Introversion Quotes

The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Introversion - along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness - is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.

Susan Cain

We have a two-tier class system when it comes to personality style. To devalue introversion is a waste of talent, energy and happiness.

Susan Cain

Tell a dream, lose a reader, said Henry James. Joyce told a dream, Finnegans Wake, and he told it in puns - cornily but rightly regarded as the lowest form of wit. This showed fantastic courage, and fantastic introversion. The truth is Joyce didn't love the reader, as you need to do. Well, he gave us Ulysses, incontestably the central modernist masterpiece; it is impossible to conceive of any future novel that might give the form such a violent evolutionary lurch. You can't help wondering, though. Joyce could have been the most popular boy in school, the funniest, the cleverest, the kindest. He ended with a more ambiguous distinction: he became the teacher's pet.

Martin Amis

The physical basis for sociopathy is approximately 50 percent inheritable, which sounds more dramatic than it probably is, because most personality characteristics that psychologists test for and study the genetics of are about 50 percent inheritable. Introversion, extroversion, it turns out that they're about 50 percent inheritable, which means that somehow sociopathy is physical, it's organic.

Martha Stout

(In writing Quiet) I was fueled by the same mix of passion and indignation that I imagine inspired Betty Friedan to publish The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Introverts are to extroverts what women were to men at that time--second-class citizens with gigantic amounts of untapped talent. Our schools, workplaces, and religious institutions are designed for extroverts, and many introverts believe that there is something wrong with them and that they should try to "pass" as extroverts. The bias against introversion leads to a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness.

Susan Cain

For seven blissful years I had spent my time reading, writing and researching a book about introversion. But the publication date had arrived, the idyll was over and my metamorphosis was complete. I was now that impossibly oxymoronic creature: the Public Introvert.

Susan Cain

Shyness is the fear of negative judgment, while introversion is simply the preference for less stimulation. Shyness is inherently uncomfortable; introversion is not. The traits do overlap, though psychologists debate to what degree.

Susan Cain

The bias against introversion leads to a colossal waste of talent, energy, and happiness.

Susan Cain

Shyness is inherently uncomfortable; introversion is not. The traits do overlap, though psychologists debate to what degree.

Susan Cain

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. (Susan Cain)

Many people believe that introversion is about being antisocial, and that's really a misperception. Because actually it's just that introverts are differently social. So they would prefer to have a glass of wine with a close friend as opposed to going to a loud party full of strangers.

Susan Cain

All personality traits have their good side and their bad side. But for a long time, we've seen introversion only through its negative side and extroversion mostly through its positive side.

Susan Cain