Top 250 Sheryl Sandberg Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Reflecting someone’s viewpoint clarifies the disagreement and becomes a starting point for resolution. We all want to be heard, and when we focus on showing others that we are listening, we actually become better listeners.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

152. “The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophesies. Most leadership positions are held by men, so women don’t expect to achieve them, and that becomes one of the reasons they don’t.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

153. “When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

154. “One of the most important things I’ve learned is how deeply you can keep loving someone after they die. You may not be able to hold them or talk to them, and you may even date or love someone else, but you can still love them every bit as much. Playwright Robert Woodruff Anderson captured it perfectly: “Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship.” Last.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

155. “Next time you’re about to call your daughter bossy, take a deep breath and say, ‘My daughter has executive leadership skills.’”

— Sheryl Sandberg

156. “I tell people in their careers, ‘Look for growth. Look for the teams that are growing quickly. Look for the companies that are doing well. Look for a place where you feel that you can have a lot of impact.’”

— Sheryl Sandberg

157. “Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

158. “No industry or country can reach its full potential until women reach their full potential. This is especially true of science and technology, where women with a surplus of talent still face a deficit of opportunity.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

159. “I thought resilience was the capacity to endure pain, so I asked Adam how I could figure out how much I had. He explained that our amount of resilience isn’t fixed, so I should be asking instead how I could become resilient. Resilience is the strength and speed of our response to adversity – and we can build it. It isn’t about having a backbone. It’s about strengthening the muscles around our backbone. Since.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

160. “No one gets to the top, if they sit on the sidelines, or if they don’t believe in themselves.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

161. “Every woman I know, particularly the senior ones, has been called too aggressive at work. We know in gender blind studies that men are more aggressive in their offices than women. We know that. Yet we’re busy telling all the women that they’re too aggressive. That’s the issue.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

162. “As we get older, we define happiness less in terms of excitement and more in terms of peacefulness. Reverend Veronica Goines sums this up as, “Peace is joy at rest, and joy is peace on its feet.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

163. “It’s hard to visualize someone as a leader, if she is always waiting to be told what to do.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

164. “A day of joy is fifteen minutes. A day of pain is fifteen years,” he said. “No one pretends this is easy, but the job of life is to make those fifteen minutes into fifteen years and those fifteen years into fifteen minutes.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

165. “No wonder women don’t negotiate as often as men. It’s like trying to cross a minefield backward in high heels.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

166. “There is no perfect fit when you’re looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

167. “I couldn’t understand when friends didn’t ask me how I was. I felt invisible, as if I were standing in front of them but they couldn’t see me. When someone shows up with a cast, we immediately inquire, “What happened?” If your ankle gets shattered, people ask to hear the story. If your life gets shattered, they don’t. People.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

168. “I don’t pretend there aren’t biological differences, but I don’t believe the desire for leadership is hardwired biology, not the desire to win or excel. I believe that it’s socialization, that we’re socializing our daughters to nurture and our boys to lead.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

169. “Guilt management can be just as important as time management for mothers.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

170. “I’d like to see where boys and girls end up if they get equal encouragement I think we might have some differences in how leadership is done.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

171. “An internal report at Hewlett-Packard revealed that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

172. “Poetry, philosophy, and physics all teach us that we don’t experience time in equal increments.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

173. “The measure of who we are is how we react to something that doesn’t go our way,” he said. “There are always things you can do better. It’s a game of mistakes.” Sports.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

174. “One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren’t making enough progress.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

175. “I don’t know anyone who has been handed only roses. We all encounter hardships. Some we see coming; others take us by surprise. It can be as tragic as the sudden death of a child, as heartbreaking as a relationship that unravels, or as disappointing as a dream that goes unfulfilled. The question is: When these things happen, what do we do next? I.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

176. “I think now is our time. My mother was told by everyone that she had two choices: She could be a nurse or a teacher. The external barriers now are just so much lower. If we start acknowledging what the real issues are, we can solve them. It’s not that hard.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

177. “And anyway, who wears a tiara on a jungle gym?”

