People Who Are Critical Quotes & Sayings

Many people are afraid to fail, so they don't try. They may dream, talk, and even plan, but they don't take that critical step of putting their money and their effort on the line. To succeed in business, you must take risks. Even if you fail, that's how you learn. There has never been, and will never be, an Olympic skater who didn't fall on the ice. — Donald Trump

Assertiveness is critical for feeling empowered in your own mind as well as at work and at home. It's saying honestly to yourself and others, "This is who I am. This is how I want to be treated," while respecting other people's rights and opinions. Assertiveness isn't about being liked all the time, nor about making sure everyone is happy. It is about standing up for your right to be treated fairly. There are many advantages to assertiveness. First, — Judy Murphy

Having a lover/friend who regards you as a living growing criatura, being, just as much as the tree from the ground, or a ficus in the house, or a rose garden out in the side yard ... having a lover and friends who look at you as a true living breathing entity, one that is human but made of very fine and moist and magical things as well ... a lover and friends who support the ciatura in you ... these are the people you are looking for. They will be the friends of your soul for life. Mindful choosing of friends and lovers, not to mention teachers, is critical to remaining conscious, remaining intuitive, remaining in charge of the fiery light that sees and knows. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I am always moved, with grateful wonder, by the goodness of people. For the few who are prying or meanly critical, for the very few who rejoice in the grief of others, there are the thousands who are kind. I have come to believe that the natural human heart is good, and I have observed that this goodness is found in all varieties of people, and that it can and does prevail in spite of other corruptions. This human goodness alone provides hope enough for the world. I have sometimes — Pearl S. Buck

People are attracted to teaching because they want to make a real impact. The teachers who are making the greatest difference go far beyond meeting standardised test measures. They aspire to truly level the playing field for their students, which means inspiring a love of learning, fostering the highest levels of critical thinking, building perseverance in working towards academic excellence, and so on. — Wendy Kopp

Every shot is unique, even if it's just a close-up, an insert of your hand. You've got to work with the guy behind the lens to get it right, focus in. Those are critical little nothing things, but you've got to work with the people who are trying to put it down, in order to get it. — Robert Forster

The truth of the matter is that the people who succeed in the arts most often are the people who get up again after getting knocked down. Persistence is critical. — Scott Turow

There is a huge trapdoor waiting to open under anyone who is critical of so-called 'popular culture' or (to redefine this subject) anyone who is uneasy about the systematic, massified cretinization of the major media. If you denounce the excess coverage, you are yourself adding to the excess. If you show even a slight knowledge of the topic, you betray an interest in something that you wish to denounce as unimportant or irrelevant. Some writers try to have this both ways, by making their columns both 'relevant' and 'contemporary' while still manifesting their self-evident superiority. Thus - I paraphrase only slightly - 'Even as we all obsess about Paris Hilton, the people of Darfur continue to die.' A pundit like (say) Bob Herbert would be utterly lost if he could not pull off such an apparently pleasing and brilliant 'irony. — Christopher Hitchens

If we don't learn from each others experience, we are forced to listen to people who have economic reasons to withhold critical information from us all. The other option is to wait for the government to tell us what their financial supporters want us to know. — Richard Diaz

Neuroticism, or the tendency to be anxious, stressed, critical, and moody, is far more predictive of relationship unhappiness and dissolution than is personality dissimilarity. While personality similarity can help the years run smoothly, any two people will be different in some way or another. How a person responds to these differences can be more important than the differences themselves. To a person who runs high in Neuroticism, differences are seen in a negative light. Anxiety and judgments about these differences then lead to criticism and contempt, two leading relationship killers. — Meg Jay

The vast majority of people who speak to me say they have had brilliant care. When they are critical, their concern tends not to be directed at the medical side but the ancillary things that surround it, such as helping patients to eat meals, cleanliness, and making sure that when patients have a problem, they are listened to. — Andrew Lansley

The critical reaction to 'Bloom' has been similar to 'Brick.' There are people on board with it and people who are not. — Rian Johnson

Many families are managed on the basis of crises, moods, quick fixes, and instant gratification - not on sound principles. Symptoms surface whenever stress and pressure mount: people become cynical, critical, or silent or they start yelling and overreacting. Children who observe these kinds of behavior grow up thinking the only way to solve problems is flight or fight. — Stephen R. Covey

