Biggest Critic Quotes

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I am my own biggest critic. Before anyone else has criticized me, I have already criticized myself. But for the rest of my life, I am going to be with me and I don't want to spend my life with someone who is always critical. So I am going to stop being my own critic. It's high time that I accept all the great things about me.
C. JoyBell C.
Toni's Talk: When you invest in yourself, you have instant credibility with your biggest critic...you! As soon as you let doubt creep in---you lose that investment. Make a daily commitment to assess your worth with positive affirmations and watch your investment grow.
C. Toni Graham
I'm the biggest critic of my own work, but sometimes you nail a chapter so good that you have to take a step back and admire that bitch.
R.D. Ronald
The older you get, the more you understand how your conscience works. The biggest and only critic lives in your perception of people's perception of you rather than people's perception of you.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (...) these three skills —self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most— are the foundation for self-control.
Kelly McGonigal (The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It)
When you invest in yourself, you have instant credibility with your biggest critic— YOU!  As soon as you allow doubt to creep in, you will lose. 
C. Toni Graham (Crossroads and the Dominion of Four (Crossroads, #2))
Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Timothy Snyder
10 Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century)
I realize that sometimes we are our biggest critic, and that the person we have the hardest time gaining approval from is usually ourselves.
Lindy Zart (Unlit Star (Unlit Star #1))
No sooner do I conquer a bad habit than I become the biggest critic of anyone who still does what I just stopped doing.
Judah Smith (Jesus Is: Find a New Way to Be Human)
To go after what you want in life, you have to silence the critics, starting with the biggest one: you.
Regina Brett (God Is Always Hiring: 50 Lessons for Finding Fulfilling Work)
They reached the carriage house. When she turned the knob, he got all critical again. “Why isn’t this door locked?” “It’s Parrish. There’s not much point.” “We have crime here, just as any other place does. Keep this door locked from now on.” “Like that’s going to stop you. All you’d have to do is give it one good kick, and – “ “Not from me, you ninny!” “I hate to be the one to break the bad news, but if they find my body, you’re the one with the biggest grudge.” “It’s impossible to hold a rational conversation with you.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Ain't She Sweet?)
How can even the idea of rebellion against corporate culture stay meaningful when Chrysler Inc. advertises trucks by invoking “The Dodge Rebellion”? How is one to be bona fide iconoclast when Burger King sells onion rings with “Sometimes You Gotta Break the Rules”? How can an Image-Fiction writer hope to make people more critical of televisual culture by parodying television as a self-serving commercial enterprise when Pepsi and Subaru and FedEx parodies of self-serving commercials are already doing big business? It’s almost a history lesson: I’m starting to see just why turn-of-the-century Americans’ biggest fear was of anarchist and anarchy. For if anarchy actually wins, if rulelessness become the rule, then protest and change become not just impossible but incoherent. It’d be like casting a ballot for Stalin: you are voting for an end to all voting.
David Foster Wallace (A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments)
Be patient and loving with yourself. You weren't meant to be your biggest critic, but your biggest fan.
Emily Kinney
So whenever that brittle voice of dissatisfaction emerges within me, I can say "Ah, my ego! There you are, old friend!" It's the same thing when I'm being criticized and I notice myself reaching with outrage, heartache, or defensiveness. It's just my ego, flaring up and testing its power. In such circumstances, I have learned to watch my heated emotions carefully, but I try not to take them too seriously, because I know that it's merely my ego that has been wounded--never my soul It is merely my ego that wants revenge, or to win the biggest prize. It is merely my ego that wants to start a Twitter war against a hater, or to sulk at an insult or to quit in righteous indignation because I didn't get the outcome I wanted. "At such times, I can always steady my life one more by returning to my soul. I ask it, "And what is it that you want, dear one?" "The answer is always the same: "More wonder, please." "As long as I'm still moving in that direction---toward wonder--then I know I will always be fine in my soul, which is where it counts. And since creativity is still the most effective way for me to access wonder, I choose it.
Elizabeth Gilbert (Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear)
EQ is so critical to success that it accounts for 58 percent of performance in all types of jobs. It’s the single biggest predictor of performance in the workplace and the strongest driver of leadership and personal excellence.
Travis Bradberry (Emotional Intelligence 2.0)
Your biggest critic and hater is likely yourself. Give yourself a hug.
Richie Norton
The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson. I still give The One Minute Manager to every person I promote. It’s an amazing resource, in particular on how to give feedback. My biggest takeaways were: Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion.
Will Guidara (Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect)
One of the Christian's biggest fears is appearing 'too Christian'. God forbid, because that's often characterized as god-awful! We want to be one, but without being 'one of them'.
Criss Jami (Killosophy)
The biggest prison in the universe is caring about what other people think of you.
