Quotessence
Home / Authors / Susan Cain
Susan Cain

Susan Cain Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllIntrovertPeoplePsikologiIndonesiaIntroversionIfsThinkingExtrovertsQuietFeelsIdeasPersonalitySolitudeWorldNeedsSocialChildrenWayCultureIntroverts

Famous Susan Cain Quotes

“This teacher was kind and well-intentioned, but I wonder whether students like the young safety officer would be better off if we appreciated that not everyone aspires to be a leader in the conventional sense of the word—that some people wish to fit harmoniously into the group, and others to be independent of it. Often the most highly creative people are in the latter category. As Janet Farrall and Leonie Kronborg write in Leadership Development for the Gifted and Talented: while extroverts tend to attain leadership in public domains, introverts tend to attain leadership in theoretical and aesthetic fields. Outstanding introverted leaders, such as Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Patrick White and Arthur Boyd, who have created either new fields of thought or rearranged existing knowledge, have spent long periods of their lives in solitude. Hence leadership does not only apply in social situations, but also occurs in more solitary situations such as developing new techniques in the arts, creating new philosophies, writing profound books and making scientific breakthroughs.”

SchoolEducationTeacherTeachingQuietIntrovertTeachers
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“But don’t risk having children make a speech to the class unless you’ve provided them with the tools to know with reasonable confidence that it will go well. Have kids practice with a partner and in small groups, and if they’re still too terrified, don’t force it. Experts believe that negative public speaking experiences in childhood can leave children with a lifelong terror of the podium.”

SchoolQuietSpeechShyClassroomIntrovertPublic SpeakingIntroversion
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“I need a break after school," she told me later. "School is hard because a lot of people are in the room, so you get tired. I freak out if my mom plans a play date without telling me, because I don't want to hurt my friends' feelings. But I'd rather stay home. At a friend's house you have to do the things other people want to do. I like hanging out with my mom after school because I can learn from her. She's been alive longer than me. We have thoughtful conversations. I like having conversations because they make people happy.”

PlayFeelingsHomeSchoolLearningMomQuietThoughtsHappyThoughtfulIntrovertConversationsIntroverts
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“When your conscientiousness impels you to take on more than you can handle, you begin to lose interest, even in tasks that normally engage you. You risk your physical health. 'Emotional labor,' which is the effort we make to control and change our own emotions, is associated with stress, burnout, and even physical symptoms like and increase in cardiovascular disease.”

StressIntrovertBurnoutEmotional Labor
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“In a now-famous experiment, he and his colleagues compared three groups of expert violinists at the elite Music Academy in West Berlin. The researchers asked the professors to divide the students into three groups: the “best violinists,” who had the potential for careers as international soloists; the “good violinists”; and a third group training to be violin teachers rather than performers. Then they interviewed the musicians and asked them to keep detailed diaries of their time. They found a striking difference among the groups. All three groups spent the same amount of time—over fifty hours a week— participating in music-related activities. All three had similar classroom requirements making demands on their time. But the two best groups spent most of their music-related time practicing in solitude: 24.3 hours a week, or 3.5 hours a day, for the best group, compared with only 9.3 hours a week, or 1.3 hours a day, for the worst group. The best violinists rated “practice alone” as the most important of all their music-related activities. Elite musicians—even those who perform in groups—describe practice sessions with their chamber group as “leisure” compared with solo practice, where the real work gets done. Ericsson and his cohorts found similar effects of solitude when they studied other kinds of expert performers. “Serious study alone” is the strongest predictor of skill for tournament-rated chess players, for example; grandmasters typically spend a whopping five thousand hours—almost five times as many hours as intermediatelevel players—studying the game by themselves during their first ten years of learning to play. College students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups. Even elite athletes in team sports often spend unusual amounts of time in solitary practice. What’s so magical about solitude? In many fields, Ericsson told me, it’s only when you’re alone that you can engage in Deliberate Practice, which he has identified as the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful—they’re counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them. Deliberate Practice is best conducted alone for several reasons. It takes intense concentration, and other people can be distracting. It requires deep motivation, often self-generated. But most important, it involves working on the task that’s most challenging to you personally. Only when you’re alone, Ericsson told me, can you “go directly to the part that’s challenging to you. If you want to improve what you’re doing, you have to be the one who generates the move. Imagine a group class—you’re the one generating the move only a small percentage of the time.” To see Deliberate Practice in action, we need look no further than the story of Stephen Wozniak. The Homebrew meeting was the catalyst that inspired him to build that first PC, but the knowledge base and work habits that made it possible came from another place entirely: Woz had deliberately practiced engineering ever since he was a little kid. (Ericsson says that it takes approximately ten thousand hours of Deliberate Practice to gain true expertise, so it helps to start young.)”

MusicPracticeSolitudeQuietIntrovertExpertiseExpertDeliberate Practice
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Any parent would be dismayed to think that this was their child’s experience of learning, of socializing, and of herself. Maya is an introvert; she is out of her element in a noisy and overstimulating classroom where lessons are taught in large groups. Her teacher told me that she’d do much better in a school with a calm atmosphere where she could work with other kids who are “equally hardworking and attentive to detail,” and where a larger portion of the day would involve independent work. Maya needs to learn to assert herself in groups, of course, but will experiences like the one I witnessed teach her this skill? The truth is that many schools are designed for extroverts. Introverts need different kinds of instruction from extroverts, write College of William and Mary education scholars Jill Burruss and Lisa Kaenzig. And too often, “very little is made available to that learner except constant advice on becoming more social and gregarious.” We tend to forget that there’s nothing sacrosanct about learning in large group classrooms, and that we organize students this way not because it’s the best way to learn but because it’s cost-efficient, and what else would we do with our children while the grown-ups are at work? If your child prefers to work autonomously and socialize one-on-one, there’s nothing wrong with her; she just happens not to fit the prevailing model. The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself. The school environment can be highly unnatural, especially from the perspective of an introverted child who loves to work intensely on projects he cares about, and hang out with one or two friends at a time. In the morning, the door to the bus opens and discharges its occupants in a noisy, jostling mass. Academic classes are dominated by group discussions in which a teacher prods him to speak up. He eats lunch in the cacophonous din of the cafeteria, where he has to jockey for a place at a crowded table. Worst of all, there’s little time to think or create. The structure of the day is almost guaranteed to sap his energy rather than stimulate it. Why do we accept this one-size-fits-all situation as a given when we know perfectly well that adults don’t organize themselves this way? We often marvel at how introverted, geeky kids “blossom” into secure and happy adults. We liken it to a metamorphosis. However, maybe it’s not the children who change but their environments. As adults, they get to select the careers, spouses, and social circles that suit them. They don’t have to live in whatever culture they’re plunked into. Research from a field known as “person-environment fit” shows that people flourish when, in the words of psychologist Brian Little, they’re “engaged in occupations, roles or settings that are concordant with their personalities.” The inverse is also true: kids stop learning when they feel emotionally threatened.”

ChildrenKidsQuietParentingIntrovertIntroversionIntrovertedness
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“We know from myths and fairy tales that there are many different kinds of powers in this world. One child is given a light saber, another a wizard’s education. The trick is not to amass all the different kinds of available power, but to use well the kind you’ve been granted. 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. Lewis Carroll was an introvert, too, by the way. Without him, there would be no Alice in Wonderland. And by now, this shouldn’t surprise us.”

WritingCreativeSolitudeQuietWriterIntrovertIntroversionAlice In WonderlandLewis Carroll
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“But there’s a less obvious yet surprisingly powerful explanation for introverts’ creative advantage—an explanation that everyone can learn from: introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck once observed, introversion “concentrates the mind on the tasks in hand, and prevents the dissipation of energy on social and sexual matters unrelated to work.” In other words, if you’re in the backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, you’re more likely to have an apple fall on your head. (Newton was one of the world’s great introverts. William Wordsworth described him as “A mind forever / Voyaging through strange seas of Thought alone.”)”

IdeasCreativityCreativeSolitudeQuietInnovationIntrovertInnovative
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Consider that the simplest social interactions between two people requires performing an astonishing array of tasks: interpreting what the other person is saying; reading body language and facial expressions; smoothly taking turns talking and listening; responding to what the other person said; assessing whether you're being understood; determining whether you're well received, and, if not, figuring out how to improve or remove yourself from the situation. Think of what it takes to juggle all this at once! And that's just a one-to-one conversation. Now imagine the multitasking required in a group setting like a dinner party. (p237)”

IntrovertHspHighly Senstitive
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Banyak introver adalah pemalu, sebagian karena mendengar pendapat bahwa ada sesuatu yang salah dengan kecenderungan mereka untuk merenung, dan sebagian lagi karena fisiologi mereka, seperti yang akan kita lihat, memaksa mereka untuk menarik diri dari lingkungan dengan stimulus yang tinggi.”

