Top 32 Introversion Quotes & Sayings

When it comes to our relationship with loneliness, specifically, it's important to understand how our relative introversion or extroversion informs our preference for social interaction.

We don’t ask why God chose as his prophet a stutterer with a public speaking phobia. But we should. The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well.

Don't think of introversion as something that needs to be cured.

Often confused with shyness, introversion does not imply social reticence or discomfort. Rather than being averse to social engagement, introverts become overwhelmed by too much of it, which explains why the introvert is ready to leave a party after an hour and the extravert gains steam as the night goes on.

[On Jung's theory of psychological types:] My mother, Katharine C. Briggs, introduced it into our family and made it a part of our lives. She and I waited a long time for someone to devise an instrument that would reflect not only one's preference for extraversion or introversion but one's preferred kind of perception and judgment as well. In the summer of 1942 we undertook to do it ourselves.

Originally, technology was pretty clearly on the side of introversion. It allowed introverts to connect with people, to express their ideas in a less stimulating way: you're sitting alone behind a computer. But I'm starting to think that the pressure to self-present constantly online is becoming so extreme.

My extroversion is a way of managing my introversion.

Introversion, when embraced, is a wellspring of riches. It took me years to acknowledge this simple reality, to claim my home, and to value all it offers.

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

What's interesting is relative levels of introversion tend to stay the same. If you went back to your reunion from school, you would probably find that if you ranked everyone in your class into terms of levels of introversion and extroversion you'd still be the same rank.

Introverts prefer introversion; we tend to gain energy by reflecting and expend energy when interacting. Extroverts have the opposite preference; they tend to gain energy by interacting and expend energy while reflecting.

...I also believe that introversion is my greatest strength. I have such a strong inner life that I’m never bored and only occasionally lonely. No matter what mayhem is happening around me, I know I can always turn inward.

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.

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.

While there are relatively few extreme introverts or extroverts, most of us lean in one direction or the other. If we lean more toward introversion, we'll generally prefer less social activity than more extroverted people. One inclination is not 'better' than another, but our culture can make it seem as if extroverts have a social advantage.

Introversion- along with its cousins sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness- is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology. Introverts living in the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man's world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. 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.

I'm an introvert, but I disguise my introversion by being an extrovert. If I don't have to be around people, I'm not. If I'm around people, I'm gonna do my thing. But I'm not really with the fake kickin' it - everything's organic, everything's natural.

The end of the world: the wholesale internal introversion upon itself of the noosphere, which has simultaneously reached the uttermost limit of its complexity and its centrality . . . the overthrow of equilibrium, detaching the mind, furfilled at last, from its material matrix, so that it will henceforth rest with all its weight on God-Omega . . . critical point simultaneously of emergence and emersion, of maturation and evasion.

The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.

Introversion, at least if extreme, is a sign of mental and spiritual immaturity.

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

I am very troubled by the tendency to define introverts by what they lack. Introversion is a preference, not a fallback plan.

Quiet is might. Solitude is strength. Introversion is power.

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.

To a greater or lesser extent there goes on in every person a struggle between two forces: the longing for privacy and the urge to go places: the introversion, interest directed within oneself toward one's own inner life of vigorous thought and fancy; and extroversion, interest directed outward, toward the external world of people and tangible values.

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.

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

Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating. Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not.

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

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

I'm caught somewhere between introversion and extroversion. Performance is natural to me, joyful, but it is also exhausting. I can feed on it, but the expense is high, too, like being a carnivore: I have to chase down my meals.

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