Top 500 Susan Cain Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Now that you’re an adult, you might still feel a pang of guilt when you decline a dinner invitation in favor of a good book.”

— Susan Cain

452. “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

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

— Susan Cain

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

— Susan Cain

455. “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

456. “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

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

— Susan Cain

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

— Susan Cain

459. “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

460. “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

461. “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

462. “If these statistics surprise you, that’s probably because so many people pretend to be extroverts.”

— Susan Cain

463. “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

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

— Susan Cain

465. “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

466. “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

467. “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

468. “Keltner, is a moral emotion.”

— Susan Cain

469. “Your degree of extroversion seems to influence how many friends you have, in other words, but not how good a friend you are.”

— Susan Cain

470. “Many of our most important civic institutions, from elections to jury trials to the very idea of majority rule, depend on dissenting voices. But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.”

— Susan Cain

471. “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

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

— Susan Cain

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

— Susan Cain

474. “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

475. “A few things introverts are not: The word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope.”

— Susan Cain

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

— Susan Cain

477. “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

478. “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

479. “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

480. “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

481. “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

482. “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

483. “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

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

— Susan Cain

485. “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

486. “If this is true – if solitude is an important key to creativity – then we might all want to develop a taste for it. We’d want to teach our kids to work independently.”

— Susan Cain

487. “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

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

— Susan Cain

489. “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

490. “In China there was more emphasis on listening, on asking questions rather than holding forth, on putting others’ needs first. In the United States, he feels, conversation is about how effective you are at turning your experiences into stories, whereas a Chinese person might be concerned with taking up too much of the other person’s time with inconsequential information.”

— Susan Cain

491. “What’s so magical about solitude? In many fields, it’s only when you’re alone that you can engage in deliberate practice. This is the key to exceptional achievement.”

— Susan Cain

492. “The word that Kagan first used to describe high-reactive people was inhibited, and that’s exactly how I still feel at some dinner parties.”

— Susan Cain

493. “People who are aware of their sweet spots have the power to leave jobs that exhaust them and start new and satisfying businesses. They.”

— Susan Cain

494. “But what if some kids are less prone to anxiety than others, as is true of extremely low-reactive kids? Often the best way to teach these children values is to give them positive role models and to channel their fearlessness into productive activities.”

— Susan Cain

495. “It may be that some disadvantaged kids who get into trouble suffer not solely from poverty or neglect, say those who hold this view, but also from the tragedy of a bold and exuberant temperament deprived of healthy outlets.”

— Susan Cain

496. “Extroverts, on the other hand, can be so intent on putting their own stamp on events that they risk losing others’ good ideas along the way and allowing workers to lapse into passivity. “Often the leaders end up doing a lot of the talking,” says Francesca Gino, “and not listening to any of the ideas that the followers are trying to provide.”

— Susan Cain

497. “Not that introverts can’t be eager and enthusiastic, but we’re not as overtly expressive as extroverts.”

— Susan Cain

498. “Introverts and extroverts also direct their attention differently: if you leave them to their own devices, the introverts tend to sit around wondering about things, imagining things, recalling events from their past, and making plans for the future. The extroverts are more likely to focus on what’s happening around them. It’s as if extroverts are seeing “what is” while their introverted peers are asking “what if.” Introverts.”

— Susan Cain

499. “In fact, a recent fMRI study shows that when people use self-talk to reassess upsetting situations, activity in their prefrontal cortex increases in an amount correlated with a decrease of activity in their amygdala.”

— Susan Cain

500. “Nor are introverts necessarily shy. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating.”

— Susan Cain