Sheryl sandberg quotes

Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.

You know, there has never been a 24-hour period in five years when I have not responded to e-mail at Facebook. I am not saying it's easy. I work long hours.

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

You need to feel that you're making a difference.

There is no perfect fit when you're looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.

Social gains are never handed out. They must be seized.

When I was in high school, I was voted most likely to succeed.

I'm not writing about things other women do. I'm writing for other women to have more self-confidence because I need it myself! And if more women were in power, I would feel more comfortable.

Everyone needs to get more comfortable with female leaders-including female leaders themselves.

Endless data show that diverse teams make better decisions. We are building products that people with very diverse backgrounds use, and I think we all want our company makeup to reflect the makeup of the people who use our products. That's not true of any industry really, and we have a long way to go.

The No. 1 impediment to women succeeding in the workforce is now in the home.

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.

...parents who work outside the home are still capable of giving their children a loving and secure childhood. Some data even suggest that having two parents working outside the home can be advantageous to a child's development, particularly for girls.

I know from my own experience that the path to change is best traveled when we travel together.

When companies offer support and assistance for personal and family hardships, their employees become more loyal and more productive.

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 cost of stability is often diminished opportunities for growth.

Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception. It is easy to dislike senior women because there are so few.

We know that the only way to achieve equality is if both men and women want to achieve equality. We also know that equality is not just the right thing to do for men, it is a good thing to do.

So there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work, and there's life, and there's no balance.

I feel really grateful to the people who encouraged me and helped me develop. Nobody can succeed on their own.

Both men and women react negatively when women negotiate on their own behalf. A man can just negotiate: "I have a better offer. That's not enough to make my family's ends meet." No one feels bad about it. But when a woman does that, there's a backlash.

I go around the room and ask people, 'What do you think?'

But I really believe that when you give people authentic identity, which is what Facebook does, and you can be your real self and connect with real people online, things will change.

It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It's also a very clear path to happiness.

I wish I could just go tell all the young women I work with, all these fabulous women, 'Believe in yourself and negotiate for yourself. Own your own success.' I wish I could tell that to my daughter. But it's not that simple.

It's hard to visualize someone as a leader, if she is always waiting to be told what to do.

I would be better at my job if I were technical.

The time is long overdue to encourage more women to dream the possible dream.

Next time you're about to call your daughter bossy, take a deep breath and say, 'My daughter has executive leadership skills.'

Presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical, and performance-ori ented) no longer holds. Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed.... Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.

If you do please everyone, you are not making enough progress.

Women systematically underestimate their own abilities.

Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.

Framing the issue of work-life balance - as if the two were dramatically opposed - practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life?

I believe we need affordable child care. I believe we need flexibility. I believe we need institutional reform and public policy reform.

I tell people in their careers, 'Look for growth. Look for the teams that are growing quickly. Look for the companies that are doing well. Look for a place where you feel that you can have a lot of impact.'

Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be okay but acknowledging that it is not.

Feeling confident - or pretending that you feel confident - is necessary to reach for opportunities. It's a cliché, but opportunities are rarely offered; they're seized.

If you ask men why they did a good job, they'll say, 'I'm awesome. Obviously. Why are you even asking?' If you ask women why they did a good job, what they'll say is someone helped them, they got lucky, they worked really hard.

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." (Harvard Business School definition of leadership)

Fortune does favor the bold and you'll never know what you're capable of if you don't try.

Nobody can succeed on their own.

We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.

A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.

Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.

It's easy to dislike the few senior women out there. What if women were half the positions in power? It would be harder to dislike all of them.

Women need to shift form thinking "I'm not ready to do that" to thinking "I want to do that- and I'll learn by doing it.

We need to start talking about child-rearing in the workplace.

The best way to make room for both life and career is to make choices deliberately-to set limits and stick to them.

We've got to get women to sit at the table.

We're focused on doing one thing incredibly well. If you look at other companies, all of these companies are doing a lot of different things but we're still, as we grow, doing exactly one thing.

No industry or country can reach its full potential until women reach their full potential.

It's pretty exciting to take real people living in the real world, their opinions, and have people have to react to that. As opposed to their perceptions of what people are thinking, which are often very different.

Success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively for women. When a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women. When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less.

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. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.

I have a five year-old son and a three year-old daughter. I want my son to have a choice to contribute fully in the workforce or at home. And I want my daughter to have the choice to not just succeed, but to be liked for her accomplishments.

Excel and you will get a mentor.

Your life's course will not be determined by doing the things that you are certain you can do. Those are the easy things. It will be determined by whether you try the things that are hard.

When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands.

Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.

I have never worked for a woman, and I have never worked with a lot of women.

When you want to change things, you won't please everyone.

Motivation comes from working on things we care about. It also comes from working with people we care about.

When you're more valuable, the people around you will do more to make it work.

When I went to college, as much as my parents emphasized academic achievement, they emphasized marriage even more. They told me that the most eligible women marry young to get a 'good man' before they are all taken.

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. And I hope that you - yes, you - have the ambition to lean in to your career and run the world. Because the world needs you to change it.

