Sheryl Sandberg Quotations

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.

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.

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.

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

I'd like to see where boys and girls end up if they get equal encouragement - I think we might have some differences in how leadership is done.

In fact, my New Year's resolution every year, and I'm Jewish so I get two New Years a year, is to meditate, and I fail every time.

We call our little girls bossy. Go to a playground; little girls get called bossy all the time - a word that's almost never used for boys - and that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce.

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.

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

When my mother took her turn to sit in a gown at her graduation, she thought she only had two career options: nursing and teaching. She raised me and my sister to believe that we could do anything, and we believed her.

I absolutely loved Tina Fey's 'Bossypants' and didn't want it to end. It's hilarious as well as important. Not only did I laugh on every page, but I was nodding along, highlighting and dog-earing like crazy.

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 look forward to the day when half our homes are run by men and half our companies and institutions are run by women. When that happens, it won't just mean happier women and families; it will mean more successful businesses and better lives for us all.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Women don't take enough risks. Men are just 'foot on the gas pedal.' We're not going to close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap.

As women get more powerful, they get less likable. I see women holding themselves back because of this, but if we start talking about the success-likability penalty women face, then we can do something about it.

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.

I'm a pragmatist. I think, as a woman, you have to be more careful. You have to be more communal, you have to say yes to more things than men, you have to worry about things that men don't have to worry about. But once we get enough women into leadership, we can break stereotypes down. If you lead, you get to decide.

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

I believe if we had half our companies and half our countries run by women, and half our homes run by men, things would be better. We know our companies would be more productive. If you use the full talents of the population, you're more productive. We know our homes would be happier.

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.

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

What works for men does not always work for women, because success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. That's what the research shows. As a man gets more successful, everyone is rooting for him. As a woman gets more successful, both men and women like her less.

I spent most of my career in business not saying the word 'woman.' Because if you say the word 'woman' in a business context, and often in a political context, the person on the other side of the table thinks you're about to sue them or ask for special treatment, right?

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.

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.

Women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, thirteen per cent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top - C-level jobs, board seats - tops out at fifteen, sixteen per cent.

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

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.

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

Over the last 10 years, women have stalled out at the top.

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.

It turns out that a husband who does the laundry, it's very romantic when you're older. And it's hard to believe when you're younger. But it's absolutely true.

The most important thing - and I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it a hundred times - if you marry a man, marry the right one.

What about the rat race in the first place? Is it worthwhile? Or are you just buying into someone else's definition of success? Only you can decide that, and you'll have to decide it over and over and over. But if you think it's a rat race, before you drop out, take a deep breath. Maybe you picked the wrong job. Try again. And then try again.

Pages on Facebook are allowed to be anonymous. That is really important. People start revolutions; we need anonymity.

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.

I don't hold myself out as a role model. I don't believe that everyone should make the same choices; that everyone has to want to be a CEO, or everyone should want to be a work-at-home mother. I want everyone to be able to choose. But I want us to be able to choose unencumbered by gender choosing for us.

I'm not pretending I can give advice to every single person or every single couple for every situation; I'm making the point that we are not going to get to equality in the workforce before we get to equality in the home. Not going to happen.

Success, for me, is that if my son chooses to be a stay-at-home parent, he is cheered on for that decision. And if my daughter chooses to work outside the home and is successful, she's cheered on and supported.

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.

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.

Women are not making it to the top of any profession in the world. But when I say, 'The blunt truth is that men run the world,' people say, 'Really?' That, to me, is the problem.

I don't believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time.

And what I saw happening is that women don't make one decision to leave the workforce. They makes lots of little decisions really far in advance that kind of inevitably lead them there.

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

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

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

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

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

My hope in writing 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead' was to change the conversation from what women can't do to what we can.

Every company I know is looking for more women at the table. Every board is looking for more women at the table. There's a reason why men want to understand the challenges women face, address them, because then they're going to be better hirers, attracters and retainers of women.

I think it is too hard for men to talk about gender. We have to let men talk about this... because we need men to talk about this if it is ever going to change.

I probably shouldn't admit this since I work in the tech industry, but I still prefer reading paper books.

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 really don't have any plan to leave Facebook. I put it so many times on the record, and I just don't get what to do to say it as clear as possible: I'm staying in Facebook; I really love my job.

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.

We look at the mission of the group and whether that's something we want to support. Very few organizations are turned down.

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.

We are looking for innovative ways to work with different people globally to help solve these problems, ... We are looking for opportunities that are sustainable and that we think will make a difference for organizations and for people across the world.

We have a desire to do things at scale, and by scale we mean the kinds of things that can touch not just millions, but hundreds of millions of people, and an approach that combines real innovation, technically and otherwise,

We want to do something that is innovative.

This can grow over time as potentially our stock or our profits increase.

It's not a lot of money in the face of all the world's problems, so we want to make sure to get the most out of it.

These are broad problems, and we want to take advantage of every way to help that we can.

These are big problems so our focus is to provide sustainable and scalable solutions to these problems.

All of us want the same things. We want to be good to the people around us and for our lives to have meaning. For me that means making the world a little bit easier for women.

People assume Wall Street is a certain culture and tech is a certain culture. But if you look at the (gender) numbers at the top of (those) industries, they don't vary very much. I think in finance, women hold 19 percent of the top jobs, and women are 21 percent of the leaders in nonprofits.

Sixty-four percent of managers in the U.S. are afraid to be alone in a room with a woman. Mentoring is all about being alone in a room with someone. Let's start talking about this honestly. The lack of equal access is the silent killer for women and no one wants to talk about it.

I'm excited that more people, especially men, are understanding that equality is good for them. I don't want men to want equality for women because they're being nice to their colleagues and daughters. I want men to want it because it's better for their companies and their lives.

Men feel like they can be a professional and a father. For women it's "or." That's offensive to me. The concept that it's not possible is crazy.

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.

There's a lot that needs to be fixed in dating for men and women in the U.S. - there's a lot of pressure on women to do things they may not want to do. And if you start out unequal, you are not going to end up with equality.

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.

Let's have an honest conversation about what's going on. A man and a man at a bar looks like mentoring. A man and a woman at a bar looks like dating.

We need to talk more openly about mentorships and sponsorships. Women don't get the mentoring, and particularly the sponsors, they need to succeed as much as men.

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

In our performance reviews with women, we need to be saying, "Are you reaching enough? Are you applying for jobs when you meet some of the criteria like men, or are you waiting to meet all the criteria like women do?" There's so much we can do to encourage women to take on more and believe in themselves.

When we get feedback on women, we ask, "Is that real or is that the gender bias at play?" Everyone could start doing that today and I think we'd see really big results.

At Facebook we feel a lot of affinity not just for this community but for any community that is trying to do what Davos is trying to do, which is to share information. And Davos is doing it in a particular way - I think the Facebook approach is obviously more broad-based, we're trying to include everyone in the world. But the goal is the same: bring people together, to share information and make the world more connected, and have people have a deeper understanding of themselves, others, the communities of which they want to be a part and can be a part.

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.

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

I gave a talk on gender stuff at Facebook one morning and a man didn't come. It was optional; he didn't have to come. But he sent a note saying, "I missed your meeting because I drove my kids to school so my wife could do something else. Thank you for making that possible." I think that employee is a loyal employee for Facebook and I think more companies should want that kind of loyalty.

When the man is traveling with a man, he says, "Let's stay up late and work on this and get this to be better." When the man's traveling with the woman, for the sake of appearances he doesn't do the work with her. That's a lost opportunity for her to be a success.

Facebook is great for women and men. We are enormously flexible. We care a lot about great opportunities for women, we push ourselves to make things as flexible as possible.

The social web can't exist until you are your real self online. I have to be me. You have to be you. Once we are online as ourselves, connected to each other and our other friends, then you can have the evolution of what becomes the social web.

It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of pregnancy or gender. It is not illegal to talk about it.

Facebook is a really exciting place trying to do something really important that I really believe in. And it matters.

A lot of people will say, "what's Facebook's business model?" I always find that a kind of funny question. Our business model is out there, which is: we monetize largely through advertising and a little bit through the gift revenue, the virtual gifts we have on our site. I think those continue to be the most promising avenues going forward.

Let's acknowledge that men reach for opportunities more quickly and more easily than women. So often as managers, we give the job to whoever starts solving the problem, to whoever jumps in. Since we know men will jump in faster than women in so many circumstances, we have to slow down and encourage more women to sit at more tables.

We have a problem with women in leadership across the board. This leadership gap - this problem of not enough women in leadership - is running really deep and it's in every industry. My answer is we have to understand the stereotype assumptions that hold women back.

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.