Matshona Dhliwayo
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.” 골드워시, 도리도리, 바오메이, 블루위저드, 섹스드롭, 엑스터시판매, 요힘빈,
랏슈러쉬파퍼파는곳+환각제파퍼판매△★카톡%3Akodak8★텔레그램%3AKomen68★+파퍼+팝니다+파퍼삽니다+파퍼판매
If motion doesn’t lead to results, why do we do it? Sometimes we do it because we actually need to plan or learn more. But more often than not, we do it because motion allows us to feel like we’re making progress without running the risk of failure. Most of us are experts at avoiding criticism. It doesn’t feel good to fail or to be judged publicly, so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen. And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.” 골드워시, 도리도리, 바오메이, 블루위저드, 섹스드롭, 엑스터시판매, 요힘빈,
여성최음제구매방법 최음제파는곳,ヒ△★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★△여성최음제 종류,↘ ♣강력최음제파는곳
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.” 골드워시, 도리도리, 바오메이, 블루위저드, 섹스드롭, 엑스터시판매, 요힘빈,
정품여성최음제구매방법 최음제파는곳,ヒ△★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★△여성최음제 종류,↘ ♣강력최음제파는곳
It doesn't take long to figure out that in the Christian subculture, the biggest criticism to throw at someone is to question their integrity as a believer.
Jennifer Knapp
The proponents of hate-crime laws are liberals, and yet they are the ones who are the biggest critics of mass incarceration,” observes James B. Jacobs, director of New York University’s Center for Research in Crime and Justice, and an expert on hate-crime laws. “So there are ironies piled on ironies. The remedy here is imprisonment, and prisons are the ultimate incubators of antisocial attitudes.
Dashka Slater (The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives)
the biggest bubble that I participate in is Conservative Facebook. It's a world where whatever Trump says is gospel, any criticism is an obvious lie and all other perspectives are Marxist. All absolute positions with no room for discussion with memes used as a foundation of fact (9/11/2020 on Twitter)
Mark Cuban
To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny: The Book to Help You Understand Why Democracy Is Failing In 2025)
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 ★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★ 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.” 골드워시, 도리도리, 바오메이, 블루위저드, 섹스드롭, 엑스터시판매, 요힘빈,
정품엑스터시판매합니다 "코리아탑" 엑스터시구입방법,△★카톡:kodak8★텔레그램:Komen68★△엑스터시정품판매,엑스터시판매,정품몰리구입방법,
Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Timothy Snyder
Most of us are experts at avoiding criticism. It doesn’t feel good to fail or to be judged publicly, so we tend to avoid situations where that might happen. And that’s the biggest reason why you slip into motion rather than taking action: you want to delay failure.
James Clear (Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones)
One of our biggest worries is that we might be becoming more like America. The US Health System (if that is not an oxymoron) rightly frightens the life out of us – we, at least, have some semblance of a national health system. Medicare may not be perfect, but God save us from the US system! 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 텔 - KrTop "코리아탑" 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 There were parts of this book that gave me slight cause for hope – it did seem like he might try to do something about education, and might even help people retrain to get better jobs. His criticisms of corporate America’s disproportionate influence on politics due to the money it was able to pour in was reassuring, if only because he noticed it might be a problem.
텔 - KrTop "코리아탑"떨,떨판매,떨판매매,떨팝니다,엑스터시구입방법,엑스터시정품판매,엑스터시판매,정품몰리구입방법,
I had a big chance to show the press and my critics and enemies that I was a force to be reckoned with. Not a flash in the pans success with no staying power. That’s heavy incentive.
Donald J. Trump (Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success)
The biggest center of attention needs to be the Secretaries of State. They're the ones that manage the elections. At the end of the day, they're the ones that need to be held accountable.
James Scott, co-founder, Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology
Regardless of who first conveyed to you that you are not good enough, in the present moment, you are now your biggest critic. You have taken the negative messages from others and internalized them, making them part of yourself. At this point in your life, you are the one who is repeatedly reinforcing that belief on a daily basis, and re-conditioning yourself to feel that you are not enough.
Aziz Gazipura (The Solution To Social Anxiety: Break Free From The Shyness That Holds You Back)
I don’t remember when I stopped noticing—stopped noticing every mirror, every window, every scale, every fast-food restaurant, every diet ad, every horrifying model. And I don’t remember when I stopped counting, or when I stopped caring what size my pants were, or when I started ordering what I wanted to eat and not what seemed “safe,” or when I could sit comfortably reading a book in my kitchen without noticing I was in my kitchen until I got hungry—or when I started just eating when I got hungry, instead of questioning it, obsessing about it, dithering and freaking out, as I’d done for nearly my whole life. I don’t remember exactly when recovery took hold, and went from being something I both fought and wanted, to being simply a way of life. A way of life that is, let me tell you, infinitely more peaceful, infinitely happier, and infinitely more free than life with an eating disorder. And I wouldn’t give up this life of freedom for the world. What I know is this: I chose recovery. It was a conscious decision, and not an easy one. That’s the common denominator among people I know who have recovered: they chose recovery, and they worked like hell for it, and they didn’t give up. Recovery isn’t easy, at first. It takes time. It takes more work, sometimes, than you think you’re willing to do. But it is worth every hard day, every tear, every terrified moment. It’s worth it, because the trade-off is this: you let go of your eating disorder, and you get back your life. There are a couple of things I had to keep in mind in early recovery. One was that I was going to recover, even though I didn’t feel “ready.” I realized I was never going to feel ready—I was just going to jump in and do it, ready or not, and I am deeply glad that I did. Another was that symptoms were not an option. Symptoms, as critically necessary and automatic as they feel, are ultimately a choice. You can choose to let the fallacy that you must use symptoms kill you, or you can choose not to use symptoms. Easier said than done? Of course. But it can be done. I had to keep at the forefront of my mind the reasons I wanted to recover so badly, and the biggest one was this: I couldn’t believe in what I was doing anymore. I couldn’t justify committing my life to self-destruction, to appearance, to size, to weight, to food, to obsession, to self-harm. And that was what I had been doing for so long—dedicating all my strength, passion, energy, and intelligence to the pursuit of a warped and vanishing ideal. I just couldn’t believe in it anymore. As scared as I was to recover, to recover fully, to let go of every last symptom, to rid myself of the familiar and comforting compulsions, I wanted to know who I was without the demon of my eating disorder inhabiting my body and mind. And it turned out that I was all right. It turned out it was all right with me to be human, to have hungers, to have needs, to take space. It turned out that I had a self, a voice, a whole range of values and beliefs and passions and goals beyond what I had allowed myself to see when I was sick. There was a person in there, under the thick ice of the illness, a person I found I could respect. Recovery takes time, patience, enormous effort, and strength. We all have those things. It’s a matter of choosing to use them to save our own lives—to survive—but beyond that, to thrive. If you are still teetering on the brink of illness, I invite you to step firmly onto the solid ground of health. Walk back toward the world. Gather strength as you go. Listen to your own inner voice, not the voice of the eating disorder—as you recover, your voice will get clearer and louder, and eventually the voice of the eating disorder will recede. Give it time. Don’t give up. Love yourself absolutely. Take back your life. The value of freedom cannot be overestimated. It’s there for the taking. Find your way toward it, and set yourself free.
Marya Hornbacher
We consume our art like moths. We gather, momentarily, around wherever the biggest, brightest light seems to be. So these days, the most successful art is the art that can elicit the quickest visceral reaction from the largest group of people.
Michael Gungor (The Crowd, The Critic And The Muse: A Book For Creators)
Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Sam Harris (Making Sense: Conversations on Consciousness, Morality, and the Future of Humanity)
The more nationalism and isolationism pervade the global polity, the greater the chance that global governance loses its relevance and becomes ineffective. Sadly, we are now at this critical juncture. Put bluntly, we live in a world in which nobody is really in charge. COVID-19 has reminded us that the biggest problems we face are global in nature. Whether it’s pandemics, climate change, terrorism or international trade, all are global issues that we can only address, and whose risks can only be mitigated, in a collective fashion.
Klaus Schwab (COVID-19: The Great Reset)
Shakespeare’s first critic was a woman. In 1664 Margaret Cavendish, the eccentric Duchess of Newcastle sometimes known as “Mad Madge,” wrote the first critical prose essay on Shakespeare, marveling at his ability to dissolve entirely into his characters—to embody them, even the women.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
Habitualization,” a Russian army-commissar-turned-literary-critic named Viktor Shklovsky wrote in 1917, “devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war.” What he argued is that, over time, we stop perceiving familiar things—words, friends, apartments—as they truly are.
Anthony Doerr (Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World)
Although the breakthrough of using fire at all would have been the biggest culinary leap, the subsequent discovery of better ways to prepare the food would have led to continual increases in digestive efficiency, leaving more energy for brain growth. The improvements would have been especially important for brain growth after birth, since easily digested weaning foods would have been critical contributors to a child’s energy supply. Advances in food preparation may thus have contributed to the extraordinary continuing rise in brain size through two million years of human evolution—a
Richard W. Wrangham (Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human)
Do not check your email at the start of your day if you can help it. This is one of the biggest killers of critical morning energy and momentum. Email is a petition for your time; it’s not a demand that you must respond to immediately. Rarely are there mission-critical obligations to address between 6 and 8 a.m.,
Chase Jarvis (Creative Calling: Establish a Daily Practice, Infuse Your World with Meaning, and Succeed in Work + Life)
The biggest threat facing minority New Yorkers now is not “over-policing,” and certainly not brutal policing. The NYPD has one of the lowest rates of officer shootings and killings in the country; it is recognized internationally for its professionalism and training standards. Deaths such as Eric Garner’s are an aberration, which the department does everything it can to avoid. The biggest threat facing minority New Yorkers today is de-policing. After years of ungrounded criticism from the press and activists, after highly publicized litigation and the passage of ill-considered laws—such as the one making officers financially liable for alleged “racial profiling”—NYPD officers have radically scaled back their discretionary activity. Pedestrian stops have dropped 80 percent citywide and almost 100 percent in some areas. The department is grappling with how to induce officers to use their lawful authority again to stop crime before it happens. Garner’s death was a heartbreaking tragedy, but the unjustified backlash against misdemeanor enforcement is likely to result in more tragedy for New Yorkers.
