Sheryl Sandberg Quotes

“Done is better than perfect.”

“What would you do if you weren't afraid?”

“Build your skills not your resume.”

“Speak up. Believe in yourself. Take risks.”

“If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on.”

“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in.”

“The easy days ahead of you will be easy. It is the hard days—the days that challenge you to your very core—that will determine who you are.”

“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”

“The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.”

“Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential.”

“Taking initiative pays off. It is hard to visualize someone as a leader if she is always waiting to be told what to do.”

“Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure.”

“There are people who are really good managers, people who can manage a big organization. And then there are people who are very analytic or focussed on strategy. Those two types don't usually tend to be in the same person. I would put myself much more in the latter camp.”

“I think Sandberg totally underestimates the challenge that women face. Sandberg, to her great credit, had Larry Summers. She has had sponsors in her life who were very powerful, who went to bat for her. That's very rare for a woman.”

“For any of us in this room today, let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited.”

“Option A is not available. So let's just kick the shit out of Option B.”

“You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. It is a muscle. You can build it up and then draw on it when you need it. And in that process, you figure out who you really are. And you just might become the very best version of yourself.”

“We were too slow to spot this and too slow to act. That is on us. This interference was completely unacceptable. It violated the values of our company and of the country we love.”

“I spent most of my career, including my time at McKinsey, never acknowledging that I was a woman. And, you know, fast forward — I'm 43 now — fitting in is not helping us.”