— Sheryl Sandberg

178. “But knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make them better.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

179. “We hold ourselves back not just out of fear of seeming too aggressive but also by underestimating our abilities. Ask a woman to explain why she’s successful and she’ll credit luck, hard work, and help from others. Ask a man the same question and he’s likely to explain, or at least think, “C’mon, I’m awesome!”4.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

180. “When you want to change things, you won’t please everyone.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

181. “Asking for input is not a sign of weakness but often the first step to finding a path forward.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

182. “Being my friend meant not just comforting me in my grief but dealing with a level of anger that I’d never felt before and struggled to control. My anger scared me – and made me need the comfort of my friends even more.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

183. “One of the conflicts inherent in having choice is that we all make different ones. There is always an opportunity cost, and I don’t know any woman who feels comfortable with all her decisions. As a result, we inadvertently hold that discomfort against those who remind us of the path not taken. Guilt and insecurity make us second-guess ourselves and, in turn, resent one another.′.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

184. “When we look for joy, we often focus on the big moments. Graduating from school. Having a child. Getting a job. Being reunited with family. But happiness is the frequency of positive experiences, not the intensity.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

185. “A psychiatrist friend explained to me that humans are evolutionarily wired for both connection and grief: we naturally have the tools to recover from loss and trauma.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

186. “When companies fail, it’s usually for reasons that almost everyone knows but almost no one has voiced. When someone isn’t making good decisions, few have the guts to tell that person, especially if that person is the boss. One.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

187. “Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.19.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

188. “Adam has published five different studies demonstrating that meaningful work buffers against burnout.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

189. “We have a problem with women in leadership across the board. This leadership gap – this problem of not enough women in leadership – is running really deep and it’s in every industry. My answer is we have to understand the stereotype assumptions that hold women back.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

190. “In fact, these “bad mother with a briefcase” images are so prevalent that writer Jessica Valenti collected them in a funny and poignant blog post called “Sad White Babies with Mean Feminist Mommies.”25.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

191. “Instead of ignoring our differences, we need to accept and transcend them.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

192. “What I tell everyone, and I really do for myself is, I have a long-run dream, which is I want to work on stuff that I think matters.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

193. “Avoiding feelings isn’t the same as protecting feelings.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

194. “Sad White Babies with Mean Feminist Mommies.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

195. “In China, women who are single past the age of twenty-seven are stigmatized as sheng nu, or “leftover women.” They face severe pressure from their families to marry, stemming from the widespread belief that regardless of education and professional achievement, a woman is “absolutely nothing until she is married.” One thirty-six-year-old economics professor was rejected by fifteen men because she had an advanced degree; her father then forbade her younger sister from going to graduate school.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

196. “Ephron insisted, “It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: you can always change your mind. I know: I’ve had four careers and three husbands.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

197. “Self-compassion often coexists with remorse. It does not mean shirking responsibility for our past. It’s about making sure that we don’t beat ourselves up so badly that we damage our future. It helps us realize that doing a bad thing does not necessarily make us a bad person. Instead of thinking “if only I weren’t,” we can think “if only I hadn’t.” This is why confession in the Catholic religion begins with “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” not “Forgive me, Father, for I am a sinner.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

198. “Parental behavioral factors – including fathers who are responsive and positive, mothers who favor “self-directed child behavior,” and parents with emotional intimacy in their marriages – influence a child’s development two to three times more than any form of child care.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

199. “You should also be aware of the internal barriers that we often impose on ourselves. Too many women sit on the side of the room when they should be sitting at the table. Too many women lower their voices when they should be speaking up. This is not our fault. We internalize messages that say it’s wrong for us to be outspoken, aggressive, and as powerful as – or even more powerful than – men.”

— Sheryl Sandberg

200. “At best, people are open to scrutinizing themselves and considering their blind spots; at worst, they become defensive and angry.”

— Sheryl Sandberg