IntrovertIndonesiaPsikologi
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Untuk alasan yang amat berbeda, pribadi yang pemalu dan introver mungkin memilih untuk menghabiskan hari mereka dengan bekerja di belakang layar seperti mencipta atau meneliti, atau menggenggam tangan orang lain yang sedang sakit berat — atau dalam posisi pemimpin yang mereka laksanakan dengan kompetensi yang tenang. Ini bukanlah peran-peran alfa, tetapi manusia yang memainkannya tetaplah tokoh-tokoh panutan.”

IntrovertInspirasiPsikologi
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Banyak introver "amat sensitif", terdengar puitis, tetapi sebenarnya itu adalah istilah teknis di dalam psikologi. Anda mungkin akan lebih cepat untuk merasa muak dengan kekerasan dan keburukan, dan Anda mungkin memiliki hati nurani yang teguh dibandingkan orang lain. Saat Anda masih kecil, Anda mungkin disebut "pemalu" dan sampai sekarang merasa gugup saat Anda sedang dinilai, misalnya saat memberikan pidato atau saat kencan pertama.”

IntrovertIndonesiaPsikologi
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Tetapi panduan-panduan baru mengagungkan kualitas-kualitas yang — tidak peduli bagaimana Dale Carnegie membuatnya terdengar mudah — lebih sulit untuk dimiliki. Apakah Anda memiliki kualitas-kualitas di bawah ini atau tidak: Memikat Mengagumkan Memesona Menarik Bersinar Dominan Berpengaruh Energetik”

IntrovertIndonesiaPsikologi
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Sangat mudah untuk mencampuradukkan keahlian mengobrol dengan bakat. Seseorang tampak seperti penyaji yang baik, mudah diajak kerja sama, dan sifat-sifat tersebut dihargai. Mengapa? Keduanya adalah sifat yang berharga, tetapi kita memberikan nilai terlalu tinggi pada presentasi dan tidak cukup banyak pada substansi dan pemikiran kritis.”

IntrovertIndonesiaPsikologi
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Di dalam memoarnya, dia (Stephen Wozniak) menawarkan nasihat ini kepada anak-anak yang menginginkan kreativitas besar: Kebanyakan penemu dan insinyur yang saya jumpai seperti saya — mereka pemalu dan hidup di dalam kepala mereka sendiri. Mereka hampir seperti seniman. Malah, yang terbaik dari mereka adalah seniman. Dan seniman bekerja dengan sangat baik ketika sendiri di mana mereka dapat mengontrol sebuah rancangan penemuan tanpa banyak orang yang merancang penemuan itu untuk penjualan atau untuk beberapa komite lain. Saya tidak percaya bahwa sesuatu yang sangat revolusioner bisa ditemukan oleh komite. Jika Anda adalah insinyur yang jarang itu yang merupakan seorang penemu dan juga seorang seniman, saya akan memberikan sedikit nasihat yang mungkin sulit untuk diterima. Nasihatnya adalah: Bekerjalah sendiri. Anda akan sangat bisa merancang produk dan fitur revolusioner jika bekerja sendiri. Bukan di dalam komite. Bukan di dalam tim.”

IntrovertIndonesiaPsikologi
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Menurut psikolog Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, yang antara tahun 1990 dan 1995 mempelajari sembilan puluh satu orang yang luar biasa kreatif dalam bidang seni, sains, bisnis, dan pemerintahan, kebanyakan subjeknya itu dipinggirkan oleh kelompok sosial saat remaja, sebagian besar karena "rasa ingin tahu yang besar atau ketertarikan terfokus terlihat aneh bagi kelompok seumurannya." Remaja-remaja yang sangat senang bersosialisasi untuk menghabiskan waktu sendirian sering gagal untuk mengembangkan bakat-bakat mereka "karena berlatih musik atau belajar matematika membutuhkan kesunyian yang mereka hindari.”

IntrovertIndonesiaPsikologi
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“The emphasis is on community, on participating in more and more programs and events, on meeting more and more people. It’s a constant tension for many introverts that they’re not living that out. And in a religious world, there’s more at stake when you feel that tension. It doesn’t feel like ‘I’m not doing as well as I’d like.’ It feels like ‘God isn’t pleased with me.’”

PeopleWorldFeelsWellsCommunityReligiousEventsProgramConstantMeetingsTensionStakesIntrovertEmphasisParticipating
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“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.”

MadeAdventureKeysGardenRichesHolesFantasticIntrovertRabbitsWonderlandRabbit Holes
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image

“Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell”—that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same.”

HumansHas BeensMightSchoolAnimalFailingExpressionAppreciateShelterShellsIntrovertMight Have Been
Book:Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Create image