In her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture.
Being an introvert is not a flaw, but a character trait like any other, and it should be respected as such, but this is not always the case, especially in the American society. Many people even blame themselves for being introverted, or are unaware that they are introverted and believe themselves to be shy.
INTROVERTS AND WORK SPACE: WHEN COLLABORATION MAY KILL CREATIVITY
6 Famous Introverts
It’s surprising for many to learn that many famous people are actually introverts. We may assume that to perform at a certain level we need an outgoing, extroverted personality, but this is not true. Read below, for example, about six well known introverts.
1. Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein is one of the most famous scientists in history, but he was also a known introvert. Leaning into his introverted nature, Einstein believed that his creativity and success came from keeping to himself. He said, “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”
Top 52 Best Quotes from Albert Einstein
2. Bill Gates
Bill Gates has said that introverts can be successful by recognizing and taking advantage of their specific strengths, like taking time to think and come up with ideas. Introvert entrepreneurs, for example, by combining their strengths with what they extroverts employees do best, can tap into both sets of skills to grow their business. It’s interesting to consider that Bill Gates is an introvert, but he’s not shy. Not all introverts are necessarily shy, and most people have some introvert and extrovert qualities that exist simultaneously.
Success and Failure: What Bill Gates Learned and 23 Inspiring Quotes
3. Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt was a public person, well known for her entertaining, lectures and press conferences, but she was actually an introvert. Roosevelt believed that you should be your best friend, because only then can you be a friend to others.
4. Elon Musk
Elon Musk is another famous introvert. It took him a lot of time and practice to get comfortable with going up on stage and speaking clearly, but being the head of a company, he had to learn how to do it.
Bezos, Musk, & Buffett See The World Differently, Because They See Time Differently
5. J.K. Rowling
J.K. Rowling is a great example of the principle that introverts are often their most creative when left alone. J.K. Rowling dreamt up Harry Potter when taking a solo train trip. Also, her pen wouldn’t work, but she was too shy to ask a stranger to borrow one, and so she composed the story in her head.
6. Warren Buffet
Warren Buffet, one of the richest people in the world, is a highly respected leader in the financial industry, but he had to put extra time and effort into learning how to connect with people. However, part of his success is due specifically to his preference for solitude, characteristic that has given him the focus needed to become an expert. Buffet’s ability to think clearly and act wisely when other people panic is what has kept him on top.
The 90 Best Warren Buffett Quotes
My Favorite 85 Quotes from “Quiet, The Power of Introverts”
“Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.” ― Susan Cain
“There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.” ― Susan Cain
“Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to.” ― Susan Cain
“The highly sensitive [introverted] tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive. 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 about their environments–both physical and emotional–unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss–another person’s shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.” ― Susan Cain
“Don’t think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.” ― Susan Cain
“The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it’s a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers — of persistence, concentration, and insight — to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.” ― Susan Cain,
“So stay true to your own nature. If you like to do things in a slow and steady way, don’t let others make you feel as if you have to race. If you enjoy depth, don’t force yourself to seek breadth. If you prefer single-tasking to multi-tasking, stick to your guns. Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way.” ― Susan Cain
“Introversion- along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness- is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.” ― Susan Cain
“Everyone shines, given the right lighting.” ― Susan Cain
“We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.” ― Susan Cain
“I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they’re good talkers, but they don’t have good ideas. It’s so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They’re valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking.” ― Susan Cain
“Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not.” ― Susan Cain
“If you’re an introvert, you also know that the bias against quiet can cause deep psychic pain. As a child you might have overheard your parents apologize for your shyness. Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell” -that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and some humans are just the same.” ― Susan Cain
“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
“The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself.” ― Susan Cain
“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
“It’s not that there is no small talk…It’s that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end…Sensitive people…’enjoy small talk only after they’ve gone deep’ says Strickland. ‘When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else.” ― Susan Cain
“We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.” ― Susan Cain
