After getting inspired by a friend, you decide to hit a gym. But, as soon as you see your friend excelling. You start feeling restless thinking – why did I come to this place? And this feeling is vulnerability. While the vulnerability is a weakness for some. Yet studies have reflected that exhibiting vulnerabilities has a positive effect. And that’s when Brené Brown quotes come into the picture.
But who is Brené Brown, and what do her quotes reflect? That’s what this article is all about.
Who is Brene Brown?
Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW; is a research professor at the University of Houston. She holds the Huffington Foundation – Brené Brown Endowed Chair. She spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy. Further, she has been the author of the top five New York Times bestsellers – The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and Dare to Lead. Not just this, her TED talk, The Power of Vulnerability, became the most talked-about talks that garnered humongous popularity. Alongside this, a filmed lecture named Brené Brown: The Call to Courage also debuted in 2019 on Netflix.
Often vulnerability is associated with fear and shame. Thus, stopping a person from stepping out of his/her comfort zone. But Brené Brown with her research has been enlightening individuals to embrace positivity, confidence, and accept oneself. And her quotes are like reminders to accept imperfection and be yourself.
So, without wasting a moment, let’s explore some of the best Brené Brown quotes.
120 Brene Brown Quotes
let’s explore some of the best Brené Brown Quotes on various topics –
Brene Brown Vulnerability Quotes
1. “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”
2. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”
3. “The moment someone asks you to do something you don’t have the time or inclination to do is fraught with vulnerability.”
4. “Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”
5. “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”
6. “Through my research, I found that vulnerability is the glue that holds relationships together. It’s the magic sauce.”
7. “Vulnerability is not weakness. And that myth is profoundly dangerous. Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.”
8. “Vulnerability is about showing up and being seen. It’s tough to do that when we’re terrified about what people might see or think.”
9. “What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?”
10. “You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.”
Brene Brown Courage Quotes
11. “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”
12. “Anonymous comments? You’re not in the arena, man. If you can’t say it to me in person in front of my kids, don’t say it.”
13. “If you want to make a difference, the next time you see someone being cruel to another human being, take it personally. Take it personally because it is personal!”
14. “Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all one’s heart.”
15. “Courage gives us a voice and compassion gives us an ear. Without both, there is no opportunity for empathy and connection.”
16. “Faith is a place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.”
17. “I’ve learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.”
18. “What we know matters but who we are matters more.”
19. “I now see how gifts like courage, compassion, and connection only work when they are exercised. Every day.”
20. “The difficult thing is that vulnerability is the first thing I look for in you and the last thing I’m willing to show you. In you, it’s courage and daring. In me, it’s weakness.”
Brene Brown Quotes on Love
21. “To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees—these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. But I’m learning that recognizing and leaning into the discomfort of vulnerability teaches us how to live with joy, gratitude, and grace.”
22. “A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.”
23. “Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves, even when we risk disappointing others.”
24. “When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.”
25. “When the people we love stop paying attention, trust begins to slip away and hurt starts seeping in.”
26. “Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them – we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.”
27. “Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.”
28. “When you get to a place where you understand that love and belonging, your worthiness is a birthright and not something you have to earn, anything is possible.”
29. “We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend.”
30. “Those who have a strong sense of love and belonging have the courage to be imperfect.”
Rising Strong Brene Brown Quotes
31. “Compassionate people ask for what they need. They say no when they need to, and when they say yes, they mean it. They’re compassionate because their boundaries keep them out of resentment.”
32. “Just because someone isn’t willing or able to love us, it doesn’t mean that we are unlovable.”
33. “There are too many people today who instead of feeling hurt are acting out their hurt; instead of acknowledging pain, they’re inflicting pain on others. Rather than risking feeling disappointed, they’re choosing to live disappointed. Emotional stoicism is not badassery. Blustery posturing is not badassery. Swagger is not badassery. Perfection is about the furthest thing in the world from badassery.”
34. “I want to be in the arena. I want to be brave with my life. And when we make the choice to dare greatly, we sign up to get our asses kicked. We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time. Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”
35. “Just because we didn’t measure up to some standard of achievement doesn’t mean that we don’t possess gifts and talents that only we can bring to the world. Just because someone failed to see the value in what we can create or achieve doesn’t change its worth or ours.”
36. “We can choose courage or we can choose comfort, but we can’t have both. Not at the same time.”
37. “I define wholehearted living as engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, no matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking, Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am brave and worthy of love and belonging.”
38. “Generosity is not a free pass for people to take advantage of us, treat us unfairly, or be purposefully disrespectful and mean.”