I worry that there are people who are put in positions of authority because they're good talkers, but they don't have good ideas. It's so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They're valuable traits, but we put too much of a premium on presenting and not enough on substance and critical thinking. — Susan Cain

Among the greatest tragedies is a person who believes that they aren't meant to win--by winning I mean find their purpose, passion and joy in life.
They believe that other people have better DNA or happiness genes or something, but that they themselves are missing a critical chromosome.
This is a lie and it is begging to be un-believed.
For the moment we know the truth about ourselves, we can take both responsibility for our own lives and inspired action to create exactly the life which is our birthright.
In other words, you were meant to win. You were created for joy. — Jacob Nordby

Do you ever wonder why a battered wife stays with her husband? Why people continue to spend money they don't have even though they know they are deeply in debt? Why some keep jamming food in their mouths when they're already overweight? Why do people stay in bad relationships? Why are some people still racist? Why do people still drink and drive? You'd think the response to all these things would be obvious and cause them to scream, "Duh, of course I need to change this." Why do we keep doing church the same way even when we know it's in critical decline? Why do paid church leaders spend so much time preparing for a 90-minute service for Christians who have heard it all before? Why do we still call our message the good news when it clearly seems to be bad news or no news to Sojourners? Why do we think Pharisees are only found in the Bible? Why is returning to a simpler form of ancient church so hard to grasp? — Hugh Halter

Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero. And sometimes you run into another problem. It is demonstrable that power structures tend to attract people who want power for the sake of power and that a significant proportion of such people are imbalanced - in a word, insane. — Frank Herbert

Afford each person the same respect, support, and fair treatment you would expect if your roles were reversed. Deal with people individually, not as objects who are part of a herd-that's the critical factor. — Bill Walsh

I know some really great actors who are pretty judgmental people, pretty critical people. But they're great actors. When they're acting, that's the craft. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

Think of humanity as a giant software program. Our bodies are the hardware and our ideas are the software. Sometimes our software gets a virus : Religious misinterpretations.
People who are infected with flawed religious ideas can infect others, especially their
children. The religions spread and mutate, until there are thousands of different religious ideas, most of them harmless, some healthy and helpful, but others quite deadly. When the deadly ones reach critical mass, they threaten the whole. — Scott Adams

Also, it's not the mathematical skill that's critical to winning, it's the discipline of being able to stick to the system. There are very few people who can withstand the losses emotionally and still stick with the system. Probably only one in five hundred people has the necessary discipline to be successful. — Blair Hull

When you develop software, the people who write the software, the developers are the key group but the testers also play an absolutely critical role. They're the ones who ah, write thousands and thousands of examples and make sure that it's going to work on all the different computers and printers and the different amounts of memory or networks that the software'11 be used in. That's a very hard job. — Bill Gates

Nothing has been as instructive in exploring the notion of authenticity as relearning the work of the great philosophers Aristotle and Plato. We are struck by their applicability to our work as we help companies and people develop their brands. Why do these early philosophers have so much to say that is helpful to modern marketers? We believe it is because they were focused on the fundamental issues of authenticity that we all face: Who are we? Why are we? How should we behave? Asking these questions encourages us to deepen our self-awareness. In particular, this issue of "who are we?" is critical. Knowing who we are is the key to elevating our capacities and performance. — Tom Hayes

And even being in the middle of it, at the LVMH group with Dior, there are certain parts of it that I'm just not really in, because it's not in me or my nature. The whole scene around it, the events, the photography ... It's never really been my thing. But I don't take a critical position on people who are very much about that either. — Raf Simons

I grew up in the midst of poverty but every black kid that I knew could read and write. We have to talk about the fact that we cannot educate for critical consciousness if we have a group of people who cannot access Fanon, Cabral, or Audre Lorde because they can't read or write. How did Malcolm X radicalize his consciousness? He did it through books. If you deprive working-class and poor black people of access to reading and writing, you are making them that much farther removed from being a class that can engage in revolutionary resistance. — Bell Hooks

I divide criticism into two categories - one coming from those who understand music, who are worthy of being critical because they are knowledgeable about what they are saying; and then there is another category of people who would criticise you anyway, whether your work is good or bad. — A.R. Rahman

A social epidemic, Mavens are data banks. They provide the message. Connectors are social glue: they spread it. But there is also a select group of people - Salesmen - with the skills to persuade us when we are unconvinced of what we are hearing, and they are as critical to the tipping of word-of-mouth epidemics as the other two groups. Who — Malcolm Gladwell

