Sheryl Sandberg – Quotes for Women

" 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 is an American technology executive, activist, and author. She is the chief operating officer (COO) of Facebook and founder of Leanin.org (also known as the Lean In Foundation). 

Before she joined Facebook as its COO, Sandberg was vice president of global online sales and operations at Google, and was involved in launching Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org. 

Before Google, Sandberg served as chief of staff for United States Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers. May her quotes inspire you to lean in to your future so that you may live your dreams.

At just 47, Sheryl Sandberg is a major philanthropist and advocate for women's rights. 

She's more than just a huge professional success, she's also an example of a strong woman whose inspirational quotes I look to almost daily. 

Just check out her website LeanIn.org and see all of the work she is doing daily to empower women and girls in the workplace. 
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These are some of my favorite inspirational quotes from Sheryl Sandberg. I hope at least one resonates with you as you fight the good fight. 

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware it is impossible not to change. 
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When life sucks you under, you can kick against the bottom, break the surface and breathe again. 
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When someone offers you a seat of a rocket ship, you don't ask what seat, you just get on.
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The upside of painful knowledge is greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.
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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.
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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.
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It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.
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We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.
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Done is better than perfect.
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If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat.
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Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence.
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What would you do if you weren’t afraid.
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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.
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Next time you are about to call a little call ‘bossy’, say instead: she has executive leadership skills.
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I really believe in what Facebook does. You know technology was going to change all our lives and it has. But technology to power us as people is really the social networking movement.
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For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst.
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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.
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Trying to do it all and expecting that it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment. Perfection is the enemy.
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Taking initiative pays off. It is hard to visualize someone as a leader if she is always waiting to be told what to do.
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Speak up. Believe in yourself. Take risks.
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It is the hard days – the times that challenge you to your very core – that will determine who you are. You are defined not just by what you achieve but by how you survive.
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When you’re more valuable, the people around you will do more to make it work.
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This is personal. This is about me not wanting other little girls to be called bossy.
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In the future there will be no female leaders. There will be just leaders.
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Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential.
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Work on stuff that matters. That was my dream and what I tell everyone.
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Given how fast the world moves today, grabbing opportunities is more important than ever.
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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.
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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.
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Leadership belongs to those who take it.
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The upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.
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You are not born with a fixed amount of resiliency. Like a muscle, you can build it, and draw on it when you need it.
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Believe in yourself and own your own success.
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Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be okay but acknowledging that it is not.
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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.
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Don’t let your fears overwhelm your desire. Let the barriers you face – and there will be barriers – be external, not internal.
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I feel really grateful to the people who encouraged me and helped me develop. Nobody can succeed on their own.
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Fortune does favor the bold and you’ll never know what you’re capable of if you don’t try.
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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.
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Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in our absence.
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Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in our absence.
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Success and likeability are positively correlated in men and negatively correlated in women. 
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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.
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It's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you are.
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Take the initiative. It's hard to see someone as a leader if she is always waiting to be told what to do.
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Option A isn't available to us. So let's just kick the shit out of Option B.
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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.
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What would you do if you weren't afraid? 
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I'm not bossy, I have leadership skills.
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Speak up. Believe in yourself. Take risks.
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Women need to shift from thinking "I'm not ready to do that" to thinking "I want to dohat -- and I'll learn by doing it.
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Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.
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If you do please everyone you are not making enough progress.
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Until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not gong to achieve as much as men.
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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.
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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.
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I don’t believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time.
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When you're more valuable, the people around you will do more to make it work. 
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The No. 1 impediment to women succeeding in the workforce is now in the home.
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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.
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If more women are in leadership roles, we’ll stop assuming they shouldn’t be.
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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. 
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Women don't take enough risk. Men are just 'foot on the gas pedal.' We're not going to close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap. 
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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.
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So there’s no such thing as work-life balance. There’s work, and there’s life, and there’s no balance.
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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.
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Pages on Facebook are allowed to be anonymous. That is really important. People start revolutions; we need anonymity.
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I feel really grateful to the people who encouraged me and helped me develop. Nobody can succeed on their own. 
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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.
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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.
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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. 
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I really think we need more women to lean into their careers and to be really dedicated to staying in the work force.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential.
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A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.

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