Top 500 Susan Cain Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “It may also help explain why they’re so bored by small talk. “If you’re thinking in more complicated ways,” she told me, “then talking about the weather or where you went for the holidays is not quite as interesting as talking about values or morality.”

— Susan Cain

202. “The longer you pause to process surprising or negative feedback, the more likely you are to learn from it.”

— Susan Cain

203. “For many introverts like David, adolescence is the great stumbling place, the dark and tangled thicket of low self-esteem and social unease. In middle and high school, the main currency is vivacity and gregariousness; attributes like depth and sensitivity don’t count for much.”

— Susan Cain

204. “Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to. Stay home on New Year’s Eve if that’s what makes you happy. Skip the committee meeting. Cross the street to avoid making aimless chitchat with random acquaintances. Read. Cook. Run. Write a story. Make a deal with yourself that you’ll attend a set number of social events in exchange for not feeling guilty when you beg off.”

— Susan Cain

205. “Restorative niche’ is Professor Little’s term for the place you go when you want to return to your true self. It can be a physical place, like the path beside the Richelieu River, or a temporal one, like the quiet breaks you plan between sales calls.”

— Susan Cain

206. “At IBM, a corporation that embodied the ideal of the company man, the sales force gathered each morning to belt out the company anthem, “Ever Onward,” and to harmonize on the “Selling IBM” song, set to the tune of “Singin’ in the Rain.”

— Susan Cain

207. “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. Or maybe you like to eat alone in restaurants and could do without the pitying looks from fellow diners. Or you’re told that you’re “in your head too much,” a phrase that’s often deployed against the quiet and cerebral.”

— Susan Cain

208. “In our house, reading was the primary group activity. On Saturday afternoons we curled up with our books in the den. It was the best of both worlds: you had the animal warmth of your family right next to you, but you also got to roam around the adventure-land inside your own head.”

— Susan Cain

209. “Talkative people are rated as smarter, better-looking, more interesting, and more desirable as friends. Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast-talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones. The same dynamics ap-ply in groups, where research shows that the voluble are considered smarter than the reticent – even though there’s zero correlation between the gift of gab and good ideas.”

— Susan Cain

210. “She had trouble finding the sacred in the everyday; it seemed to be there only when she withdrew from the world.”

— Susan Cain

211. “As children, our classroom desks are increasingly arranged in pods, the better to foster group learning, and research suggests that the vast majority of teachers believe that the ideal student is an extrovert.”

— Susan Cain

212. “All of which raises the question, how did we go from Character to Personality without realizing that we had sacrificed something meaningful along the way?”

— Susan Cain

213. “Whoever you are, bear in mind that appearance is not reality. Some people act like extroverts, but the effort costs them energy, authenticity, and even physical health. Others seem aloof or self-contained, but their inner landscapes are rich and full of drama. So the next time you see a person with a composed face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the powers of quiet.”

— Susan Cain

214. “Since then, some forty years of research has reached the same startling conclusion. Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases: groups of nine generate fewer and poorer ideas compared to groups of six, which do worse than groups of four. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” writes the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham.”

— Susan Cain

215. “In our culture, guilt is a tainted word, but it’s probably one of the building blocks of conscience.”

— Susan Cain

216. “As an introvert might be expected to do, he’d prepared thoroughly for the speech, not only rehearsing his remarks but also making sure he could cite the latest research. Even.”

— Susan Cain

217. “From outside the evangelical community, this seems an astonishing confession. Since when is solitude one of the Seven Deadly Sins? But to a fellow evangelical, McHugh’s sense of spiritual failure would make perfect sense. Contemporary evangelicalism says that every person you fail to meet and proselytize is another soul you might have saved.”

— Susan Cain

218. “Potential clients would walk out of Charlie’s office scared.”

— Susan Cain

219. “Many shy people turn inward, partly as a refuge from the socializing that causes them such anxiety. And many introverts are shy, partly as a result of receiving the message that there’s something wrong with their preference for reflection, and partly because their physiologies, as we’ll see, compel them to withdraw from high-stimulation environments.”

— Susan Cain

220. “Csikszentmihalyi, who between 1990 and 1995 studied the lives of ninety-one exceptionally creative people in the arts, sciences, business, and government, many of his subjects were on the social margins during adolescence, partly because “intense curiosity or focused interest seems odd to their peers.” Teens who are too gregarious to spend time alone often fail to cultivate their talents “because practicing music or studying math requires a solitude they dread.”

— Susan Cain

221. “Would you be surprised if I told you that the vaudevillean professor and the recluse who prefers a life of the mind are one and.”

— Susan Cain

222. “They dream vividly, and can often recall their dreams the next day. They love music, nature, art, physical beauty. They feel exceptionally strong emotions – sometimes acute bouts of joy, but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear. Highly sensitive people also process information.”

— Susan Cain

223. “Putting theory into practice is hard for them,” writes Gallagher, “because their sensitive natures and elaborate schemes are unsuited to the heterogeneous rigors of the schoolyard.”

— Susan Cain

224. “Although we often hang back in group situations, evidence proves that introverts make strong leaders – often delivering better outcomes than extroverted leaders do. Yes, you read that right – not just decent outcomes, but better ones.”