We must have systems of checks and balances to make sure that those people who are making critical decisions for our country are held accountable, and nowhere is that more important than in the area of national security. — Chris Van Hollen

We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in the derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves. As author and mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested, "'What will they think of me?' must be put aside for bliss." We begin to feel this bliss when messages previously experienced as critical or blaming begin to be seen for the gifts they are: opportunities to give to people who are in pain. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

I think that any woman who had a conversation with me and had an opportunity to truly understand my life story wouldn't view it through a critical lens. There are people, of course, in the world of politics, who look for things to be critical about. But those people are already against you. — Wendy Davis

We have to start with the little babies who are born now, socialize them in freedom and critical thinking. We don't have to throw away their faith. People confuse the two, thinking if you are enlightened that means apostasy. It doesn't. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

You have to have a thick enough skin to cope with the criticism. I'm very self-critical and I have a lot of friends that I trust who are film directors and writers and people in my profession. — George Lucas

The conventional explanation for Jewish success, of course, is that Jews come from a literate, intellectual culture. They are famously "the people of the book." There is surely something to that. But it wasn't just the children of rabbis who went to law school. It was the children of garment workers. And their critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn't the intellectual rigor you get from studying the Talmud. It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching your father sell aprons on Hester Street. — Malcolm Gladwell

Growing economies are critical; we will never be able to end poverty unless economies are growing. We also need to find ways of growing economies so that the growth creates good jobs, especially for young people, especially for women, especially for the poorest who have been excluded from the economic system. — Jim Yong Kim

Arrogant or critical people are often people with low self-esteem who are afraid of taking risks. That's because, if you learn something new, you are then required to make mistakes in order to fully understand what you have learned. — Robert Kiyosaki

Many people are afraid to teach because they don't think they know enough. I hope I've put the lie to that. But also consider this: work in brain science has shown that nothing is better for maintaining your memory and critical thinking skills as you age than continuous learning. And remember, there's no better way to learn than to teach. This is not to mention the threat of obsolescence. As the pace of technological change has quickened, the pace of change throughout all of work life has been cranked up, and those who don't constantly work out on the cognitive treadmill find themselves lapped by the new young things right out of college. Finally, — Richie Etwaru

Insecurity and jealously can be a cause of someone having a critical spirit towards others. Focusing on men and not the Lord can cause one to be critical of every flaw of others. Satan is also the "the accuser of the brethren" (Revelation 12:10) and sadly can work through or use believers to accomplish his work of tearing down. Those who are habitual fault-finders, constant critics of people and situations usually are sick in the body and full of tension and stress. The Scriptural solution to any of us even struggling in this area is clear: "stop passing judgment on one another" and that we can start to love others in the body of Christ, uplifiting them, edifying them and building them up. — Greg Gordon

If people who cherish freedom, who know the importance of mutual respect and are aware of the imperative necessity to establish a constructive and critical debate, if these people are not ready to speak out, to be more committed and visible, then we can expect sad, painful tomorrows. The choice is ours. — Tariq Ramadan

Stinging words! You re critical of everyone," observes Iris. "Oh, not everyone," says Clara in an offhand manner. "Only everybody who's alive as well as most people who are dead. I feel quite neutral about anybody not yet born. — Gregory Maguire

Most people would not attempt to climb Mount Everest on their own. Typically, climbers will look toward Sherpas, who have served as guides for generations in Nepal, high in the Himalayas. They help climbers prepare and show them along the routes that will get them to the top. They are seasoned and know every details of the trails. But your guide is even more essentail if you are to make it back down safely. Coming down the mountain can be the most perilous part. You're tired. Your defenses are down. You may very well fall at the critical moment. You need that guide. As you approach retirement, you are moving to a different phase of life. You are descending the mountain. — Christopher Abts

A good sense of humour is the sign of a healthy perspective, which is why people who are uncomfortable around humour are either pompous (inflated) or neurotic (oversensitive). Pompous people mistrust humour because at some level they know their self-importance cannot survive very long in such an atmosphere, so they criticise it as "negative" or "subversive." Neurotics, sensing that humour is always ultimately critical, view it as therefore unkind and destructive, a reductio ad absurdum which leads to political correctness. Not that laughter can't be unkind and destructive. Like most manifestations of human behaviour it ranges from the loving to the hateful. The latter produces nasty racial jokes and savage teasing; the former, warm and affectionate banter, and the kind of inclusive humour that says, "Isn't the human condition absurd, but we're all in the same boat. — John Cleese