39. “When we own our stories, we avoid being trapped as characters in stories someone else is telling.”
40. “When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don’t go away; instead, they own us, they define us.”
Brene Brown Leadership Quotes
41. “To me, a leader is someone who holds her- or himself accountable for finding potential in people and processes. And so, what I think is really important is sustainability.”
42. “Daring leaders work to make sure people can be themselves and feel a sense of belonging.”
43. “There is an incredibly important, uncomfortable, and brave discussion that every single leader and every organization in the world should be having about privilege.”
44. “Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior.”
45. “A brave leader is someone who says I see you. I hear you. I don’t have all the answers, but I’m going to keep listening and asking questions.”
46. “The level of collective courage in an organization is the absolute best predictor of that organization’s ability to be successful.”
47. “Cynicism and sarcasm are bad in person, and even worse when they travel through email and text.”
48. “We desperately need more leaders who are committed to courageous, wholehearted leadership and who are self-aware enough to lead from their hearts, rather than unevolved leaders who lead from hurt and fear.”
49. “What do your team members do that earns your trust? The most common answer: asking for help.”
50. “Studying leadership is way easier than leading.”
Brene Brown Shame Quotes
51. “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”
52. “If we share our shame story with the wrong person, they can easily become one more piece of flying debris in an already dangerous storm.”
53. “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.”
54. “You cannot talk about race without talking about privilege. And when people start talking about privilege, they get paralyzed by shame.”
55. “I did not learn about vulnerability and courage and creativity and innovation from studying vulnerability. I learned about these things from studying shame.”
56. “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”
57. “Laughter is evidence that the chokehold of shame has been loosened. Knowing laughter is the moment we feel proof that our shame has been transformed. Like empathy, it strips shame to the bone, robs it of its power, and forces it from the closet.”
58. “The culture of shame is driven by fear, blame, and disconnection, and it is often a powerful incubator for issues like perfectionism, stereotyping, gossiping, and addiction.”
59. “Shame and self-esteem are very different issues. We feel shame. We think self-esteem.”
60. “Shame is the most powerful, master emotion. It’s the fear that we’re not good enough.”
Brene Brown Authenticity Quotes
61. “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”
62. “Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
63. “If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.”
64. “If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything.”
65. “One of the things I talk a lot about in my work that I try to practice – which is really hard – is in those moments where we’re being asked to do things or asked to take over or asked to take care of something, we have to have the courage to choose discomfort over resentment. And to me, a huge part of my authenticity practice has been choosing discomfort and saying no.”
66. “It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.”
67. “It’s about showing up. And sometimes I don’t do it. I almost always regret it, but sometimes I don’t do it. Sometimes I walk into a situation where I’m intimidated and I want to be liked and I want to fit in, and I don’t choose authenticity. And it’s always pretty miserable.”
68. “Mindfully practicing authenticity during our most soul-searching struggles is how we invite grace, joy and gratitude into our lives.”
69. “Authenticity is also about the courage and the vulnerability to say, “Yeah, I’ll try it. I feel pretty uncomfortable and I feel a little vulnerable, but I’ll try it!”
70. “Why, when we know that there’s no such thing as perfect, do most of us spend an incredible amount of time and energy trying to be everything to everyone? Is it that we really admire perfection? No – the truth is that we are actually drawn to people who are real and down-to-earth. We love authenticity and we know that life is messy and imperfect.”
Brene Brown Perfectionism Quotes
71. “Healthy striving is self-focused: ‘How can I improve?’ Perfectionism is other-focused: ‘What will they think?’”
72. “Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.”
73. “Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together.”
74. “Perfectionism is a self-destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”
75. “Worthiness doesn’t have prerequisites.”
76. “Judging has become such a part of our thinking patterns that we are rarely even aware of why and how we do it. It takes a great deal of conscious thinking or mindfulness to even bring the habit of judging into our awareness.”
77. “Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it’s about earning approval and acceptance.”
78. “Perfectionism is not the same thing as striving to be our best. Perfectionism is not about healthy achievement and growth; it’s a shield.”
79. “I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.”
80. “Perfectionism is a twenty-ton shield that we lug around thinking it will protect us when, in fact, it’s the thing that’s really preventing us from taking flight.”
Brene Brown Gratitude Quotes
81. “Until we can receive with an open heart, we’re never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”
82. “One of the greatest barriers to connection is the cultural importance we place on ‘going it alone.’ Somehow, we’ve come to equate success with not needing anyone. Many of us are willing to extend a helping hand, but we’re very reluctant to reach out for help when we need it ourselves. It’s as if we’ve divided the world into ‘those who offer help’ and ‘those who need help.’ The truth is that we are both.”