At Facebook, we try to be a strengths-based organization, which means we try to make jobs fit around people rather than make people fit around jobs. We focus on what people's natural strengths are and spend our management time trying to find ways for them to use those strengths every day.

Women attribute their success to working hard, luck, and help from other people. Men will attribute that - whatever success they have, that same success - to their own core skills.

Leadership is not bullying and leadership is not aggression. Leadership is the expectation that you can use your voice for good. That you can make the world a better place.

But the upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.

No industry or country can reach its full potential until women reach their full potential. This is especially true of science and technology, where women with a surplus of talent still face a deficit of opportunity.

I really think we need more women to lean into their careers and to be really dedicated to staying in the work force.

We know when we use the full talents of our population we're more productive. And we know that when people really feel like they can have flexible lives, they're better employees.

As a country and as a world, we are not comfortable with women in leadership roles. We call little girls bossy.

Talking can transform minds, which can transform behaviors, which can transform institutions.

Speak up. Believe in yourself. Take risks.

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

When people are really suffering, and we know they're suffering, that question can be a very difficult one. Inadvertently, I think without anyone meaning it, it communicates a lack of empathy.

I'm not telling women to be like men. I'm telling us to evaluate what men and women do in the workforce and at home without the gender bias.

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 "Seeping 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.

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.

When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands. When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated and ambitious. Someone who values fairness and expects or, even better, wants to do his share in the home. These men exist and, trust me, over time, nothing is sexier.

I'm a feminist because I believe in women... it's a heavy word, feminism, but it's not one I think we should run from. I'm proud to be a feminist.

Don't make decisions too far in advance, particularly ones you're not even conscious you're making.

Everyone knows that marriage is the biggest personal decision you make, but it's the biggest career decision you can make.

So please ask yourself: What would I do if I weren't afraid? And then go do it.

The most important thing is to have a more open and honest dialogue about gender issues.

It's more pressure on women to - if they marry or partner with someone, to partner with the right person. Because you cannot have a full career and a full life at home with your children if you are also doing all of the housework and child care.

Believe in yourself and negotiate for yourself. Own your own success.

The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophesies. Most leadership positions are held by men, so women don't expect to achieve them, and that becomes one of the reasons they don't.

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.

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

Bring your whole self to work. I don't believe we have a professional self Monday through Friday and a real self the rest of the time. It is all professional and it is all personal.

I've seen over and over how much self-belief drives outcomes. And that's why I force myself to sit at the table, even when I am not sure I belong there - and yes, this still happens to me. And when I'm not sure anyone wants my opinion, I take a deep breath and speak up anyway.

What I tell everyone, and I really do for myself is, I have a long-run dream, which is I want to work on stuff that I think matters.

I want to tell any young girl out there who's a geek, I was a really serious geek in high school. It works out. Study harder.

Women have made tons of progress. But we still have a small percentage of the top jobs in any industry, in any nation in the world. I think that's partly because from a very young age, we encourage our boys to lead and we call our girls bossy.

Build your skills, not your resume.

I want women to get paid more. I want to teach them to negotiate so they get paid more.

I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every 'Harry Potter' book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way.

Guilt management can be just as important as time management for mothers.

Its time to cheer on girls and women who want to sit at the table

The most important career decision you'll make is who your life partner is.

Trying to do it all and expecting that it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment. Perfection is the enemy.

If more women are in leadership roles, we'll stop assuming they shouldn't be.

People think that women don't negotiate because they're not good negotiators, but that's not it. Women don't negotiate because it doesn't work as well for them. Women have to say, 'I really add a lot of value, and it's in your interest to pay me more.' I hate that advice, but I want to see women get ahead.

Done is better than perfect.

The most important thing we're doing differently is that we talk openly about gender at Facebook.

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

And in situations where a man and a woman each receive negative feedback, the woman's self-confidence and self-esteem drop to a much greater degree. The internalization of failure and the insecurity it breeds hurt future performance, so this pattern has serious long-term consequences.

When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated, and ambitious.

There are really good reasons to leave the workforce or work less or take a different job when you want to be with your children. I just want women - and men - to make that choice once they have the child. Not years in advance, because... they don't get the right opportunities. They give up before they even start.

Until women are as ambitious as men, they're not gong to achieve as much as men.

Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.

I don't pretend there aren't biological differences, but I don't believe the desire for leadership is hardwired biology, not the desire to win or excel. I believe that it's socialization, that we're socializing our daughters to nurture and our boys to lead.

If I had to embrace a definition of success, it would be that success is making the best choices we can ... and accepting them.

We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests.

Don't let your fears overwhelm your desire. Let the barriers you face-and there will be barriers-be external, not internal. Fortune does favor the bold, and I promise that you will never know what you're capable of unless you try.

Communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth) and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak the truth are very silencing of others.

And anyway, who wears a tiara on a jungle gym?

Our culture needs to find a robust image of female success that is first, not male, and second, not a white woman on the phone, holding a crying baby.

Two things that I think matter are gratitude and joy.

Most people assume that women are responsible for households and child care. Most couples operate that way - not all. That fundamental assumption holds women back.

Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice.