67 Sheryl Sandberg Quotes On Life, Leadership & Success

If you’re looking for the best Sheryl Sandberg quotes then you’ve come to the right place.

Sheryl Sandberg is an American technology executive, activist and author. She is the chief operating officer of Facebook and founder of Leanin.org. Before joining Facebook as COO she was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google, and was involved in launching Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org.

Sandberg has received many honours throughout her career including being ranked one of the 50 “Most Powerful Women in Business” by Fortune Magazine on multiple occasions, being listed as one of the world’s 100 most powerful women by Forbes and in 2012, was also named in annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world assembled by Time.

Sheryl Sandberg’s estimated net worth is $1.6 billion (2018).

In other endeavours, she is has co-authored two bestselling books: Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, and Option B.

I’ve picked out the best Sheryl Sandberg quotes from Lean In and several other sources. I hope these quotes on life, leadership, resilience, and success will give you the confidence and self-belief to lean in and seize opportunities.

Inspirational Sheryl Sandberg Quotes

1. “Finding gratitude and appreciation is key to resilience. People who take the time to list things they are grateful for are happier and healthier.” – Sheryl Sandberg

2. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg(One of my favourite inspirational Sheryl Sandberg quotes.)

3. “We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.” – Sheryl Sandberg

4. “It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.” – Sheryl Sandberg

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

6. “You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up, draw on it when you need it. In that process you will figure out who you really are — and you just might become the very best version of yourself.” – Sheryl Sandberg

7. “Done is better than perfect.” – Sheryl Sandberg

8. “Not taking failures personally allows us to recover — and even to thrive.” – Sheryl Sandberg

9. “Feeling confident – or pretending that you feel confident – is necessary to reach for opportunities. It’s a cliche, but opportunities are rarely offered; they’re seized.” – Sheryl Sandberg

10. “The easy days ahead of you will be easy. It is the hard days — the times that challenge you to your very core — that will determine who you are. You will be defined not just by what you achieve, but by how you survive.” – Sheryl Sandberg

11. “We find our humanity — our will to live and our ability to love — in our connections to one another. Be there for your family and friends. And I mean in person. Not just in a message with a heart emoji.” – Sheryl Sandberg

12. “Build resilience in yourselves. When tragedy or disappointment strike, know that you have the ability to get through absolutely anything. I promise you do. As the saying goes, we are more vulnerable than we ever thought, but we are stronger than we ever imagined.” – Sheryl Sandberg

13. “The best antidote to bad speech is good speech. The best antidote to hate is tolerance.” – Sheryl Sandberg

14. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg

15. “I learned that in the face of a void or in the face of any challenge, you can choose joy and meaning.” – Sheryl Sandberg

16. “Trying to do it all and expecting it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment. Perfection is the enemy.” – Sheryl Sandberg

17. “The upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.” – Sheryl Sandberg

18. “Knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make them better.” – Sheryl Sandberg

19. “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?” – Sheryl Sandberg

20. “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

21. “Life is never perfect. We all live some form of Option B.” – Sheryl Sandberg

22. “Let me fall if I must fall. The one I become will catch me.” – Sheryl Sandberg

23. “When tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs constricts your ability to think or even breath. Or you can try to find meaning.” – Sheryl Sandberg

24. “Speak up. Believe in yourself. Take risks.” – Sheryl Sandberg

25. “When you’re more valuable, the people around you will do more to make it work.” – Sheryl Sandberg

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

27. “Work on stuff that matters. That was my dream and what I tell everyone.” – Sheryl Sandberg

28. “Given how fast the world moves today, grabbing opportunities is more important than ever.” – Sheryl Sandberg

29. “I truly believe that the single most important career decision that a women makes is whether she will have a life partner and who that partner is.” – Sheryl Sandberg

30. “When life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, find the surface and breathe again.” – Sheryl Sandberg

31. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg

32. “Writing about joyful experiences for just three days can improve people’s moods and decrease their visits to health centers a full three months later.” – Sheryl Sandberg

33. “We have to work on treating ourselves like we would treat our friends.” – Sheryl Sandberg

34. “Self-compassion is how we recover.” – Sheryl Sandberg

35. “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.'” – Sheryl Sandberg

36. “Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.” – Sheryl Sandberg

37. “Everyone knows that marriage is the biggest personal decision you make, but it’s the biggest career decision you can make. …Partner with the right person, because you cannot have a full career and a full life at home with the children if you are also doing all the housework and childcare.” – Sheryl Sandberg

38. “Self-doubt becomes a form of self-defense… We put ourselves down before others can.” – Sheryl Sandberg

39. “When you want to change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren’t making enough progress.” – Sheryl Sandberg

40. “I recommend adopting two concurrent goals: a long-term dream and an eighteen-month plan.” – Sheryl Sandberg

41. “Authentic communication is not always easy, but it is the basis for successful relationships at home and real effectiveness at work. Yet people constantly back way from honesty to protect themselves and others. This reticence causes and perpetuates all kinds of problems: uncomfortable issues that never get addressed, resentment that builds, unfit managers who get promoted rather than fired, and on and on. Often these situations don’t improve because no one tells anyone what is really happening. We are so rarely brave enough to tell the truth.” – Sheryl Sandberg

42. “Sharing emotions builds deeper relationships. Motivation comes from working on things we care about. It also comes from working with people we care about. To really care about others, we have to understand them — what they like and dislike, what they feel as well as think.” – Sheryl Sandberg

43. “Instead of pondering the question “Can we have it all”, we should be asking the more practical question “Can we do it all?”” – Sheryl Sandberg

44. “Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice.” – Sheryl Sandberg

45. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg

46. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg

47. “It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you are.” – Sheryl Sandberg

48. “Option A isn’t available to us. So let’s just kick the shit out of Option B.” – Sheryl Sandberg

49. “I used to think smarts reigned until I watched smart people flame out. Then I thought it was only about connections. That, too, had serious limits. So does luck. When you get right down to it, success in life is about resilience. Every life well-lived is full of failures, both major and minor.” – Sheryl Sandberg

50. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg

51. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg

52. “Build your skills, not your resume.” – Sheryl Sandberg

53. “The cost of stability is often diminished opportunities for growth.” – Sheryl Sandberg

54. “We plant the seeds of resilience in the ways we process negative events. After spending decades studying how people deal with setbacks, psychologist Martin Seligman found that three P’s can stunt recovery: (1) personalization—the belief that we are at fault; (2) pervasiveness—the belief that an event will affect all areas of our life; and (3) permanence—the belief that the aftershocks of the event will last forever. The three P’s play like the flip side of the pop song “Everything Is Awesome”—“everything is awful.” The loop in your head repeats, “It’s my fault this is awful. My whole life is awful. And it’s always going to be awful.” – Sheryl Sandberg

55. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Sheryl Sandberg

56. “Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.” – Sheryl Sandberg

57. “No one gets to the top, if they sit on the sidelines, or if they don’t believe in themselves.” – Sheryl Sandberg

58. “If I had to embrace a definition of success, it would be that success is making the best choices we can… and accepting them.” – Sheryl Sandberg

59. “Nobody can succeed on their own.” – Sheryl Sandberg

Leadership Quotes

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

61. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg

62. “In the future there will be no female leaders. There will be just leaders.” – Sheryl Sandberg

63. “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.” – Sheryl Sandberg

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

65. “Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.” – Sheryl Sandberg (One of the famous Sheryl Sandberg quotes on making others better as a leader.)

66. “I’m not bossy, I have leadership skills.” – Sheryl Sandberg

67. “Leadership belongs to those who take it.” – Sheryl Sandberg

TED TALK: Sheryl Sandberg on why we have too few women leaders

Did you like these Sheryl Sandberg quotes?

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