Lean In Quotes

“Done is better than perfect.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“Women need to shift from thinking "I'm not ready to do that" to thinking "I want to do that- and I'll learn by doing it.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

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

“When woman work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

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

“I realized that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming. We all grew up on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," which instructs young women that if they just wait for their prince to arrive, they will be kissed and whisked away on a white horse to live happily ever after. Now young women are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after. Once again, we are teaching women to be too dependent on others.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“We need to stop telling [women], "Get a mentor and you will excel." Instead, we need to tell them, "Excel and you will get a mentor.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“Give us a world where half our homes are run by men, and half our institutions are run by women. I'm pretty sure that would be a better world.”
― Sheryl Sandberg

“You then will lean way in to your career. You will find something you love doing and you will do it with gusto. Find the right career for you and go all the way to the top. Start out by Aiming high. Try- and try hard. I hope you find true meaning, contentment, and passion in your life. I hope you navigate the difficult times and come out with greater strength and resolve. I hope you find whatever balance you seek with your eyes wide open.”
― Sheryl Sandberg

“We cannot change what we are unaware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.”
― Sheryl Sandberg

“[Eric Schmidt] explained that only one criterion that mattered when picking a job- fat growth. When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to not be doing them. Politics and stagnation set in, and everyone falters, He told me, "If you're offered a seat on a rocket sip, you don't ask what seat. You just get on.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“Still, my argument was that if she was going to work for the next 30 years, what difference does "going back" 4 years really make? If the other path made her happier and offered her a chance to learn new skills, that meant she was actually moving forward.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

“But knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make them better.”
― Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In for Graduates

“Stop leaning into your career while leaning out of your life. Instead, it’s time to lean in a totally different way altogether.”
― Erin Hatzikostas, You Do You(ish): Unleash Your Authentic Superpowers to Get the Career You Deserve

“Be the best. Work harder, work smarter. Exceed every expectation. But also, be invisible, imperceptible. Don't make anyone uncomfortable. Don't inconvenience. Exist in the negative only, the space around. Do not insert yourself into the main narrative. Go unnoticed. Become the air. Open your eyes.”
― Natasha Brown, Assembly

“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes. I believe that this would be a better world.”
― Sheryl Sandberg in "Lean In"

“We are most effective when we are able to lean in fully to the resource of the other people in our lives.”
― Henry Kimsey-House, Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead

“Show me a woman without guilt and I'll show you a man”
― Marie Wilson

“For pain to love you back, then set you free, you must first learn to love it.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Fully compatible with ballooning inequality, liberal feminism outsources oppression. It permits professional-managerial women to lean in precisely by enabling them to lean on the poorly paid migrant women to whom they subcontract their caregiving and housework.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“Its love affair with individual advancement equally permeates the world of social-media celebrity, which also confuses feminism with the ascent of individual women. In that world, “feminism” risks becoming a trending hashtag and a vehicle of self-promotion, deployed less to liberate the many than to elevate the few.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto

“Our answer to lean-in feminism is kick-back feminism. We have no interest in breaking the glass ceiling while leaving the vast majority to clean up the shards. Far from celebrating women CEOs who occupy corner offices, we want to get rid of CEOs and corner offices.”
― Nancy Fraser, Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto