Sheryl Sandberg quotes:

In fact, my New Year's resolution every year, and I'm Jewish so I get two New Years a year, is to meditate, and I fail every time.

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.

So there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work, and there's life, and there's no balance.

When my mother took her turn to sit in a gown at her graduation, she thought she only had two career options: nursing and teaching. She raised me and my sister to believe that we could do anything, and we believed her.

We call our little girls bossy. Go to a playground; little girls get called bossy all the time - a word that's almost never used for boys - and that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce.

What about the rat race in the first place? Is it worthwhile? Or are you just buying into someone else's definition of success? Only you can decide that, and you'll have to decide it over and over and over. But if you think it's a rat race, before you drop out, take a deep breath. Maybe you picked the wrong job. Try again. And then try again.

I don't hold myself out as a role model. I don't believe that everyone should make the same choices; that everyone has to want to be a CEO, or everyone should want to be a work-at-home mother. I want everyone to be able to choose. But I want us to be able to choose unencumbered by gender choosing for us.

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.

I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every 'Harry Potter' book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way.

It's more pressure on women to - if they marry or partner with someone, to partner with the right person. Because you cannot have a full career and a full life at home with your children if you are also doing all of the housework and child care.

I spent most of my career in business not saying the word 'woman.' Because if you say the word 'woman' in a business context, and often in a political context, the person on the other side of the table thinks you're about to sue them or ask for special treatment, right?

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.'

I probably shouldn't admit this since I work in the tech industry, but I still prefer reading paper books.

I believe if we had half our companies and half our countries run by women, and half our homes run by men, things would be better. We know our companies would be more productive. If you use the full talents of the population, you're more productive. We know our homes would be happier.

It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It's also a very clear path to happiness.

Women attribute their success to working hard, luck, and help from other people. Men will attribute that - whatever success they have, that same success - to their own core skills.

When I went to college, as much as my parents emphasized academic achievement, they emphasized marriage even more. They told me that the most eligible women marry young to get a 'good man' before they are all taken.

Women have made tons of progress. But we still have a small percentage of the top jobs in any industry, in any nation in the world. I think that's partly because from a very young age, we encourage our boys to lead and we call our girls bossy.

If more women are in leadership roles, we'll stop assuming they shouldn't be.

If you ask men why they did a good job, they'll say, 'I'm awesome. Obviously. Why are you even asking?' If you ask women why they did a good job, what they'll say is someone helped them, they got lucky, they worked really hard.

My hope in writing 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead' was to change the conversation from what women can't do to what we can.

I don't believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time.

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.

As women get more powerful, they get less likable. I see women holding themselves back because of this, but if we start talking about the success-likability penalty women face, then we can do something about it.

I'm not pretending I can give advice to every single person or every single couple for every situation; I'm making the point that we are not going to get to equality in the workforce before we get to equality in the home. Not going to happen.

People think that women don't negotiate because they're not good negotiators, but that's not it. Women don't negotiate because it doesn't work as well for them. Women have to say, 'I really add a lot of value, and it's in your interest to pay me more.' I hate that advice, but I want to see women get ahead.

At Facebook, we try to be a strengths-based organization, which means we try to make jobs fit around people rather than make people fit around jobs. We focus on what people's natural strengths are and spend our management time trying to find ways for them to use those strengths every day.

There are really good reasons to leave the workforce or work less or take a different job when you want to be with your children. I just want women - and men - to make that choice once they have the child. Not years in advance, because... they don't get the right opportunities. They give up before they even start.

I think it is too hard for men to talk about gender. We have to let men talk about this... because we need men to talk about this if it is ever going to change.

It turns out that a husband who does the laundry, it's very romantic when you're older. And it's hard to believe when you're younger. But it's absolutely true.

I have a five year-old son and a three year-old daughter. I want my son to have a choice to contribute fully in the workforce or at home. And I want my daughter to have the choice to not just succeed, but to be liked for her accomplishments.

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.

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.

