Susan Cain Quotes

80 Sourced Quotes

Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn't soothe anger; it fuels it.

Susan Cain
So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don't let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don't force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way.

Susan Cain
What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?

Susan Cain
Flow is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity...In a state of flow, you're neither bored nor anxious, and you don't question your own adequacy. Hours pass without your noticing.

Susan Cain
We're told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts — which means that we've lost sight of who we really are. Depending on which study you consult, one-third to one half of Americans are introverts — in other words one out of every two or three people you know.

Susan Cain
Introversion — along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness — is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.

Susan Cain
We can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Bill Gates is never going to be Bill Clinton, no matter how he polishes his social skills, and Bill Clinton can never be Bill Gates, no matter how much time he spends alone with a computer.

Susan Cain
Love is essential; gregariousness is optional. Cherish your nearest and dearest. Work with colleagues you like and respect. Scan new acquaintances for those who might fall into the former categories or whose company you enjoy for its own sake. And don't worry about socializing with everyone else. Relationships make everyone happier, introverts included, but think quality over quantity.

Susan Cain
Persistence isn't very glamorous. If genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the 1 percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other 99 percent.

Susan Cain
Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess such a key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole. She didn't choose to go to Wonderland - but she made of it an adventure that was fresh and fantastic and very much her own.

Susan Cain
It's never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population.

Susan Cain
Shyness is the fear of negative judgment, while introversion is simply the preference for less stimulation. Shyness is inherently uncomfortable; introversion is not. The traits do overlap, though psychologists debate to what degree.

Susan Cain
We don't need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

Susan Cain
Remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it's creativity you're after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can't see each other's ideas until everyone has had a chance to contribute.

Susan Cain
Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race. And the single most important aspect of personality … is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum.

Susan Cain
Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can.

Susan Cain
The world needs you and it needs the things you carry. So I wish you the best of all possible journeys and the courage to speak softly.

Susan Cain
Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.

Susan Cain
Everyone shines, given the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight, for others, a lamplit desk.

Susan Cain
Schwartz's research suggests something important: we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizeable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.

Susan Cain
There is no one more courageous than the person who speaks with the courage of his convictions.

Susan Cain
Introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation.

Susan Cain
We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard's education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of power, but to use well the kind you've been granted.

Susan Cain
When you go to a football game and someone offers you a beer [...], they're really saying hi, have a glass of extroversion.

Susan Cain
I had always imagined Rosa Parks as a stately woman with a bold temperament, someone who could easily stand up to a busload of glowering passengers. But when she died in 2005 at the age of ninety-two, the flood of obituaries recalled her as soft-spoken, sweet, and small in stature. They said she was "timid and shy" but had "the courage of a lion." They were full of phrases like "radical humility" and "quiet fortitude.

Susan Cain