“Evangelicalism has taken the Extrovert Ideal to its logical extreme…If you don’t love Jesus out loud, then it must not be real love. It’s not enough to forge your own spiritual connection to the divine; it must be displayed publicly.” ― Susan Cain
“We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard’s education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of power, but to use well the kind you’ve been granted.” ― Susan Cain
“It’s as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people’s emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world.” ― Susan Cain
“Love is essential, gregariousness is optional.” ― Susan Cain
“I had always imagined Rosa Parks as a stately woman with a bold temperament, someone who could easily stand up to a busload of glowering passengers. But when she died in 2005 at the age of ninety-two, the flood of obituaries recalled her as soft-spoken, sweet, and small in stature. They said she was “timid and shy” but had “the courage of a lion.” They were full of phrases like “radical humility” and “quiet fortitude.” ― Susan Cain
“Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can. This does not mean aping extroverts; ideas can be shared quietly, they can be communicated in writing, they can be packaged into highly produced lectures, they can be advanced by allies. The trick for introverts is to honor their own styles instead of allowing themselves to be swept up by prevailing norms.” ― Susan Cain
“We don’t ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well.” ― Susan Cain
“A Manifesto for Introverts: 1. There’s a word for ‘people who are in their heads too much’: thinkers. 2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation. 3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths. 4. Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert. There will always be time to be quiet later. 5. But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters. 6. One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards. 7. It’s OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk. 8. ‘Quiet leadership’ is not an oxymoron. 9. Love is essential; gregariousness is optional. 10. ‘In a gentle way, you can shake the world.’ -Mahatma Gandhi” ― Susan Cain
“For example, highly sensitive people tend to be keen observers who look before they leap. They arrange their lives in ways that limit surprises. They’re often sensitive to sights, sounds, smells, pain, coffee. They have difficulty when being observed (at work, say, or performing at a music recital) or judged for general worthiness (dating, job interviews). But there are new insights. The highly sensitive tend to be philosophical or spiritual in their orientation, rather than materialistic or hedonistic. They dislike small talk. They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive (just as Aron’s husband had described her). 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 about their environments — both physical and emotional — unusually deeply. They tend to notice subtleties that others miss — another person’s shift in mood, say, or a lightbulb burning a touch too brightly.” ― Susan Cain
“What if you love knowledge for its own sake, not necessarily as a blueprint to action? What if you wish there were more, not fewer reflective types in the world?” ― Susan Cain
“Indeed, your biggest challenge may be to fully harness your strengths. You may be so busy trying to appear like a zestful, reward-sensitive extrovert that you undervalue your own talents, or feel underestimated by those around you. But when you’re focused on a project that you care about, you probably find that your energy is boundless.” ― Susan Cain
“(Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He’s staring at your shoes instead of his own.)” ― Susan Cain
“Many Introverts are also “highly sensitive,” which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you’re more apt than the average person to feel pleasantly overwhelmed by Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” or a well-turned phrase or an act of extraordinary kindness. You may be quicker than others to feel sickened by violence and ugliness, and you likely have a very strong conscience.” ― Susan Cain
“The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting.” ― Susan Cain
“Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.” ― Susan Cain
“We often marvel at how introverted, geeky, kid ‘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. They don’t have to live in whatever culture they’er plunked into.” ― Susan Cain
“Naked lions are just as dangerous as elegantly dressed ones” ― Susan Cain
“Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world and make sure you contribute it. If this requires public speaking or networking or other activities that make you uncomfortable, do them anyway. But accept that they’re difficult, get the training you need to make them easier, and reward yourself when you’re done.” ― Susan Cain
“The other thing Aron found about sensitive people is that sometimes they’re highly empathic. It’s as if they have thinner boundaries separating them from other people’s emotions and from the tragedies and cruelties of the world. They tend to have unusually strong consciences. … they’re acutely aware of the consequences of a lapse in their own behavior.” ― Susan Cain
“Theodor Geisel (otherwise known as Dr. Seuss) spent his workdays ensconced in his private studio, the walls lined with sketches and drawings, in a bell-tower outside his La Jolla, California, house. Geisel was a much more quiet man than his jocular rhymes suggest. He rarely ventured out in public to meet his young readership, fretting that kids would expect a merry, outspoken, Cat in the Hat–like figure, and would be disappointed with his reserved personality. “In mass, [children] terrify me,” he admitted.”
