Susan Cain Quotes

self-help writer

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Susan Cain (born 1968) is an American writer and lecturer, and author of the non-fiction book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (2012) which argues that modern Western culture misunderstands and undervalues the traits and capabilities of introverted people. Her follow-on book, Quiet Power (2016), was adapted for children and teens, and for their educators and parents. Cain's Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole (2022) encourages readers to accept feelings of sorrow and longing as inspiration to experience sublime emotions—such as beauty and wonder and transcendence—to counterbalance the "normative sunshine" of society's pressure to constantly be positive.

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Alternative Names: Susan Horowitz Cain

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I'm seeing businesses embrace the Quiet Revolution as the next great diversity issue of our time.

We need systems that reward the best ideas, not the best presenters.

There's no correlation between expressing an idea assertively or charismatically, and having a good idea.

This is the next great diversity issue of our time.

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.

For seven blissful years I had spent my time reading, writing and researching a book about introversion. But the publication date had arrived, the idyll was over and my metamorphosis was complete. I was now that impossibly oxymoronic creature: the Public Introvert.

One honest relationship can be more productive than fistfuls of business cards.

Where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum... influences our choice of friends and partners, and how we make conversation, resolve differences and show love. It affects the careers we choose and whether or not we succeed at them.

We've known about the transcendent power of solitude for centuries; it's only recently that we've forgotten it.

Our culture is biased against quiet and reserved people, but introverts are responsible for some of humanity's greatest achievements.

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.

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.

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.

Solitude matters, and for some people it is the air that they breathe.

I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing … I like to think before I speak (softly).