger as an individual. But on top of those errors we add another, which pushes our problem with strangers into crisis. We do not understand the importance of the context in which the stranger is operating. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

7 " The Holy Fool is a truth-teller because he is an outcast. Those who are not part of existing social hierarchies are free to blurt out inconvenient truths or question things the rest of us take for granted. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

8 " The thing we want to learn about a stranger is fragile. If we tread carelessly it will crumple under our feet... The right way to talk to strangers is with caution and humility. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

9 " We think we can easily see into the hearts of others based on the flimsiest of clues. We jump at the chance to judge strangers. We would never do that to ourselves, of course. We are nuanced and complex and enigmatic. But the stranger is easy. If I can convince you of one thing in this book, let it be this: Strangers are not easy. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

10 " Defaulting to truth is a problem. It lets spies and con artists roam free. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

11 " Today we are now thrown into contact all the time with people whose assumptions, perspectives, and backgrounds are different from our own. The modern world is not two brothers feuding for control of the Ottoman Empire. It is Cortés and Montezuma struggling to understand each other through multiple layers of translators. Talking to Strangers is about why we are so bad at that act of translation. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

12 " Because we do not know how to talk to strangers, what do we do when things go awry with strangers? We blame the stranger. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

13 " The closest we have to Holy Fools in modern life are whistleblowers. They are willing to sacrifice loyalty to their institution—and, in many cases, the support of their peers—in the service of exposing fraud and deceit. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

14 " If suicide is coupled, then it isn’t simply the act of depressed people. It’s the act of depressed people at a particular moment of extreme vulnerability and in combination with a particular, readily available lethal means. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

15 " The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

16 " Don't look at the stranger and jump to conclusions. Look at the stranger's world. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

17 " We start by believing. And we stop believing only when our doubts and misgivings rise to the point where we can no longer explain them away. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

18 " Transparency is the idea that people’s behavior and demeanor—the way they represent themselves on the outside—provides an authentic and reliable window into the way they feel on the inside. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

19 " Pronin calls this phenomenon the “illusion of asymmetric insight.” She writes: The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know

20 " To assume the best about another is the trait that has created modern society. Those occasions when our trusting nature gets violated are tragic. But the alternative—to abandon trust as a defense against predation and deception—is worse. "

― Malcolm Gladwell , Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know