— Susan Cain

225. “Overarousal interferes with attention and short-term memory – key.”

— Susan Cain

226. “These findings suggest something very important: introverts like people they meet in friendly contexts; extroverts prefer those they compete with.”

— Susan Cain

227. “When people are skilled at adopting free traits, it can be hard to believe that they’re acting out of character. Professor Little’s students are usually incredulous when he claims to be an introvert. But Little is far from unique; many people, especially those in leadership roles, engage in a certain level of pretend-extroversion.”

— Susan Cain

228. “Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones.”

— Susan Cain

229. “Anyone can be a great negotiator, I told them, and in fact it often pays to be quiet and gracious, to listen more than talk, and to have an instinct for harmony rather than conflict. With this style, you can take aggressive positions without inflaming your counterpart’s ego. And by listening, you can learn what’s truly motivating the person you’re negotiating with and come up with creative solutions that satisfy both parties.”

— Susan Cain

230. “I could literally go years without having any friends except for my wife and kids,” he says. “Look at you and me. You’re one of my best friends, and how many times do we actually talk – when you call me! I don’t like socializing.”

— Susan Cain

231. “Extroverts get better grades than introverts during elementary school, but introverts outperform extroverts in high school and college.”

— Susan Cain

232. “By the time I was old enough to figure out that I was simply introverted, it was a part of my being, the assumption that there is something inherently wrong with me. I wish I could find that little vestige of doubt and remove it.”

— Susan Cain

233. “Don is “a bitter introvert,” as he cheerfully puts it – bitter because the more time he spends at HBS, the more convinced he becomes that he’d better change his ways.”

— Susan Cain

234. “Here’s a rule of thumb for networking events: one new honest-to-goodness relationship is worth ten fistfuls of business cards. Rush home afterward and kick back on your sofa. Carve out restorative niches.”

— Susan Cain

235. “Drowsy extroverts behind the wheel should be especially careful – at least until they increase their arousal levels by chugging coffee or cranking up the radio. Conversely, introverts driving in loud, overly arousing traffic noise should work to stay focused, since the noise may impair their thinking.”

— Susan Cain

236. “If you want your child to learn these skills, don’t let her hear you call her “shy”: she’ll believe the label and experience her nervousness as a fixed trait rather than an emotion she can control. She also knows full well that “shy” is a negative word in our society. Above all, do not shame her for her shyness.”

— Susan Cain

237. “Everything in the service involved communication,” he says with gentle exasperation. “Greeting people, the lengthy sermon, the singing. There was no emphasis on quiet, liturgy, ritual, things that give you space for contemplation.”

— Susan Cain

238. “That’s because top performers overwhelmingly worked for companies that gave their workers the most privacy, personal space, control over their physical environments, and freedom from interruption. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said that their workspace was acceptably private, compared to only 19 percent of the worst performers; 76 percent of the worst performers but only 38 percent of the top performers said that people often interrupted them needlessly.”

— Susan Cain

239. “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

240. “The parents of high-reactive children are exceedingly lucky, Belsky told me. “The time and effort they invest will actually make a difference. Instead of seeing these kids as vulnerable to adversity, parents should see them as malleable – for worse, but also for better.”

— Susan Cain

241. “And every day, Don wrestles with himself. Should he go back to his apartment and recharge over a quiet lunch, as he longs to do, or join his classmates?”

— Susan Cain

242. “Of course, there’s another word for such people: thinkers.”

— Susan Cain

243. “Emily lowers her voice and flattens her affect during fights with Greg, she thinks she’s being respectful by taking the trouble not to let her negative emotions show. But Greg thinks she’s checking.”

— Susan Cain

244. “Deliberate Practice is best conducted alone for several reasons. It takes intense concentration, and other people can be distracting. It requires deep motivation, often self-generated. But most important, it involves working on the task that’s most challenging to you personally.”

— Susan Cain

245. “Joyce has also come to appreciate Isabel’s sensitive ways. “Isabel is an old soul,” she says. “You forget that she’s only a child. When I talk to her, I’m not tempted to use that special tone of voice that people reserve for children, and I don’t adapt my vocabulary. I talk to her the way I would to any adult. She’s very sensitive, very caring. She worries about other people’s well-being. She can be easily overwhelmed, but all these things go together and I love this about my daughter.”

— Susan Cain

246. “A software engineer named Tom kicks off, describing with great passion his relief at learning that there was “a physiological basis for the trait of sensitivity. Here’s the research! This is how I am! I don’t have to try to meet anyone’s expectations anymore. I.”

— Susan Cain

247. “Caucasians, he said, seem to be “less afraid of other people thinking that what they said was too loud or too stupid.”

— Susan Cain

248. “A man has as many social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups. – WILLIAM JAMES.”

— Susan Cain

249. “When introverts hit the number nine button and find they’ve lost a point, they slow down before moving on to the next number, as if to reflect on what went wrong. But extroverts not only fail to slow down, they actually speed up.”

— Susan Cain

250. “His hypothesis was that extroverted leaders enhance group performance when employees are passive, but that introverted leaders are more effective with proactive employees.”

— Susan Cain