Women Leadership Quotes: 12 Short Lines for Moments of Doubt, With Sources

In May 2009, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the only woman among the nine justices of the US Supreme Court. Sandra Day O'Connor had retired three years earlier. When a reporter asked Ginsburg how many women the court needed, her answer became one of her most quoted lines, and it opens one of the four groups below.

This page collects twelve short lines by women who led hospitals, navies, companies, courts and governments. They are sorted by the moment they help with: hesitating before a promotion, being the only woman at the table, having your style called soft, and needing to make a call. Each line has the speech, book or interview it comes from and the year. An earlier version of this page had fifteen lines. We removed nine that we could not trace to a source and added six that we could; the cut lines are listed near the end. This page is part of our collection of women leadership quotes.

Before you say yes to a role you don't feel ready for

Many of the lines women leaders are remembered for are about the moment just before the jump. These three come from people who described their own hesitation openly.

Growth and comfort do not coexist.

— Ginni Rometty, Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, 2011

Rometty said this on stage in October 2011, interviewed by Fortune's Jessi Hempel, while she was running IBM's sales and marketing. Three weeks later IBM named her its next chief executive. In the same session she told a story from early in her career. She was offered a big job and replied that she needed more experience first. That evening her husband asked whether a man would have answered the same way. The line works best for someone weighing a stretch role. It is less useful for comforting someone who is already overloaded.

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You can't be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.

— Tina Fey, Bossypants, 2011

Fey wrote her memoir after years as the first woman head writer of Saturday Night Live and then as the creator and showrunner of 30 Rock. Both jobs ran on deadlines with no room for polishing. The image is deliberately childish, which is why it lands in a team chat. A stiffer line can sound like a lecture there.

Done is better than perfect.

— Facebook office poster, quoted by Sheryl Sandberg in Lean In, 2013

This one is often printed as Sandberg's own, but in Lean In she points to it as one of the posters on the walls at Facebook, where she was chief operating officer. She presents it as a check on perfectionism, which she argues holds women back from raising their hands. If you quote it, credit the poster and the book. That is both accurate and a better story.

When you are the only woman at the table

These lines were spoken by women who were outnumbered when they said them. Two are serious and one is a joke. All three carry more weight when you know the room they came from.

Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. … It shouldn't be that women are the exception.

— Ruth Bader Ginsburg, interview with Joan Biskupic, USA Today, 2009

Ginsburg said this in May 2009, as David Souter prepared to retire and President Obama looked for a replacement. Between the two sentences she added that she did not mean the split had to be exactly half and half. Sonia Sotomayor joined the court that August. The first sentence is the one that fits on a slide. The second is the argument.

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In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman.

— Margaret Thatcher, speech to the National Union of Townswomen's Guilds, Royal Albert Hall, 1965

Thatcher was a 39-year-old opposition MP when she said this on 20 May 1965, fourteen years before she became prime minister. She was speaking to a hall full of women, and the line was a joke that turns a stereotype around. It still works as a laugh among peers. In a mixed team it can come across as a dig, so think about who is in the room before you use it.

There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.

— Madeleine Albright, the line she quoted and defended in "My Undiplomatic Moment," The New York Times, 2016

Albright, the first woman to serve as US secretary of state, had used this line for about twenty-five years. In February 2016 she said it at a campaign event for Hillary Clinton and was criticised for suggesting women owed Clinton their votes. In her New York Times piece a few days later she wrote that she still believed women should help one another, but that it was "the wrong context and the wrong time" for the line. That is also the best guide to using it: use it to back mentoring and sponsorship, not to tell people how to vote.

When someone calls your style too soft

The criticism that a woman leads "from the heart" is old. These three answer it, from a princess, a prime minister and a management theorist.

I don't go by a rulebook, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that's got me into trouble in my work—I understand that.

— Diana, Princess of Wales, Panorama, BBC1, 1995

Nearly 23 million people in Britain watched Martin Bashir's interview on 20 November 1995. In 2021 an inquiry by Lord Dyson found that Bashir had used forged bank statements to win the access that led to it. The words are Diana's, but in a formal speech you may want to acknowledge how the interview came about. Note the second half of the sentence, which usually gets cut: she admits the approach cost her.

I hope in return I leave behind a belief that you can be kind, but strong; empathetic, but decisive; optimistic, but focused; that you can be your own kind of leader—one that knows when it's time to go.

— Jacinda Ardern, resignation announcement, Napier, 2023

Ardern announced on 19 January 2023 that she would step down as New Zealand's prime minister. She said she no longer had "enough in the tank" to do the job justice. The pairs in this sentence answer the charge that kindness and toughness can't go together. Few leaders have tied that idea to the decision to leave. It suits a farewell, a handover note or a talk on sustainable leadership.

Power is not a pre-existing thing which can be handed out to someone, or wrenched from someone.