― Susan Cain
“There is no one more courageous than the person who speaks with the courage of his convictions.” ― Susan Cain
“The same person who would never raise his hand in a lecture hall of two hundred people might blog to two thousand, or two million, without thinking twice. The same person who finds it difficult to introduce himself to strangers might establish a presence online and then extend these relationships into the real world.” ― Susan Cain
“Flow is an optimal state in which you feel totally engaged in an activity…In a state of flow, you’re neither bored nor anxious, and you don’t question your own adequacy. Hours pass without your noticing.” ― Susan Cain
“Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling, said Jung, extroverts to the external life of people and activities. Introverts focus on the meaning they make of the events swirling around them; extroverts plunge into the events themselves. Introverts recharge their batteries by being alone; extroverts need to recharge when they don’t socialize enough.” ― Susan Cain
“As a young boy, Charles Darwin made friends easily but preferred to spend his time taking long, solitary nature walks. (As an adult he was no different. “My dear Mr. Babbage,” he wrote to the famous mathematician who had invited him to a dinner party, “I am very much obliged to you for sending me cards for your parties, but I am afraid of accepting them, for I should meet some people there, to whom I have sworn by all the saints in Heaven, I never go out.”)” ― Susan Cain
“In fact, public speaking anxiety may be primal and quintessentially human, not limited to those of us born with a high-reactive nervous system. One theory, based on the writings of the sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, holds that when our ancestors lived on the savannah, being watched intently meant only one thing: a wild animal was stalking us. And when we think we’re about to be eaten, do we stand tall and hold forth confidently? No. We run. In other words, hundreds of thousands of years of evolution urge us to get the hell off the stage, where we can mistake the gaze of the spectators for the glint in a predator’s eye.” ― Susan Cain
“Scores of studies have shown that venting doesn’t soothe anger; it fuels it.” ― Susan Cain
“It’s not that I’m so smart,” said Einstein, who was a consummate introvert. “It’s that I stay with problems longer.” ― Susan Cain
“Extroverts are more likely to take a quick-and-dirty approach to problem-solving, trading accuracy for speed, making increasing numbers of mistakes as they go, and abandoning ship altogether when the problem seems too difficult or frustrating. Introverts think before they act, digest information thoroughly, stay on task longer, give up less easily, and work more accurately. 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.” ― Susan Cain
“The pressure to entertain, to sell ourselves, and never to be visibly anxious keeps ratcheting up.” ― Susan Cain
“One noteworthy study suggests that people who suppress negative emotions tend to leak those emotions later in unexpected ways. The psychologist Judith Grob asked people to hide their emotions when she showed them disgusting images. She even had them hold pens in their mouths to prevent them from frowning. She found that this group reported feeling less disgusted by the pictures than did those who’d been allowed to react naturally. Later, however, the people who hid their emotions suffered side effects. Their memory was impaired, and the negative emotions they’d suppressed seemed to color their outlook. When Grob had them fill in the missing letter to the word “gr_ss”, for example, they were more likely than others to offer “gross” rather than “grass”. “People who tend to [suppress their negative emotions] regularly,” concludes Grob, “might start to see their world in a more negative light.” p. 223” ― Susan Cain
“Schwartz’s research suggests something important: we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizeable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.” ― Susan Cain
“Psychologists usually offer three explanations for the failure of group brainstorming. The first is social loafing: in a group, some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work. The second is production blocking: only one person can talk or produce an idea at once, while the other group members are forced to sit passively. And the third is evaluation apprehension, meaning the fear of looking stupid in front of one’s peers.” ― Susan Cain
“[Dale] Carnegie’s metamorphosis from farm boy to sales man to public speaking icon is also the story of the rise of the Extrovert Ideal. Carnegie’s journey reflected a cultural evolution that reached a tipping going around the turn of the twentieth century, changing forever who we are and whom we admire, how we act at job interviews and what we look for in an employee, how we court out mates and raise out children. America had shifted from what the influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality — and opened up a Pandora’s Box of personal anxieties from which we would never quite recover.” ― Susan Cain
“…By 1920, popular self-help guides had changed their focus from inner virtue to outer charm — ‘to know what to say and how to say it,’ as one manual put it. ‘To create a personality is power,’ advised another. ‘Try in every way to have a ready command of the manners which make people think ‘he’s a mighty likable fellow,’ said a third.” — ibid. ― Susan Cain
“Americans also received advice on self-presentation — whether they liked it or not — from the advertising industry… ads focused obsessively on the hostile glare of the public spotlight. ‘All around you people are judging you silently.’ warned a 1922 ad for Woodbury’s soap. ‘Critical eyes are sizing you up right now,’ advised the Williams Shaving Cream company… In one ad for Dr. West’s toothbrushes, a prosperous-looking fellow sat behind a desk, his arm cocked confidently behind his hip, asking whether you’ve ‘Ever tried selling yourself to you? A favorable first impression is the greatest single factor in business or social success.” ― Susan Cain