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.

Women are not making it to the top of any profession in the world. But when I say, 'The blunt truth is that men run the world,' people say, 'Really?' That, to me, is the problem.

I look forward to the day when half our homes are run by men and half our companies and institutions are run by women. When that happens, it won't just mean happier women and families; it will mean more successful businesses and better lives for us all.

When woman work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework.

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Done is better than perfect.

We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

Fortune does favor the bold and you'll never know what you're capable of if you don't try.

Presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical, and performance-oriented) no longer holds. Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed.Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.

But knowing that things could be worse should not stop us from trying to make them better.

Shutting down discussion is self-defeating and impedes progress. We need to talk and listen and debate and refute and instruct and learn and evolve."

Communication starts with the understanding that there is my point of view (my truth) and someone else's point of view (his truth). Rarely is there one absolute truth, so people who believe that they speak the truth are very silencing of others.

Both men and women react negatively when women negotiate on their own behalf. A man can just negotiate: "I have a better offer. That's not enough to make my family's ends meet." No one feels bad about it. But when a woman does that, there's a backlash.

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.

Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential.

But the upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.

Next time you're about to call your daughter bossy, take a deep breath and say, 'My daughter has executive leadership skills.'

As a country and as a world, we are not comfortable with women in leadership roles. We call little girls bossy.

In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.

we compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet

When it comes time to settle down, find someone who wants an equal partner. Someone who thinks women should be smart, opinionated, and ambitious.

You know, there has never been a 24-hour period in five years when I have not responded to e-mail at Facebook. I am not saying it's easy. I work long hours.

Everyone knows that marriage is the biggest personal decision you make, but it's the biggest career decision you can make.

The things that hold women back, hold them back from sitting at the boardroom table and they hold women back from speaking at the PTA meeting.

I just believed. I believed that the technology would change people's lives. I believed putting real identity online - putting technology behind real identity - was the missing link.

I'd worked on leprosy and malaria in India [at the World Bank] and asked myself the question: Why do we let 2 million children die every year around the world for not having clean water? Because they're faceless and nameless. So, for me, Facebook looked like it was going to solve the problem of the invisible victim.

Every woman I know, particularly the senior ones, has been called too aggressive at work. We know in gender blind studies that men are more aggressive in their offices than women. We know that. Yet we're busy telling all the women that they're too aggressive. That's the issue.

Most people assume that women are responsible for households and child care. Most couples operate that way - not all. That fundamental assumption holds women back.

We need to start talking about child-rearing in the workplace.

Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." (Harvard Business School definition of leadership)

If I had to embrace a definition of success, it would be that success is making the best choices we can ... and accepting them.

Don't be afraid to ask the 'dumb' question, everyone else will be relieved you had the guts to ask!

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.

Today, despite all of the gains we have made, neither men nor women have real choice. Until women have supportive employers and colleagues as well as partners who share family responsibilities, they don't have real choice. And until men are fully respected for contributing inside the home, they don't have real choice either.

A lot of people will say, "what's Facebook's business model?" I always find that a kind of funny question. Our business model is out there, which is: we monetize largely through advertising and a little bit through the gift revenue, the virtual gifts we have on our site. I think those continue to be the most promising avenues going forward.

The more women help one another, the more we help ourselves. Acting like a coalition truly does produce results. Any coalition of support must also include men, many of whom care about gender inequality as much as women do.

The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophesies. Most leadership positions are held by men, so women don't expect to achieve them, and that becomes one of the reasons they don't.

Until women are as ambitious as men, they're not gong to achieve as much as men.

Women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, thirteen per cent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top - C-level jobs, board seats - tops out at fifteen, sixteen per cent.

I want women to get paid more. I want to teach them to negotiate so they get paid more.

If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. There is work, there is life, and there is no balance.

Framing the issue of work-life balance - as if the two were dramatically opposed - practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life?

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.

The most important career decision you'll make is who your life partner is.

