Previous
Privilege, Heritage, and Cultural Background
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Outliers, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Throughout Outliers, in addition to exploring the factors that determine success, Gladwell demonstrates how an improved understanding of success could have a dramatic impact on some of the most crucial facets of contemporary society, such as business, athletics, economics and education. Gladwell attributes several major societal problems, such as low graduation rates in inner-city schools, to a failure to understand success. For example, Gladwell posits that educational outcomes in inner city schools could be improved by adjusting age cut-offs or shortening summer vacation, two overlooked factors that have been shown in research-based studies to significantly impact student outcomes. Throughout Outliers, Gladwell seeks not only to inform, but also to suggest specific evidence-based solutions to real 21st-century problems. He also invites the reader to apply his or her newfound understanding of success to think constructively about how we can all contribute to a better society by focusing on the success factors that matter most, such as opportunity and hard work, rather than perpetuating the myth of “talent” above all.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Solutions and Implications for the Future ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Solutions and Implications for the Future appears in each chapter of Outliers. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
chapter length:
Get the entire Outliers LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Solutions and Implications for the Future Quotes in Outliers
Below you will find the important quotes in Outliers related to the theme of Solutions and Implications for the Future.
Chapter 1 Quotes
The talent of essentially half of the Czech athletic population has been squandered.
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
31
Explanation and Analysis:
Gladwell here gives a surprising example of how accumulative advantage works in practice. On the Czech soccer team, there are almost no players born in the second half of the year (July through December). Gladwell offers his theory for why this is the case. As young boys, Czech citizens are organized onto soccer teams based on the year in which they were born. At the age of 7 or 8, being born in January is a big advantage over being born in December--almost a year makes a marked difference in a young boy's height and strength. So from an early age, the boys born in the first half of the year get a small advantage in sporting events. Instead of "evening out" over the years, such advantages actually accumulate over time--the boys born in the first half of the year get more praise and attention from their coaches, and thus succeed even more.
Gladwell sums up his findings by pointing out that a huge chunk of Czech athletes have been essentially barred from professional athleticism simply because they were born in the wrong months (and therefore never enjoyed the slow accumulation of advantages that their slightly older teammates did). It's unclear what, exactly, Gladwell is proposing in place of the current system of organization (i.e., a system that organizes young people based on the year in which they were born). Nevertheless, it's bizarre and surprising to think that half of an entire population has had such a huge obstacle put in the way of them achieving athletic success.
We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail.
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes
I don’t mean to suggest…that every software tycoon in Silicon Valley was born in 1955...but there are very clearly patterns here, and what’s striking is how little we seem to want to acknowledge them.
Chapter 3 Quotes
Terman didn’t understand what a real outlier was, and that’s a mistake we continue to make to this day.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
This was Terman’s error. He fell in love with the fact that his Termites were at the absolute pinnacle of the intellectual scale...without realizing how little that seemingly extraordinary fact meant.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes
The Cs were squandered talent. But they didn’t need to be.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes
Since we know outliers always have help along the way, can we sort through the ecology of Joe Flom and identify the conditions that helped create him?
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes
Schools work. The only problem with school, for the kids who aren’t achieving, is that there isn’t enough of it.
Her community does not give her what she needs. So what does she have to do? Give up her evenings and weekends and friends—all the elements of her old world—and replace them with KIPP
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Marita just needed a chance. And look at the chance she was given! Someone brought a little bit of the rice paddy to South Bronx and explained to her the miracle of meaningful work.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Eplg Quotes
These were history’s gifts to my family—and if the resources of that grocer, the fruits of those riots, the possibilities of that culture, and the privileges of that skin tone had been extended to others, how many more would now live a life of fulfillment, in a beautiful house high on a hill?