— Mary Parker Follett, Dynamic Administration, 1942 edition

Follett, a Boston social worker turned management thinker, argued in the 1920s for "power-with" rather than "power-over": authority built together with the people you lead rather than held over them. Dynamic Administration collects her lectures and was published after her death in 1933. Peter Drucker later praised her as a pioneer of management. Use this line when someone mistakes collaboration for weakness.

When the team needs a decision, not a pep talk

The last group is about getting things done. A nurse, a computer scientist and a comedy writer say what they expected of themselves and of the people around them.

I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took an excuse.

— Florence Nightingale, letter to Hilary Bonham Carter, 1861

The full passage begins, "I have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or woman had before." Nightingale wrote it while campaigning for army health reform after her work in the Crimean War hospitals at Scutari, using mortality statistics to make her case. The line sounds harsh out of context. In context it is about accountability for outcomes, which is how to use it. It is not a reason to refuse anyone a sick day.

You manage things, you lead people. We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership.

— Grace Hopper, quoted in "The Wit and Wisdom of Grace Hopper," OCLC Newsletter, 1987

Hopper helped program the Harvard Mark I and pushed for computer languages written in English words, work that led to COBOL. She retired from the US Navy in 1986 as a rear admiral, at 79. She often finished the thought with a jab at the business-school graduates running Washington. The first sentence is short enough for a whiteboard and fits a new manager's first week.

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In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.

— Tina Fey, Bossypants, 2011

Fey's second line on this page comes from the part of her memoir about running writers' rooms. It is the plainest description of delegation here, and the qualifier "in most cases" keeps it honest. It goes well in a note to a newly promoted manager who is tempted to do the team's work for them. For more lines in this vein, see our humble leadership quotes.

Which line for which moment

Three short messages built on these lines

A quote works better in a message when you add one sentence that only you could write. Here are three examples you can adapt.

• To a colleague hesitating over a stretch role: "Early in her career, Ginni Rometty answered a big job offer by saying she needed more experience, and her husband asked whether a man would have said the same. Her words: 'Growth and comfort do not coexist.' You are more ready than you think. Say yes."
• To a new team lead after a hard first week: "Grace Hopper's rule: 'You manage things, you lead people.' The spreadsheets will wait. Spend Monday talking to your people."
• Opening a talk at a women's leadership event: "In 2009, the only woman on the US Supreme Court told a reporter, 'Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.' Today we are talking about the places where that still isn't true."

Three habits keep a quote from sounding like a poster. Say who said it and when. Keep the context that changes the meaning, such as Albright's own caveat or the Facebook poster behind "Done is better than perfect". Choose the speaker for the audience as well as the words. If you need something even shorter for a card or caption, our short leadership quotes are sorted by occasion.

Lines we cut from this page, and why

The earlier version of this article gave every line a source and a year, but several of those sources do not hold up. These are the lines we removed:

• "Leadership is not defined by the exercise of power but by the capacity to increase the sense of power among those led." This was credited to Mary Parker Follett, Dynamic Administration, 1924. The book was assembled after her death in 1933, and we could not find the sentence in her published work. The Follett line above replaces it.
• "…always take on things I'd never done before." This was credited to Ginni Rometty at a 2015 Northwestern commencement. We could not confirm that speech. The "growth and comfort" half comes from the 2011 Fortune summit.
• "Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from." This was credited to Jodie Foster at the 2013 Golden Globes. We found no primary source.
• "I never dreamed about success. I worked for it." This was credited to Estée Lauder's 1985 memoir. It circulates without a page reference, and we could not confirm it.
• "We need to accept that we won't always make the right decisions…" This was credited to Arianna Huffington, Thrive, 2014. Quote sites disagree on which of her books it comes from, so we left it out rather than guess.
• "Don't be intimidated by what you don't know." This was credited to Sara Blakely in a 2012 Forbes interview. It has been reprinted since at least 2016 without the interview it came from.
• "Whatever you do, be different." This was credited to Anita Roddick, Business as Unusual, 2000. We could not match it to a page.
• "It is past time for women to take their rightful place." This was credited to Ruth Bader Ginsburg at her 1993 confirmation hearings. We found no source for the wording. Her 2009 line above is on the record.
• "Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes." This is widely credited to Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers, and the National Women's Hall of Fame quotes a longer version. We found no record of the "1978 Gray Panthers address" the old page cited.

Two other famous lines need the same care. The folding-chair advice credited to Shirley Chisholm rests on Donna Brazile's recollection, not on Chisholm's own writing; we trace it in leadership quotes by women of color. "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent" has no confirmed source in Eleanor Roosevelt's writing; our women empowerment quotes page explains why.

If you keep only one line from this page, keep the one with the clearest record: Ginsburg's, said on the record to a named reporter while she was the only woman on the court.