83. I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.”
84. “We’re a nation hungry for more joy: Because we’re starving from a lack of gratitude.”
85. “What separates privilege from entitlement is gratitude.”
86. “A good life happens when you stop and are grateful for the ordinary moments that so many of us just steamroll over to try to find those extraordinary moments.”
87. “The only universal language I know of that wraps up joy and gratitude and love is laughter.”
88. “I believe a joyful life is made up of joyful moments, gracefully strung together by trust, gratitude, inspiration, and faith.”
89. To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else’s hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that “I’m only human” does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality.
90. Let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen, to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee… to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, to be this vulnerable means that we’re alive.
Brene Brown Belonging Quotes
91. “You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”
92. “Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us, and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.”
93. “As unique as we all are, an awful lot of us want the same things. We want to shake up our current less-than-fulfilling lives. We want to be happier, more loving, forgiving and connected with the people around us.”
94. “Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”
95. “Here’s what is truly at the heart of wholeheartedness: Worthy now, not if, not when, we’re worthy of love and belonging now. Right this minute. As is.”
96. “Those who feel lovable, who love, and who experience belonging simply believe they are worthy of love and belonging. I often say that Wholeheartedness is like the North Star: We never really arrive, but we certainly know if we’re headed in the right direction.”
97. “True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness. True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.”
98. “But what we know now is that when we deny our emotion, it owns us. When we own our emotion, we can rebuild and find our way through the pain.”
99. “Sometimes the most dangerous thing for kids is the silence that allows them to construct their own stories—stories that almost always cast them as alone and unworthy of love and belonging.”
100. “If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.”
Brene Brown Daring Greatly Quotes [from ‘Daring Greatly’ Book]
101. “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weaknesses.”
102. “When I look at narcissism through the vulnerability lens, I see the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I see the fear of never feeling extraordinary enough to be noticed, to be lovable, to belong, or to cultivate a sense of purpose.”
103. “Numb the dark and you numb the light.”
104. “The willingness to show up changes us, It makes us a little braver each time.”
105. “Even to me the issue of “stay small, sweet, quiet, and modest” sounds like an outdated problem, but the truth is that women still run into those demands whenever we find and use our voices.”
106. “Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.”
107. “I’ve found what makes children happy doesn’t always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.”
108. “To love ourselves and support each other in the process of becoming real is perhaps the greatest single act of daring greatly.”
109. “Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.”
110. “Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.”
Brene Brown Dare to Lead Quotes [from ‘Dare to Lead’ Book]
111. “At the end of the day, at the end of the week, at the end of my life, I want to say I contributed more than I criticized.”
112. “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”
113. “Show up for people in pain and don’t look away.”
114. “We fail the minute we let someone else define success for us.”
115. “Only when diverse perspectives are included, respected, and valued can we start to get a full picture of the world:”
116. “Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio reminds us, “We are not necessarily thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.”
117. “Feeding people half-truths or bullshit to make them feel better (which is almost always about making ourselves feel more comfortable) is unkind.”
118. “to be the person who we long to be—we must again be vulnerable. We must take off the armor, put down the weapons, show up, and let ourselves be seen.”
119. “If you have more than three priorities, you have no priorities.”
120. “Living BIG (boundaries, integrity, and generosity).”
Life Lessons To Learn from Brene Brown
Here are few life lessons that we can learn from Brené Brown.
- Accept vulnerability as a strength and not a weakness. When a person becomes vulnerable, he displays his/her true self to the world and experiences authenticity. Which also helps a person in assessing fearlessness.
- Don’t hide your emotions or dodge them. Because it leads to a stressful life. Instead, Brown suggests that one should become self-aware while exploring emotions.
- Fear is and will always be the villain in every individual’s life. It also distracts people from following their desires. But the solution is to – move forward. The more you face it, the stronger you will become.
- Don’t think about what other people have to say about you. Just ignore them. Instead, try talking to those people who are trustworthy enough to hear your story.
- Stop pretending. Because with it, there is always going to be insecurity, doubts, and even fear. So, learn to face every problem with confidence. And embrace your authentic self.
- Keep a check on your core values. These sets of guiding principles help in achieving goals. And if you are not in alignment with them, then happiness will come knocking your door.
Now, we know about life lessons. But let’s see how Brené Brown depicts them through inspirational quotes.
Closing Thoughts
So, these are some of the best Brené Brown quotes that we find motivating. Every quote unfolds a beautiful meaning of life and helps in giving direction. Not just this, but these quotes will help you sail through problems in personal as well as professional life!
