Top 500 Susan Cain Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Introverts also seem better than extroverts at delaying gratification, a crucial life skill associated with everything from higher SAT scores and income to lower body mass index.”

— Susan Cain

452. “How could you be shy and courageous?”

— Susan Cain

453. “I wonder whether students like the young safety officer would be better off if we appreciated that not everyone aspires to be a leader in the conventional sense of the word – that some people wish to fit harmoniously into the group, and others to be independent of it.”

— Susan Cain

454. “Some high-reactives love public speaking and performing, and plenty of extroverts have stage fright; public speaking is the number-one fear in America, far more common than the fear of death. Public speaking phobia has many causes, including early childhood setbacks, that have to do with our unique personal histories, not inborn temperament.”

— Susan Cain

455. “The one exception to this is online brainstorming. Groups brainstorming electronically, when properly managed, not only do better than individuals, research shows; the larger the group, the better it performs. The same is true of academic research – professors who work together electronically, from different physical locations, tend to produce research that is more influential than those either working alone or collaborating face-to-face.”

— Susan Cain

456. “But public opinion was beside the point for Franklin and Eleanor. Each had strengths that the other craved – her empathy, his bravado. “E is an Angel,” Franklin wrote in his journal. When she accepted his marriage proposal in 1903, he proclaimed himself the happiest man alive. She responded with a flood of love letters. They were married in 1905 and went on to have six children.”

— Susan Cain

457. “McHugh helped the students find rhythms in their lives that allowed them to claim the solitude they needed and enjoyed, and to have social energy left over for leading others.”

— Susan Cain

458. “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.”

— Susan Cain

459. “The stereotype of the university professor is accurate for so many people on campus. They like to read; for them there’s nothing more exciting than ideas. And some of this has to do with how they spent their time when they were growing up. If you spend a lot of time charging around, then you have less time for reading and learning. There’s only so much time in your life.”

— Susan Cain

460. “No confunda la firmeza o la elocuencia con las buenas ideas.”

— Susan Cain

461. “Many foreign-born professionals experience this; you’re a glorified laborer instead of a leader.”

— Susan Cain

462. “Our nervous systems make little distinction between our own pain and the pain of others, it turns out; they react similarly to both. This instinct is as much a part of us as the desire to eat and breathe. The compassionate instinct is also a fundamental aspect of the human success story – and one of the great powers of bittersweetness.”

— Susan Cain

463. “I’m doing this to advance work I care about deeply, and when the work is done I’ll settle back into my true self.”

— Susan Cain

464. “The “Bus to Abilene” anecdote reveals our tendency to follow those who initiate action – any action.”

— Susan Cain

465. “Introversion – along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness.”

— Susan Cain

466. “If you had gathered the same people who created Linux, installed them in a giant conference room for a year, and asked them to devise a new operating system, it’s doubtful that anything so revolutionary would have occurred.”

— Susan Cain

467. “In the meantime, I’ve told you my tale of abject terror because it lies at the heart of some of my most urgent questions about introversion. On some deep level, my fear of public speaking seems connected to other aspects of my personality that I appreciate, especially my love of all things gentle and cerebral.”

— Susan Cain

468. “We can also trace our admiration of extroverts to the Greeks, for whom oratory was an exalted skill, and to the Romans, for whom the worst possible punishment was banishment from the city, with its teeming social life.”

— Susan Cain

469. “Here’s one answer: social media has made new forms of leadership possible for scores of people who don’t fit the Harvard Business School mold.”

— Susan Cain

470. “Remarkable, but perhaps not surprising. Psychologists are trained to heal, so their research naturally focuses on problems and pathology.”

— Susan Cain

471. “No one would choose this sort of painful adolescence, but the fact is that the solitude of Woz’s teens, and the single-minded focus on what would turn out to be a lifelong passion, is typical for highly creative people.”

— Susan Cain

472. “Don’t think about the perfect answer. It’s better to get out there and say something than to never get your voice in.”

— Susan Cain

473. “I believe it’s because we intuit that, if pain endures transgenerationally, then so, too, could healing.”

— Susan Cain

474. “Keltner, is a moral emotion.”

— Susan Cain

475. “We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies.”

— Susan Cain

476. “But Edgar is an avowed introvert. “I’d much rather sit and read and think about things than talk to people,” he says.”