Oh, sorry, am I being difficult?" Rich asked. "I'm not good with people. Sometimes I'm difficult. I wish people would just tell me. Anyway, the Taiyang Shen is critical. In fact, my idea won't work without it. But a Mars probe? Pfft. C'mon." "All right," Venkat said. "What's your idea?" Rich snatched a paper from the desk. "Here it is!" He handed it to Venkat with a childlike smile. Venkat took the summary and skimmed it. The more he read, the wider his eyes got. "Are you sure about this?" "Absolutely!" Rich beamed. "Have you told anyone else?" "Who would I tell?" "I don't know," Venkat said. "Friends?" "I don't have any of those." "Okay, keep it under your hat." "I don't wear a hat." "It's just an expression." "Really?" Rich said. "It's a stupid expression." "Rich, you're being difficult." "Ah. Thanks. — Andy Weir

Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash. — Raymond Chandler

If there are witnesses the government interviewed who suggest other people were involved or that Tim McVeigh was not involved, those are critical matters that would have to be investigated. — Richard Burr

I'm not critical of the people who do psychotherapy. The therapists in the trenches have to face an awful lot of the social, political, and economic failures of capitalism. They have to take care of all the rejects and failures. They are sincere and work hard with very little credit, and the HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are trying to wipe them out. So certainly I am not attacking them. I am attacking the theories of psychotherapy. — James Hillman

Folks who thrive in God's grace give grace easily, but the self-critical person becomes others-critical. We "love" people the way we "love" ourselves, and if we are not good enough, then no one is. We keep ourselves brutally on the hook, plus our husbands, our kids, our friends, our churches, our leaders, anyone "other." When we impose unrealistic expectations on ourselves, it's natural to force them on everyone else. If we're going to fail, at least we can expect others to fail; and misery loves company, right? — Jen Hatmaker

There will always be some who dilute the gospel to attract a crowd, but not everyone who wants to be contemporary does that. You can tell those who do because they leave out critical parts of the message, such as the uniqueness of Christ, that he's the only way, the fact that we are saved by grace through faith, or the reality of heaven and hell. Those who compromise on nonnegotiables think they're being relevant, but they become irrelevant because they have nothing to offer. Their message becomes increasingly weak and void of the power to transform people's lives. — Leon Fontaine

The combination of rumination and negative mood is toxic. Research shows that people who ruminate while sad or distraught are likely to feel besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased. — Sonja Lyubomirsky

There are many things that people do happily that I can't imagine why they would do it ... But I have to say that even though I am critical or judgmental of society at large, I'm not critical of people individually. We are who we are. — Ian MacKaye

A number of countries, including some who have loudly criticized the NSA, privately acknowledge that America has special responsibilities as the world's only superpower, that our intelligence capabilities are critical to meeting these responsibilities, and that they themselves have relied on the information we obtain to protect their own people. — Barack Obama

It's true that people do assume that people who are critical are smarter than people who are uncritical. — Gretchen Rubin

Cell phones, computers, and internet have made it so that we can interact with anyone around the world at any moment, but the quality of our relationships around us have become less transparent. We no longer see our neighbors as neighbors, or people as people. We have been taught to look through our eyes and not our hearts. It is critical that humanity strengthens the relationships between people and learns to help each other. We were all born on this planet with no idea of who we are, and are forced to develop based on our surroundings to form a sense of identity, but deep down we are all the same. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Journalism is a voyeuristic vocation that attracts to its employment many people who are often naturally shy and insatiably curious, and each day they are assigned to view the world with a critical eye and a detached sense of intimacy. — Gay Talese

I have absolute respect for Israel and people in Israel who are critical of their own country. — Antonio Munoz Molina

It's critical - that the people that are benefiting today from Medicare and Social Security that they not see benefit reductions. It's awfully hard to tell someone who might be 82, that they've gotta go back to work, because their benefits are gonna be chopped. That's not gonna happen. — Fred Upton

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you. — Federico Mayor Zaragoza

When you look around at the six people that you spend the most time with, that's who you are. I think that in making those decisions in who you are going to be married to, who your friends are going to be, those are really huge, critical, life decisions. Who gets to talk to you everyday, is almost like the food that you eat. It is a very huge critical situation to choose who the people are that you are spending your life with, spending your time with and who you are choosing to give your love and everything to. — Will Smith

