Quotes about Self-criticism

Sometimes on Wednesday I'll read something that I wrote on Tuesday and I'll think, "This is crap. I hate it and I hate myself." Then I'll re-read the identical passage on Thursday. To my astonishment, it has become brilliant overnight. Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance. Keep working.

Preoccupation with self is always a major component of unhealthy guilt and recrimination.

If a man has nobody to punish him when he feels he deserves it, he starts punishing himself. It is this inward-turned hostility which causes the depression [...]

You want the praise of people who kick themselves every 15 minutes. The praise of people who despise themselves?

I'm my best and harshest critic. I know what's good and what isn't.

I know I have my faults and shortcomings, but the blow them all out of proportion!

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people.

there's nothing kills a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

It's a tough thing-you get in a situation where you feel you have to be perfect all the time and it sucks.

She generally gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it), and sometimes she scolded herself so severely as to bring tears into her eyes;

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.

I love readings and my readers, but the din of voices of the audience gives me stage fright, and the din of voices inside whisper that I am a fraud, and that the jig is up. Surely someone will rise up from the audience and say out loud that not only am I not funny and helpful, but I'm annoying, and a phony.