“At the onset of the Culture of Personality, we were urged to develop an extroverted personality for frankly selfish reasons — as a way of outshining the crowd in a newly anonymous and competitive society. But nowadays we tend to think that becoming more extroverted not only makes us more successful, but also makes us better people. We see salesmanship as a way of sharing one’s gifts with the world.” ― Susan Cain
“The essence of HBS education is that leaders have to act confidently and make decisions in the face of incomplete information. The teaching method plats with an age-old question: If you don’t have all the facts — and often you won’t — should you wait to act until you’ve collected as much data as possible? Or, by hesitating, do you risk losing others’ trust and your own momentum? The answer isn’t obvious. If you speak firmly on the basis of bad information, you can lead your people into disaster. But if you exude uncertainty, then moral suffers, funders won’t invest, and your organization can collapse.” ― Susan Cain
“‘Socializing [at HBS]is an extreme sport,’ one of Don’s friends tells [the author]. ‘People go out all the time. If you don’t go out one night, the next day people will ask, ‘Where were you?’ I go out at night like it’s my job.’ Don has noticed that the people who organize social events — happy hours, dinners, drinking fests — are at the top of the social hierarchy.” ― Susan Cain
“In the United States, [Don] feels, conversation is about how effective you are 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
“Even businesses that employ many artists, designers, and other imaginative types often display a preference for extroversion. ‘We want to attract creative people,’ the director of human resources at a major media company told me. When [the author] asked what she meant by ‘creative,’ she answered without missing a beat, ‘You have to be outgoing, fun, and jazzed up to work here.’” ― Susan Cain
“If we assume that quiet and loud people have roughly the same number of good (and bad) ideas, then we should worry if the louder and more forceful people always carry the day. This would mean that an awful log of bad ideas prevail while good ones get squashed. Yet studies in group dynamics suggest that this is exactly what happens…We also see talkers as leaders. The more a person talks, the more other group members direct their attention to [them], which means that [they] become increasingly more powerful as a meeting goes on. It also helps to speak fast; we rater quick talkers as more capable and appealing than slow talkers. All of this would be find if more talking were correlated with greater insight, but research [and common sense] suggests that there’s no such link.” ― Susan Cain
“We tend to overestimate how outgoing leaders need to be. ‘Most leading in a corporation is done in small meetings and it’s done at a distance, through written and video communications,’ Professor Mills told [the author]. ‘It’s not done in front of big groups.’” ― Susan Cain
“The lesson, says [management theorist, Jim Collins], is clear. We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.” ― Susan Cain
“[A respected U.S. Air Force Commander] wasn’t concerned with getting credit or even with being in charge; he simply assigned work to those who could perform it best. This meant delegating some of his most interesting, meaningful, and important tasks — work that other leaders would have kept for themselves.” ― Susan Cain
“I don’t believe anything really revolutionary has been invented by committee. If you’re that rare engineer who’s an inventor and also an artist, I’m going to give you some advice that might be hard to take. That advice is: Work alone. You’re going to be best able to design revolutionary products and features if you’re working on your own. Not on a committee. Not on a team.” — p.73–74 (from the autobiography of Steve Wozniak, iWoz) ― Susan Cain
“The cooperative approach has politically progressive roots — the theory is that students take ownership of their education when they learn from one another — but according to elementary school teachers in New York, Michigan, and Georgia, it also trains kids to express themselves in the team culture of corporate America. ‘This style of teaching reflects the business community, one fifth grade teacher in a Manhattan public school told [the author], ‘where people’s respect for others is based on their verbal abilities, not their originality or insight. You have to be someone who speaks well and calls attention to yourself. It’s an elitism based on something other than merit.’” ― Susan Cain
“What’s so magical about solitude? In many fields, [research psychologist, Anders] Ericsson told [the author], it’s only when you’re alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful — they’re counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them….Only when you’re alone, Ericsson told [the author] can you ‘go directly to the part that’s challenging to you. If you want to improve what you’re doing, you have to be the one who generates the move.’” ― Susan Cain
“Indeed, excessive stimulation seems to impede learning: a recent study found that people learn better after a quiet stroll through the woods than after a noisy walk down a city street. Another study…found that the simple act of being interrupted is one of the biggest barriers to productivity.” ― Susan Cain
“…group brainstorming doesn’t actually work…Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases…the one exception is online brainstorming…a worthy goal, so long as we understand that social glue, as opposed to creativity, is the principal benefit [of group brainstorming].” ― Susan Cain