Heather Mac Donald (The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe)
Shakespeare’s First Folio. Below the title sits the famous portrait of Shakespeare known as the Droeshout portrait, after its engraver, Martin Droeshout. It is a famously awful portrait. Critics over the years have complained that the head is huge—“ much too big for the body.” The skull is of “horrible hydrocephalus development.” The mouth is too small. The ear is malformed. The hair is lopsided, like a bad wig.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
You always run the risk, if you talk about social class, of being labeled Marxist,” the editor for social studies and history at one of the biggest publishing houses told me. This editor communicates the taboo, formally or subtly, to every writer she works with, and she implied that most other editors do, too. Publisher pressure derives in part from textbook adoption boards and committees in states and school districts. These are subject in turn to pressure from organized groups and individuals who appear before them. For years Educational Research Analysts, led until 2004 by Mel Gabler of Texas, kept capitalism safe from harm at school. Gabler’s stable of right-wing critics regarded even a hint of class analysis taboo. As one writer has put it, “Formulating issues in terms of class is unacceptable, perhaps even un-American.
James W. Loewen (Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong)
To those who are fighting depression or deal with anxiety. Here is something to think about... When you're fighting depression or have anxiety, it is like being scared and tired at the same time. The fear of failure, but no urge to be productive. It's wanting friends but hate socializing. You want to be alone, but not feel lonely. I want you to know that it's okay to stumble and fall. But you need to pick yourself up. Keep fighting the good fight and understand, you're not alone. You are carrying undeniable strength and will make it through. Ever ask yourself, are you exhausted by fighting with the thoughts in your head telling you, you won't be anything? Stop now and rehab! Communication is important and quit pushing others away that are willing to help you. And most importantly, start helping yourself. The biggest enemy is YOU. The biggest critic is YOURSELF.
Lorenzo Dozier (31 Days to Live)
The superego is the inner voice that is always putting us down for not living up to certain standards or rewarding our ego when we fulfill its demands . . . In fact, our superego is one of the most powerful agents of the personality: it is the "inner critic" that keeps us restricted to certain limited possibilities for ourselves. A large part of our initial transformational work centers on becoming more aware of the superego's "voice" in its many guises, both positive and negative. Its voices continually draw us back into identifying with our personality and acting out in self-defeating ways. When we are present, we are able to hear our superego voices without identifying with them; we are able to see the stances and positions of the superego as if they were characters in a play waiting in the wings, ready to jump in and control or attack us once again. When we are present, we hear the superego's voice but we do not give it any energy; the "all-powerful" voice then becomes just another aspect of the moment. However, we must also be on the lookout for the formation of new layers of superego that come from our psychological and spiritual work . . . In fact, one of the biggest dangers that we face in using the Enneagram is our superego's tendency to take over our work and start criticizing us, for example, for not moving up the Levels of Development or going in the Direction of Integration fast enough. The more we are present, however, the more we will recognize the irrelevance of these voices and successfully resist giving them energy. Eventually, they lose their power, and we can regain the space and quiet we need to be receptive to other, more life-giving forces within us. . . . If we feel anxious, depressed, lost, hopeless, fearful, wretched, or weak, we can be sure that our superego is on duty.
Don Richard Riso (The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types)
I’m going to build the biggest, most exclusive, most impressive S and M club in the world.” Søren said nothing at first. But he did look up to the ceiling and addressed a few words to it. “I suppose it wouldn’t have occurred to you to call him to join the Peace Corps, Lord,” Søren said, still gazing upward. “It had to be this?” “Who the hell are you talking to?” Kingsley demanded. “God. I was criticizing Him, so perhaps it’s for the best you interrupted. This is your grand calling in life? Your ultimate purpose? An S and M club?” “No,” Kingsley said, shaking his head. “Not an S and M club. The S and M club. And you’re going to help me, because it’s your fault I’m doing this.” “My fault?” Søren repeated, pointing at himself. “What leaps in logic did you take to lay this at my doorstep?” “You turned me kinky,” Kingsley said. Søren paused. “I want to argue with that assertion,” Søren said. “Oui?” “I said I wanted to argue with, not that I could.
Tiffany Reisz (The King (The Original Sinners, #6))
Ultimately, Zeiss created mirrors that were the smoothest objects ever made, with impurities that were almost imperceptibly small. If the mirrors in an EUV system were scaled to the size of Germany, the company said, their biggest irregularities would be a tenth of a millimeter. To direct EUV light with precision, they must be held perfectly still, requiring mechanics and sensors so exact that Zeiss boasted they could be used to aim a laser to hit a golf ball as far away as the moon.