When the man is traveling with a man, he says, "Let's stay up late and work on this and get this to be better." When the man's traveling with the woman, for the sake of appearances he doesn't do the work with her. That's a lost opportunity for her to be a success.

Women need to shift form thinking "I'm not ready to do that" to thinking "I want to do that- and I'll learn by doing it.

The time is long overdue to encourage more women to dream the possible dream.

In our performance reviews with women, we need to be saying, "Are you reaching enough? Are you applying for jobs when you meet some of the criteria like men, or are you waiting to meet all the criteria like women do?" There's so much we can do to encourage women to take on more and believe in themselves.

Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception. It is easy to dislike senior women because there are so few.

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.

We have a problem with women in leadership across the board. This leadership gap - this problem of not enough women in leadership - is running really deep and it's in every industry. My answer is we have to understand the stereotype assumptions that hold women back.

Build your skills not your resume.

Our culture needs to find a robust image of female success that is first, not male, and second, not a white woman on the phone, holding a crying baby,

As former secretary of state Madeleine Albright once said, There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.

Communication works best when we combine appropriateness with authenticity, finding that sweet spot where opinions are not brutally honest but delicately honest.

We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers - or even happy professionals and competent mothers.

There is no perfect fit when you're looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around.

By focusing on her career and taking a calculated approach to amassing power, Heidi violated our stereotypical expectations of women. Yet by behaving in the same manner, Howard lived up to our stereotypical expectations of men. The end result? Liked him, disliked her.

Think personally, act communally.

He said that when you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress. Mark was right.

As a child I never thought about what I wanted to be, but I thought a lot about what I wanted to do.

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.

As more women lean in to their careers, more men need to lean in to their families. We need to encourage men to be more ambitious in their homes.

No wonder women don't negotiate as often as men. It's like trying to cross a minefield backward in high heels.

We need to talk more openly about mentorships and sponsorships. Women don't get the mentoring, and particularly the sponsors, they need to succeed as much as men.

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.

And anyway, who wears a tiara on a jungle gym?

I'm excited that more people, especially men, are understanding that equality is good for them. I don't want men to want equality for women because they're being nice to their colleagues and daughters. I want men to want it because it's better for their companies and their lives.

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.

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.

The No. 1 impediment to women succeeding in the workforce is now in the home.

Pages on Facebook are allowed to be anonymous. That is really important. People start revolutions; we need anonymity.

What works for men does not always work for women, because success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. That's what the research shows. As a man gets more successful, everyone is rooting for him. As a woman gets more successful, both men and women like her less.

I wish I could just go tell all the young women I work with, all these fabulous women, 'Believe in yourself and negotiate for yourself. Own your own success.' I wish I could tell that to my daughter. But it's not that simple.

I'm a pragmatist. I think, as a woman, you have to be more careful. You have to be more communal, you have to say yes to more things than men, you have to worry about things that men don't have to worry about. But once we get enough women into leadership, we can break stereotypes down. If you lead, you get to decide.

I don't pretend there aren't biological differences, but I don't believe the desire for leadership is hardwired biology, not the desire to win or excel. I believe that it's socialization, that we're socializing our daughters to nurture and our boys to lead.

I absolutely loved Tina Fey's 'Bossypants' and didn't want it to end. It's hilarious as well as important. Not only did I laugh on every page, but I was nodding along, highlighting and dog-earing like crazy.

When I was in high school, I was voted most likely to succeed.

Over the last 10 years, women have stalled out at the top.

I go around the room and ask people, 'What do you think?'

...parents who work outside the home are still capable of giving their children a loving and secure childhood. Some data even suggest that having two parents working outside the home can be advantageous to a child's development, particularly for girls.

A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.

A woman, if you're Most Intelligent or Most Likely to Succeed, that's an embarrassing thing. Or something that's not considered attractive, and I think that's what we need to change.

Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.

Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.

All of us want the same things. We want to be good to the people around us and for our lives to have meaning. For me that means making the world a little bit easier for women.