3 reasons group brainstorming fails: (1) social loafing: in a group, some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work. (2) production blockage: only one person can talk or produce an idea at once, while the other group members are forced to sit passively. (3) evaluation apprehension: self-consciousness in front of one’s peers. ― Susan Cain
“The way forward, [the author is] suggesting, is not to stop collaborating face-to-face, but to refine the way we do it. For on thing, we should actively seek out symbiotic introvert-extrovert relationships, in which leadership and other tasks are divided according to people’s natural strengths and temperaments… We also need to create settings in which people are free to circulate in a shifting kaleidoscope of interactions, and to disappear into their private workspaces when they want to focus or simply be alone.” ― Susan Cain
“Once you understand introversion and extroversion as preferences for certain levels of stimulation, you can begin consciously trying to situate yourself in environments favorable to your personality — neither overstimulating nor under-stimulating, neither boring nor anxiety — making.” ― Susan Cain
“As Jung speculated almost a century ago about the two types, ‘the one [extroversion] consists in a high rate of fertility, with low powers of defense and short duration of life for the single individual; the other [introversion] consists in equipping the individual with numerous means of self-preservation plus a low fertility rate.’” ― Susan Cain
“A reward-sensitive person is highly motivated to seek rewards — from a promotion to a lottery jackpot to an enjoyable evening out with friends. Reward sensitivity motivates us to pursue goals like sex and money, social status and influence. It prompts us to climb ladders and reach for faraway branches in order to gather life’s choicest fruits. But sometimes we’re a little too sensitive to rewards. Reward sensitivity on overdrive gets people into all kinds of trouble. We can get so excited by the prospect of juicy prizes, like winning big in the stock market, that we take outsized risks and ignore obvious warning signals.” ― Susan Cain
“What underlies all this reward-seeking? The key seems to be positive emotion. Extroverts tend to experience more pleasure and excitement than introverts do” ― Susan Cain
“‘Everyone assumes that it’s good to accentuate positive emotions, but that isn’t correct,’ the psychology professor Richard Howard told [the author], pointing to the example of soccer victories that end in violence and property damage. ‘A lot of antisocial and self-defeating behavior results from people who amplify positive emotions.’” ― Susan Cain
“Since the days of Aristotle, philosophers have observed that these two modes — approaching things that appear to give pleasure and avoiding others that seem to cause pain — lie at the heart of all human activity.” ― Susan Cain
“Being relatively unmoved by rewards gives you the incalculable power to go your own way. It’s up to you to use that independence to good effect…Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can…The trick for introverts is to honor their own styles instead of allowing themselves to be sept up by prevailing norms.” ― Susan Cain
“‘Perhaps instead of trying to change their ways, colleges can learn to listen to their sound of silence.’ wrote Heejung Kim, a Stanford University cultural psychologist, in a paper arguing that talking is not always a positive act.” ― Susan Cain
“‘The contrast is striking,’ writes Michael Harris Bond, a cross-cultural psychologist who focuses on China. ‘The Americans emphasize sociability and prize those attributes that make for easy, cheerful association. The Chinese emphasize deeper attributes, focusing on moral virtues and achievement.’” ― Susan Cain
“If you live in a collective, then things will go a lot more smoothly if you behave with restraint, even submission…From a Western perspective, it can be hard to see what’s so attractive about submitting to the will of others. But what looks to a Westerner like subordination can seem like basic politeness to many Asians.” ― Susan Cain
“It’s because of relationship-honoring, for example, that social anxiety disorder in Japan, known as taijin kyofusho, takes the form not of excessive worry about embarrassing oneself, as it does in the United States, but of embarrassing others.” ― Susan Cain
“‘In Asian cultures,’ [Communications coach, Professor Preston] Ni said, ‘there’s often a subtle way to get what you want. It’s not always aggressive, but it can be very determined and very skillful. in the end, much is achieved because of it. Aggressive power beats you up; soft power wins you over…’ ― Susan Cain
“[The author] has found that there are three key steps to identifying your own core personal projects: (1) think back to what you loved to do when you were a child. (2) pay attention to the work you gravitate to. (3) pay attention to what you envy.” ― Susan Cain
“‘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…or a temporal one…” ― Susan Cain
“When your conscientiousness impels you to take on more than you can handle,. you being to lose interest, even in tasks that normally engage you. You also risk your physical health. ‘Emotional labor,’ which is the effort we make to control and change our own emotions, is associated with stress, burnout, and even physical symptoms like an increase in cardiovascular disease. Professor Little believes that prolonged acting out of character may also increase autonomic nervous system activity, which can, in turn, compromise immune functioning.” ― Susan Cain
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
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