Chris Miller (Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology)
Dear Self, We’ve been together since the beginning, and it’s thanks to you that I get to experience this life. You are closer to me than anyone, the only one who knows all that I’ve seen and done. The only one who has wwitnessed the world through my eyes. Who knows my deepest thoughts. My darkest fears. And my biggest dreams. We’ve been through a lot together—everything, in fact. The highest highs, and the lowest lows. You’re wwith me in my greatest moments and the ones I’d like to do over. And no matter what, you’ve always stuck by me. We are true partners—you are the only one about whom I can say wwithout a doubt that we wwill always be together. But in spite of your loyalty, and your caring, I’ve sometimes ignored you. I haven’t always listened when you told me what’s best for me or nudged me in the direction I should go. Instead of looking to you, I looked outwward, at what others were doing or saying. I distracted myself, so I couldn’t hear your voice. Instead of caring for you, I sometimes pushed too hard. And yet you’ve never abandoned me. You’ve always forgiven me. And you’ve always welcomed me home, wwithout judgment or criticism. For all of that, I thank you. Thank you for being gentle wwith me. For being strong. For always being wwilling to learn and grow wwith me through my mistakes, and my triumphs. And for over and over reflecting back to me the best of what is inside me. Thank you for showwing me what unconditional love truly means. Love, Me
Jay Shetty (8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It Go)
1. Trust. Without trust, communication breaks. More specifically: In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust. Consider the following: If I trust you completely, then I require no explanation or communication of your actions whatsoever, because I know that whatever you are doing is in my best interests. On the other hand, if I don’t trust you at all, then no amount of talking, explaining, or reasoning will have any effect on me, because I do not trust that you are telling me the truth. In a company context, this is a critical point. As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust. A CEO’s ability to build this trust over time is often the difference between companies that execute well and companies that are chaotic.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
As Redleaf sees it, the biggest problem is that individuals, the people who called the police on Debra Harrell, are trusting a system that is inherently biased (as most systems are in this country) against poor people and people of color. “There’s an assumption,” Redleaf told me, “among the general public, that it’s always better to make a call, even if you’re not sure what you’re seeing, because these people are professionals and if there was no real neglect, then the system will sort it out. Well, what we find is, they often get it wrong when they try to sort it out. The caseworkers at protection agencies aren’t licensed social workers. They often have minimal training. Police certainly aren’t experts on parenting or childcare. So basically we as a society have entrusted people who have no real training or serious knowledge about children and families with critical issues involving children. And they are making decisions about who gets to be a parent and who gets to raise their children and whether you’ll be labeled a child-abuser and unable to work.
Kim Brooks (Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear)
Antiracism calls us to live a life full of intentional acts, to come to new understandings and commit to new ways to live justly--not to repeat patterns of oppression. Two of the biggest obstacles to becoming antiracist are nostalgia and convenience. Nostalgia will prohibit us from seeing multiple perspectives, from thinking critically about the harm we are causing because we are centering our own comfort. Choosing to support racist authors, actors, and production companies because we have warm and fuzzy feelings about them is perpetuating racism.
Britt Hawthorne (Raising Antiracist Children: A Practical Parenting Guide)
The mind craves ease; it encourages the senses to recognize symbols, to gloss. It makes maps of our kitchen drawers and neighborhood streets; it fashions a sort of algebra out of life. And this is useful, even essential - X is the route to work, Y is the heft and feel of a nickel between your fingers. Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us. We'd pass out every time we saw - actually saw- a flower...'Habitualization,' a Russian army-commissar-turned-literary-critic named Viktor Shklovsky wrote in 1917, 'devours works, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war.
Anthony Doerr (Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World)
Being able to spot bullshit based on data is a critical skill. Decades ago, fancy language and superfluous detail might have served a bullshitter’s needs. Today, we are accustomed to receiving information in quantitative form, but hesitant to question that information once we receive it. Quantitative evidence generally seems to carry more weight than qualitative arguments. This weight is largely undeserved—only modest skill is required to construct specious quantitative arguments. But we defer to such arguments nonetheless. Consequently, numbers offer the biggest bang for the bullshitting buck.
Carl T. Bergstrom (Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World)
I'm loath to bring up the E word here, and I'm even more embarrassed to talk about "millennials" in this way because it is a terrible cliché you've heard a hundred million times, and it is not a cliché I actually believe to be true. However, in writing a book for people in their twenties in 2017, I'd be remiss to not discuss this biggest criticism against them. If you are a twenty-something working in the world of Gen Xers and baby boomers, many older people think you are entitled. This is probably not news to you. Your bosses meet over glasses of wine and get parent drunk about how lazy you are and how you don't respect authority and don't take initiative and also what a pain in the ass and entitled they feel you are. Boo-hoo. It doesn't matter that the assessment is a wild, sweeping stereotype, nor that it's not actually true or fair--after managing millennials successfully for years, I know it's not. There's not an entire generation of lazy jerks walking around, waiting to steal jobs and assignments they don't deserve. Also, people of all ages can and do act entitled, and this is just a tidy, cantankerous way to label a whole census block of folks and make them seem less threatening because some people (cough cough: olds) feel afraid that they might be aging out of their careers and not feel as relevant as before.
Jennifer Romolini (Weird in a World That's Not: A Career Guide for Misfits, F*ckups, and Failures)
Dr. Fauci’s business closures pulverized America’s middle class and engineered the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history. In 2020, workers lost $3.7 trillion while billionaires gained $3.9 trillion.46 Some 493 individuals became new billionaires,47 and an additional 8 million Americans dropped below the poverty line.48 The biggest winners were the robber barons—the very companies that were cheerleading Dr. Fauci’s lockdown and censoring his critics: Big Technology, Big Data, Big Telecom, Big Finance, Big Media behemoths (Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, Viacom, and Disney), and Silicon Valley Internet titans like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Jack Dorsey.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
I Am My Teacher (Sonnet 1234) I teach myself when I need to learn something, I correct myself when I make mistakes. No two year old shaped as 40, 50, 60 or 70, Has the maturity to provide me moral guidance. I taught myself electronics when I fell for it, I taught myself music in my youthful high. I taught myself languages in sheer obsession, I taught myself aeronautics when I wanted to fly. Critics mail, I should add "biggest ego" to my bio, I thank them all for an astounding revelation. If I actually behaved befitting my capacity, Half your legends will lose their reputation. You only see the tip of the ice-berg, Fullness of the Himalayas you'll never see. I chose to put many of my passions aside, One path, one mission - one answer to calamity.