— Susan Cain

477. “Temperament refers to inborn, biologically based behavioral and emotional patterns that are observable in infancy and early childhood; personality is the complex brew that emerges after cultural influence and personal experience are thrown into the mix.”

— Susan Cain

478. “Everyone assumes that it’s good to accentuate positive emotions, but that isn’t correct.”

— Susan Cain

479. “Similarly, at Microsoft, many employees enjoy their own private offices, yet they come with sliding doors, movable walls, and other features that allow occupants to decide when they want to collaborate and when they need private time to think. These kinds of diverse workspaces benefit introverts as well as extroverts, the systems design researcher Matt Davis told me, because they offer more spaces to retreat to than traditional open-plan offices.”

— Susan Cain

480. “But does it always make sense to equate leadership with hyper-extroversion?”

— Susan Cain

481. “And it’s the kids we might call the most sensitive, the most high-reactive, the ones who are likely to be introverts who feel the guiltiest.”

— Susan Cain

482. “People would always tell me, ‘These are the best years of your life,’ ” he recalls. “And I would think to myself, I hope not! I hated school.”

— Susan Cain

483. “But in the case of this commander, says Grant, people respected not just his formal authority, but also the way he led: by supporting his employees’ efforts to take the initiative. He gave subordinates input into key decisions, implementing the ideas that made sense, while making it clear that he had the final authority. He wasn’t concerned with getting credit or even with being in charge; he simply assigned work to those who could perform it best.”

— Susan Cain

484. “Public Speaking–Social Anxiety Center of New York.”

— Susan Cain

485. “Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory. They’re associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated, and insecure. Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their colleagues;.”

— Susan Cain

486. “On the other side of the debate are a group of psychologists known as the Situationists. Situationism posits that our generalizations about people, including the words we use to describe one another – shy, aggressive, conscientious, agreeable – are misleading. There is no core self; there are only the various selves of Situations X, Y, and Z.”

— Susan Cain

487. “When you look at big companies, almost none of the top executives are Asians. They hire someone who doesn’t know anything about the business, but maybe he can make a good presentation.”

— Susan Cain

488. “As adults, many of us work for organizations that insist we work in teams, in offices without walls, for supervisors who value “people skills” above all. To advance our careers, we’re expected to promote ourselves unabashedly.”

— Susan Cain

489. “If “fast” and “slow” animals had parties, writes the evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, “some of the fasts would bore everyone with their loud conversation, while others would mutter into their beer that they don’t get any respect.”

— Susan Cain

490. “We know that there are physiological limits on who we are and how we act. But should we attempt to manipulate our behavior within the range available to us, or should we simply be true to ourselves? At what point does controlling our behavior become futile, or exhausting?”

— Susan Cain

491. “We often marvel at how introverted, geeky kids “blossom” into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it’s not the children who change but their environments. As adults, they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them.”

— Susan Cain

492. “That’s why Professor Little, the consummate introvert, lectures with such passion. Like a modern-day Socrates, he loves his students deeply; opening their minds and attending to their well-being are two of his core personal projects. When.”

— Susan Cain

493. “Why are some people talkative while others measure their words? Why.”

— Susan Cain

494. “They like to read; for them there’s nothing more exciting than ideas. And some of this has to do with how they spent their time when they were growing up.”

— Susan Cain

495. “We tend to place compassion on the “positive” side of the ledger of human emotions, notwithstanding this decidedly bittersweet view of it as the product of shared sorrow.”

— Susan Cain

496. “It suggests that when it comes time to make group decisions, extroverts would do well to listen to introverts – especially when they see problems ahead.”

— Susan Cain

497. “Introverts just just don’t buzz as easily.”

— Susan Cain

498. “You see this all the time. People ask, ‘How did this happen, how did we pay so much?’ Usually it’s said that they were carried away by the situation, but that’s not right. Usually they’re carried away by people who are assertive and domineering. The risk with our students is that they’re very good at getting their way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going the right way.”

— Susan Cain

499. “It’s just the most amazing thing to see the introvert revolution literally remaking the way we organize society – this time, the world of book clubs.”

— Susan Cain

500. “Buzz is JFK’s Camelot, but it’s also the Kennedy Curse.”

— Susan Cain