Sallie Krawcheck Quotes

"Assume the best intent in others around you. You will often be right, and even when you're not, people can rise to your view of them. Not always, but enough that I believe it's worth it."

"To empower women, power must be given to them, presumably by an entity that already has it. And that entity is the patriarchy. This also implies that women must be on the receiving end, waiting - politely - to be empowered. Very Victorian-era courtship, isn't it?"

"Stop hoping for a promotion that's not coming. Instead, start a business at which you want to work."

"We all know money is power. And women won't be equal with men until we are financially equal with men. Getting more money into the hands of women is good for women, but it's also good for their families, for the economy, and for society."

"Most financial questions don't have one right answer - just an answer that's right for you."

"Networking has been cited as the number one unwritten rule of success in business. Who you know really impacts what you know."

"Albert Einstein is reported to have said compounding is the eighth wonder of the world. Obviously, a dollar invested in your 20s is worth so much more than a dollar invested in your 60s."

"I'm about impact. One can make impact if they run a big business with a lot of zeroes. I've done that. One can also make an impact when you're a research analyst, where it's you and your associate. I've done that."

"I love to talk. I love to share. I love to vent. But I prefer action."

"Somehow, there is this feeling that women require remedial financial education, and so everything must be dumbed down. The reality is that we all need a lot more education, but guys just go ahead and invest anyway."

"The research indicates that when we women invest, we women do tend to be more patient, take a longer-term perspective and as a result of it, tend to be better investors than men. But the messages we get are that investing is sort of 'the guys' world.'"

"The whole icon of a bull that stands for Wall Street - you couldn't come up with an image of a more male environment. Women feel that the brand doesn't speak to them."

"If you are a senior woman in business, you intuitively know two things: If a white man promotes a woman or a person of color, he gets credit for it. If a woman says great things about a woman, you get dinged for it. Research is clear on this."

"If you are going to fire this person or hire that person, do it all in a concentrated period. The Band-Aid gets ripped off, and everybody goes back to work."

"I never talk about my money! It is interesting how awkward it is to talk about it, even though I talk about it in the abstract every day."

"We shouldn't think anyone needs a Ph.D. in advanced investing in order to begin to invest."

"First, pay off your high-interest-rate debt. If you have student loan debt - that's low interest rate; that has a tax benefit - you can leave that out. A mortgage can be an OK one. Credit card debt is poison. That needs to be paid off right away."

"Whatever your income level is, save as much as you can - up to 20 percent, but more if you can - and invest it. Put that into an IRA; put that into a brokerage account."

"I hated being a junior investment banker. I loved the research business, the wealth management business."

"People just haven't saved enough for retirement. And they're going to outlive their money."

"The only time in my career I've lost sleep - wake up 3:30 in the morning, and you know you're not going back to sleep - is when I've been an entrepreneur. Even in the financial crisis."

"We just haven't had enough women in senior roles on Wall Street overall - fewer women in the investment banking function overall as well."

"What you hear and what the research shows is that gentlemen negotiate for their first job. Women do not negotiate from their first job and on. And I tell women there is no H.R. fairy godmother. There might be, but you better not count on it."

"I never really considered myself much of a feminist until I left Wall Street. I did all the right things - such as put together gender-diverse teams - but feminism wasn't deep in my bones."

"The 'aha' moment came one to me one morning when I was applying my mascara, and I realized that the retirement crisis is actually a woman's crisis: Women live longer than men yet retire with less money."

"I'm a Weeble. Remember Weebles? The toy whose tagline was, 'Weebles wobble but they don't fall down?' I'm resilient. Oh, and I work really hard."

"I wish I had known that that process of figuring out what you're good at, what you want to do, and where you want to have an impact is not a one-time exercise, but an ongoing one. Instead, I bought into success being an endpoint rather than a constant process."

"My low point was after being reorganized out of running Merrill Lynch. That dismissal deeply contradicted my sense of fairness, since, at the time, my team and I had done what we were brought in to do: We had turned Merrill Lynch around from the depths of the financial crisis."

"I make it a priority to keep in touch with people with whom I've worked in the past. And I'm fortunate, because I've worked with some terrific folks."

"People say to me, 'Has being a woman helped or hindered your career?' And the answer is yes."