Abhijit Naskar (Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect)
Does this look like something you would like?” can become “How does this look to you?” or “What about this works for you?” You can even ask, “What about this doesn’t work for you?” and you’ll probably trigger quite a bit of useful information from your counterpart. Even something as harsh as “Why did you do it?” can be calibrated to “What caused you to do it?” which takes away the emotion and makes the question less accusatory. You should use calibrated questions early and often, and there are a few that you will find that you will use in the beginning of nearly every negotiation. “What is the biggest challenge you face?” is one of those questions. It just gets the other side to teach you something about themselves, which is critical to any negotiation because all negotiation is an information-gathering process.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
In 1976, a doctoral student at the University of Nottingham in England demonstrated that randomizing letters in the middle of words had no effect on the ability of readers to understand sentences. In tihs setncene, for emalxpe, ervey scarbelmd wrod rmenias bcilasaly leibgle. Why? Because we are deeply accustomed to seeing letters arranged in certain patterns. Because the eye is in a rush, and the brain, eager to locate meaning, makes assumptions. This is true of phrases, too. An author writes “crack of dawn” or “sidelong glance” or “crystal clear” and the reader’s eye continues on, at ease with combinations of words it has encountered innumerable times before. But does the reader, or the writer, actually expend the energy to see what is cracking at dawn or what is clear about a crystal? The mind craves ease; it encourages the senses to recognize symbols, to gloss. It makes maps of our kitchen drawers and neighborhood streets; it fashions a sort of algebra out of life. And this is useful, even essential—X is the route to work, Y is the heft and feel of a nickel between your fingers. Without habit, the beauty of the world would overwhelm us. We’d pass out every time we saw—actually saw—a flower. Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs. We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous, too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eye sees something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did I really take the time to see the tree? I glimpse hazel hair, high cheekbones, a field of freckles, and I think Shauna. But did I take the time to see my wife? “Habitualization,” a Russian army-commissar-turned-literary-critic named Viktor Shklovsky wrote in 1917, “devours works, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war.” What he argued is that, over time, we stop perceiving familiar things—words, friends, apartments—as they truly are. To eat a banana for the thousandth time is nothing like eating a banana for the first time. To have sex with somebody for the thousandth time is nothing like having sex with that person for the first time. The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack. In the Tom Andrews Studio I open my journal and stare out at the trunk of the umbrella pine and do my best to fight off the atrophy that comes from seeing things too frequently. I try to shape a few sentences around this tiny corner of Rome; I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.
Anthony Doerr (Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World)
Stress physiologists have found a biological explanation for this phenomenon as well. The part of the brain most affected by early stress is the prefrontal cortex, which is critical in self-regulatory activities of all kinds, both emotional and cognitive. As a result, children who grow up in stressful environments generally find it harder to concentrate, harder to sit still, harder to rebound from disappointments, and harder to follow directions. And that has a direct effect on their performance in school. When you’re overwhelmed by uncontrollable impulses and distracted by negative feelings, it’s hard to learn the alphabet. And in fact, when kindergarten teachers are surveyed about their students, they say that the biggest problem they face is not children who don’t know their letters and numbers; it is kids who don’t know how to manage their tempers or calm themselves down after a provocation.
Paul Tough (How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character)
Revitalized and healthy, I started dreaming new dreams. I saw ways that I could make a significant contribution by sharing what I’ve learned. I decided to refocus my legal practice on counseling and helping start-up companies avoid liability and protect their intellectual property. To share some of what I know, I started a blog, IP Law for Startups, where I teach basic lessons on trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, and patents and give tips for avoiding the biggest blunders that destroy the value of intellectual assets. Few start-up companies, especially women-owned companies that rarely get venture capital funding, can afford the expensive hourly rates of a large law firm to the get the critical information they need. I feel deeply rewarded when I help a company create a strategy that protects the value of their company and supports their business dreams. Further, I had a dream to help young women see their career possibilities. In partnership with my sister, Julie Simmons, I created lookilulu.com, a website where women share their insights, career paths, and ways they have integrated motherhood with their professional pursuits. When my sister and I were growing up on a farm, we had a hard time seeing that women could have rewarding careers. With Lookilulu® we want to help young women see what we couldn’t see: that dreams are not linear—they take many twists and unexpected turns. As I’ve learned the hard way, dreams change and shift as life happens. I’ve learned the value of continuing to dream new dreams after other dreams are derailed. I’m sure I’ll have many more dreams in my future. I’ve learned to be open to new and unexpected opportunities. By way of postscript, Jill writes, “I didn’t grow up planning to be lawyer. As a girl growing up in a small rural town, I was afraid to dream. I loved science, but rather than pursuing medical school, I opted for low-paying laboratory jobs, planning to quit when I had children. But then I couldn’t have children. As I awakened to the possibility that dreaming was an inalienable right, even for me, I started law school when I was thirty; intellectual property combines my love of law and science.” As a young girl, Jill’s rightsizing involved mustering the courage to expand her dreams, to dream outside of her box. Once she had children, she again transformed her dreams. In many ways her dreams are bigger and aim to help more people than before the twists and turns in her life’s path.
