Susan Cain quotes

There is zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas. (Susan Cain)
I think the shyness one feels in childhood is often overcome with time. There are children who hide behind their parents' legs, but you don't see grown-ups hiding behind people. It just doesn't happen. I mean, not that often. People develop social skills over time.
Susan Cain
Opposites attract, and I think temperament is so fundamental that you end up craving someone of the opposite temperament to complete you.
Susan Cain
I get a lot of letters from introverts asking how they can meet people. The key is to make sure that you are doing things you enjoy.
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
I look back on my years as a Wall Street lawyer as time spent in a foreign country.
Susan Cain
Love is essential, gregariousness is optional.
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
Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place.
Susan Cain
We've known about the transcendent power of solitude for centuries; it's only recently that we've forgotten it.
Susan Cain
Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi - all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to. (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
We have a two-tier class system when it comes to personality style. To devalue introversion is a waste of talent, energy and happiness.
Susan Cain
One honest relationship can be more productive than fistfuls of business cards.
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
I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing ... I like to think before I speak (softly).
Susan Cain
Our culture is biased against quiet and reserved people, but introverts are responsible for some of humanity's greatest achievements.
Susan Cain
Introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation.
Susan Cain
Solitude matters. And for some people it's the air they breathe.
Susan Cain
Naked lions are just as dangerous as elegantly dressed ones.
Susan Cain
In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who's comfortable "putting himself out there." (Susan Cain)
It's never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population.
Susan Cain
Our culture rightly admires risk-takers, but we need our 'heed-takers' more than ever.
Susan Cain
We (introverts) are not anti-social; we're differently social.
Susan Cain
(In writing Quiet) I was fueled by the same mix of passion and indignation that I imagine inspired Betty Friedan to publish The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Introverts are to extroverts what women were to men at that time--second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent. Our schools, workplaces, and religious institutions are designed for extroverts, and many introverts believe that there is something wrong with them and that they should try to "pass" as extroverts. The bias against introversion leads to a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness.
Susan Cain