Quotes from Sallie Krawcheck

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

Your career is not going to go the way you planned. It is impossible at the age of 23 to pick the right industry, the right company, and you can visualize what you're going to be doing in your 40s, 50s, and 60s, but chances are that it's going to be something quite different. So remain open to opportunities and change.

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.

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.'

Recognize that the issues we face as women advancing in business are issues my grandmother would have loved to have had. And fight the good fight nonetheless. For yourself and your peers - but also for your daughter, when it's her turn.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

On Wall Street, the industry in which I grew up, a culture in which 'my word is my bond' shifted over the past few decades toward one where the big print can say 'Free' while the small print gives the real costs.

I think that indicates why men tend to invest more wealth. If he loses some, there's more coming in. Whereas for women, it's like "Ugh, I gotta keep this."

I had very good bosses, very good companies for which I worked. I worked in industries where the results really mattered; it wasn't the perception of results, it was just the facts.

When I feel risk-averse, I am much more likely to surround myself with middle-aged, professional, southern females; I just am.

We don't recognize the power of compounding.

We haven't always been aware of it, but the 'locker-room bro talk' has long been going on not just in locker rooms but in some corporate conference rooms. Of course, not by all men. But by some - including some who hold positions of power. And that matters in holding women back.

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.

Like many entrepreneurs, I never have two days that are alike. One thing that's consistent is I wake up early, around 4:30 A.M. It's my most productive time of day because I can think and work uninterrupted.

Hard work most often leads to success, but it's not every day, and it's not every week. It will pay off at different times over the course of your career.

I've managed many people in my career. I've managed very diverse teams. And it's interesting because what I've found over time is that when it would come to bonus time or raise time, I would hear from the gentlemen, 'I want to make X.' I don't think I ever heard from a woman who worked for me, 'I want to make X.'

Your adrenaline starts to go when the market opens in the morning. It's like sports programming.

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

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.