If you're not critical about your history, that can be a problem because there are religious leaders, politicians and all kinds of powerful people who can take advantage of a population that isn't really thinking. — Jose Gonzalez

I'm too obsessed that the people who say critical things about me are right, even though I'm getting to do something I love. — Sam Raimi

Now there are many, many people in the world, but relatively few with whom we interact, and even fewer who cause us problems. So when you come across such a chance for practicing patience and tolerance, you should treat it with gratitude. It is rare. Just as having unexpectedly found a treasure in your own house, you should be happy and grateful toward your enemy for providing you that precious opportunity. Because if you are ever to be successful in your practice of patience and tolerance, which are critical factors in counteracting negative emotions, it is due to your own efforts and also the opportunity provided by your enemy. — Dalai Lama XIV

Against the urgency of people dying in the streets, what in God's name is the point of cultural studies?...At that point, I think anybody who is into cultural studies seriously as an intellectual practice, must feel, on their pulse, its ephemerality, its insubstantiality, how little it registers, how little we've been able to change anything or get anybody to do anything. If you don't feel that as one tension in the work that you are doing, theory has let you off the hook. — Stuart Hall

And when had a critical eye ever helped me, really? Nobody likes the girl who points out all the inherent sexism on The Bachelor. But people are charmed byt the girl kvelling about nail art, boba tea, and the homeopathic benefits of ayahuasca. — Mindy Kaling

The people on this planet who end up doing nothing are those who never realize they can't do everything. — Kevin DeYoung

The most successful people in life are the ones who settle their critical issues early and manage them daily. — John C. Maxwell

There is no position so critical, no office so important, that the occasional, and even the more than occasional, utter incompetent will not wind up filling it. Heart surgeons, popes, presidents, it makes no difference. Look around and you will see an existence replete with people who are betraying, in a most egregious manner, the powers and responsibilities that have been entrusted to them. — Daniel Polansky

Zombies have got to do a lot of hanging around together
weaklings, liars, cheaters. Everybody respects them these days, everybody thinks that if they don't respect them it means they're against civil liberties or something, but I can only sympathize with them a little, but only a little; I can't respect them, they bore me
their everlasting bawling about their tricky little sadnesses and deprivations of childhood bore me. You've introduced me to some of the people you know. I don't dislike any of them, but I really can't pretend I believe in any of them, or that they don't bore me. And in being critical of them of course I'm being critical of you, too, at least for having them as friends. There are other people around, too, you know, not just the ones who start by giving up, and then just hang around to see what giving up leads to. It leads to being a zombie of one sort or another. — William, Saroyan

When I want to explain why empowering girls and women is critical to fighting poverty, I often tell a person's story. It's easier to relate to a personal story than to global data telling us that the majority of the billion people who live on less than $2 per day are women and girls. We are often told to never treat a person like a statistic. — Helene D. Gayle

I am often talking about the ideas collected in Normal Life in contexts that are not academic, or that are full of people who are not primarily engaging as theorists or theory-readers. Being able to make ideas visual, especially critical ideas about movements that can be difficult to hear because of attachments we have to certain national narratives, or because of ways that we see ourselves, is especially useful. — Dean Spade

The war industry people are very together; they know exactly what they want; they don't even have to talk to each other. The peace industry people are just intellectuals who are very critical of each other ... Unless the peace industry is powerful, we're always going to have war. It is as simple as that. — Yoko Ono

Those who are critical of Alliance are the same people who have done nothing for 30 years. — Eliot Spitzer

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people's children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it. — Erma Bombeck

So most skeptics who criticize us are really just misinformed and kind of ignorant. They're just assuming something about us. We're quite critical ourselves, but we're here to help people. — Ryan Buell

The psychology of sanction.' 'If you're right, then why does anyone protest against torture? Why don't we all just go, "Oh well, we've seen how well it works in the movies, let's just go along with it"?' Carol leaned on her fists on the edge of his bed as she spoke, her tumbled blonde hair falling into her eyes. 'Carol, you might not have noticed, but there's a significant number of people out there who do say just that. Look at the opposition in the US when the Senate decided to outlaw torture just the other year. People believe in its efficacy precisely because they've seen it in the movies. And some of those believers are in positions of power. The reason we don't all fall for it is that we're not all equally credulous. Some of us are much more critical of what we see and read than others. But you can fool some of the people all of the time. And when spooks and cops go bad, that's what they rely on.' She — Val McDermid