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In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who’s comfortable putting himself out there.

Susan Cain

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Susan Cain
Age: 56
Born: 1968
Born: March 20
Lawyer
Non-Fiction Writer
Writer
Values
Ideal
Individual
Admire
Self
Putting
Think
Ideals
Gregarious
Thinking
Value
Spotlight
Like
Comfortable
Bold
Type
Individuality
Society
Mostly

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Love is essential, gregariousness is optional.
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...true self-esteem comes from competence, not the other way around.
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Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi — all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to.
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It's not that there is no small talk...It's that it comes not at the beginning of conversations but at the end...Sensitive people...'enjoy small talk only after they've gone deep' says Strickland. 'When sensitive people are in environments that nurture their authenticity, they laugh and chitchat just as much as anyone else.
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Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can.
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Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.
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It's never a good idea to organize society in a way that depletes the energy of half the population.
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Introverts often work more slowly and deliberately. They like to focus on one task at a time and can have mighty powers of concentration . They're relatively immune to the lures of wealth and fame.
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One honest relationship can be more productive than fistfuls of business cards.
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We're told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable. We see ourselves as a nation of extroverts - which means that we've lost sight of who we really are. Depending on which study you consult, one third to one half of Americans are introverts - in other words, one out of every two or three people you know.
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(Finland is a famously introverted nation. Finnish joke: How can you tell if a Finn likes you? He's staring at your shoes instead of his own.)
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A widely held, but rarely articulated, belief in our society is that the ideal self is bold, alpha, gregarious. Introversion is viewed somewhere between disappointment and pathology.
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...if you can think of meetings you've attended, you can probably recall a time - plenty of times - when the opinion of the most dynamic or talkative person prevailed to the detriment of all.
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America had shifted from what influential cultural historian Warren Susman called a culture of character to a culture of personality, and opened up a Pandora's box of personal anxieties of which we would never recover.
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We have a two-tier class system when it comes to personality style. To devalue introversion is a waste of talent, energy and happiness.
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Extroversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we've turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.
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I've wanted to be a writer since I was four years old!
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Introverts are offered keys to private gardens full of riches. To possess such a key is to tumble like Alice down her rabbit hole. She didn't choose to go to Wonderland - but she made of it an adventure that was fresh and fantastic and very much her own.
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We don't need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.
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I've never given a speech without being terrified first.
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