Whitney Johnson (Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream)
But then, to its more severe leftist critics, some of them Jews, Israel is not the “democratic exception” it is said to be. The New Left sees it as a reactionary small country. Its de-tractors tell you how it abuses its Arab population and, to a lesser extent, Jewish immigrants from North Africa and the Orient. It is occasionally denounced by some Israelis as corrupt, “Levantine,” theocratic. Gossip traces the worst of the Israeli financial swindles to the most observant of Orthodox Jews. I am often told that the old Ashkenazi leaders were unimaginative, that the new Rabin group lacks stature, that Ben-Gurion was a terrible old guy but a true leader, that the younger generation is hostile to North African and Asian Jews. These North African and Oriental immigrants are blamed for bringing a baksheesh mentality to Israel; the intellectuals are blamed for letting the quality of life (a deplorable phrase) deteriorate—I had hoped that six thousand miles from home I would hear no more about the quality of life—and then there is the Palestinian question, the biggest and most persistent of Israel’s headaches: “We came here to build a just society. And what happened immediately?” I speak of this to Shahar. He says to me, “Where there is no paradox there is no life.
Saul Bellow (To Jerusalem and Back)
Dr. Fauci’s business closures pulverized America’s middle class and engineered the largest upward transfer of wealth in human history. In 2020, workers lost $3.7 trillion while billionaires gained $3.9 trillion.46 Some 493 individuals became new billionaires,47 and an additional 8 million Americans dropped below the poverty line.48 The biggest winners were the robber barons—the very companies that were cheerleading Dr. Fauci’s lockdown and censoring his critics: Big Technology, Big Data, Big Telecom, Big Finance, Big Media behemoths (Michael Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch, Viacom, and Disney), and Silicon Valley Internet titans like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Larry Ellison, and Jack Dorsey. The very Internet companies that snookered us all with the promise of democratizing communications made it impermissible for Americans to criticize their government or question the safety of pharmaceutical products; these companies propped up all official pronouncements while scrubbing all dissent. The same Tech/Data and Telecom robber barons, gorging themselves on the corpses of our obliterated middle class, rapidly transformed America’s once-proud democracy into a censorship and surveillance police state from which they profit at every turn.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
THEORY OF ALMOST EVERYTHING After the war, Einstein, the towering figure who had unlocked the cosmic relationship between matter and energy and discovered the secret of the stars, found himself lonely and isolated. Almost all recent progress in physics had been made in the quantum theory, not in the unified field theory. In fact, Einstein lamented that he was viewed as a relic by other physicists. His goal of finding a unified field theory was considered too difficult by most physicists, especially when the nuclear force remained a total mystery. Einstein commented, “I am generally regarded as a sort of petrified object, rendered blind and deaf by the years. I find this role not too distasteful, as it corresponds fairly well with my temperament.” In the past, there was a fundamental principle that guided Einstein’s work. In special relativity, his theory had to remain the same when interchanging X, Y, Z, and T. In general relativity, it was the equivalence principle, that gravity and acceleration could be equivalent. But in his quest for the theory of everything, Einstein failed to find a guiding principle. Even today, when I go through Einstein’s notebooks and calculations, I find plenty of ideas but no guiding principle. He himself realized that this would doom his ultimate quest. He once observed sadly, “I believe that in order to make real progress, one must again ferret out some general principle from nature.” He never found it. Einstein once bravely said that “God is subtle, but not malicious.” In his later years, he became frustrated and concluded, “I have second thoughts. Maybe God is malicious.” Although the quest for a unified field theory was ignored by most physicists, every now and then, someone would try their hand at creating one. Even Erwin Schrödinger tried. He modestly wrote to Einstein, “You are on a lion hunt, while I am speaking of rabbits.” Nevertheless, in 1947 Schrödinger held a press conference to announce his version of the unified field theory. Even Ireland’s prime minister, Éamon de Valera, showed up. Schrödinger said, “I believe I am right. I shall look an awful fool if I am wrong.” Einstein would later tell Schrödinger that he had also considered this theory and found it to be incorrect. In addition, his theory could not explain the nature of electrons and the atom. Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli caught the bug too, and proposed their version of a unified field theory. Pauli was the biggest cynic in physics and a critic of Einstein’s program. He was famous for saying, “What God has torn asunder, let no man put together”—that is, if God had torn apart the forces in the universe, then who were we to try to put them back together?
Michio Kaku (The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything)
You should use calibrated questions early and often, and there are a few that you will find that you will use in the beginning of nearly every negotiation. “What is the biggest challenge you face?” is one of those questions. It just gets the other side to teach you something about themselves, which is critical to any negotiation because all negotiation is an information-gathering process. Here are some other great standbys that I use in almost every negotiation, depending on the situation: ■​What about this is important to you? ■​How can I help to make this better for us? ■​How would you like me to proceed? ■​What is it that brought us into this situation? ■​How can we solve this problem? ■​What’s the objective? / What are we trying to accomplish here? ■​How am I supposed to do that? The implication of any well-designed calibrated question is that you want what the other guy wants but you need his intelligence to overcome the problem. This really appeals to very aggressive or egotistical counterparts. You’ve not only implicitly asked for help—triggering goodwill and less defensiveness—but you’ve engineered a situation in which your formerly recalcitrant counterpart is now using his mental and emotional resources to overcome your challenges. It is the first step in your counterpart internalizing your way—and the obstacles in it—as his own. And that guides the other party toward designing a solution. Your solution.
Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It)
Curing humanity of its madness is the biggest challenge there is. The only remedy is to subject everyone from the day they are born to an educational regime of reason, logic, clear and critical thinking, i.e. Logos thinking, and to teach them to see straight through emotional Mythos and understand it for exactly what it is: emotional lies to seduce, manipulate, exploit and control the gullible masses. The sensory Mythos of scientism is as dangerous as the emotional and mystical Mythos of mainstream religion. Only Logos – rationalism and idealism – can provide Ariadne’s golden thread to lead us out of the labyrinth of the lunatics where the Minotaur of Madness devours everyone ritually offered up to it. It’s time to slay the Minotaur and make humanity sane
Thomas Stark (Extra Scientiam Nulla Salus: How Science Undermines Reason (The Truth Series Book 8))
Roosevelt's policies generated intense pushback from critics who thought the federal government was straying dangerously far beyond its mandate. But what the president knew - and what those contending with the United States' contemporary difficulties would do well to remember - was that the biggest mistake one can make in a crisis is not to do too much. It is to not do enough.
Meg Jacobs
In a company context, this is a critical point. As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge. If the employees fundamentally trust the CEO, then communication will be vastly more efficient than if they don’t. Telling things as they are is a critical part of building this trust. A CEO’s ability to build this trust over time is often the difference between companies that execute well and companies that are chaotic.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
Doing a break-even analysis: The payoff from different retirement dates A break-even analysis compares what you get in your lifetime if you pick different dates to collect Social Security. It’s a way to estimate your total payoff from retiring at an earlier date (with reduced monthly payments) and retiring at a later date (with higher monthly payments). This approach gets some criticism, because it can lead to a costly decision if you end up living longer than expected. Factors such as your health and other financial resources also should be weighed in deciding when it makes the most sense to claim retirement benefits. But I also know that many people care — understandably! — how much Social Security they may get in a lifetime. In general, if you die before reaching the break-even age, and you started collecting benefits at the earlier date, you come out ahead. If you live beyond your break-even age but started benefits at the later date, you also come out ahead, because those bigger payments add up over time. Where you lose out is if you die before reaching the break-even age (and you started collecting larger benefits at the later date) or if you die after your break-even age (and you started smaller benefits at the earlier date). The break-even approach is a common tool recommended by financial planners, and it can provide perspective. But it’s just one consideration. The more you care about how your benefits add up over a lifetime, the greater weight you may give a break-even calculation. The more you care about ending up with the biggest monthly benefit, the greater weight you may give to delaying your claim for Social Security.
Jonathan Peterson (Social Security For Dummies)
I still give The One Minute Manager to every person I promote. It’s an amazing resource, in particular on how to give feedback. My biggest takeaways were: Criticize the behavior, not the person. Praise in public; criticize in private. Praise with emotion, criticize without emotion.
Will Guidara (Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect)
In 1709 a playwright named Nicholas Rowe sought more reliable information on Shakespeare to introduce a new edition of the plays. As Rowe explained, “knowledge of an Author may sometimes conduce to the better understanding his Book.” Rowe’s publisher placed advertisements in the London Gazette and the Daily Courant, requesting anyone with “serviceable” materials to come forward. No one seems to have done so, for Rowe’s introduction, “Some Account of the life &c. Of Mr. William Shakespeare,” is largely a critical appreciation of the plays dotted with a few biographical statements. Many of these statements proved to be either inaccurate or unverifiable, but they were repeated for the next 150 years, entrenching a Shakespearean mythos.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
Over the following decades, a few documents turned up—a loan, a real estate investment, the request for a grant of a coat of arms—but none shed any light on what critics were most eager to understand: Shakespeare’s literary career and development.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
In an 1840 lecture “On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History,” the influential critic Thomas Carlyle declared that it was “impiety” to meddle with Shakespeare.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
A few critics commented that the material had been “twisted by a master artificer into the cunning semblance of a biography” and that “it is all a record of external events… not the exhibition of a human soul.” But mostly Lee’s book was celebrated, becoming the new Shakespeare biography for the twentieth century.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
As the scholar Gary Taylor writes, the “whole subsequent history of Shakespearian criticism, scholarship, interpretation, and performance is a history of the retrieval, analysis, and synthesis of what seemed lost by 1659.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
In 1843 the publisher Charles Knight provided the nation with the first book-length biography of the national poet, William Shakspere: A Biography. (Nineteenth-century biographers tended to use “Shakspere,” consistent with the spelling on his baptismal and burial records.) The book was an extended Victorian fantasy—a “descriptive reverie,” as one critic at the time put it—freely fictionalizing Shakespeare’s life, blissfully untethered from scholarly citation or historical fact. Since Shakespeare could not be known through letters, journals, or other personal records, Knight found him in Stratford-upon-Avon—in the streets and village life, the surrounding fields and forests, and in the Birthplace itself. Stratford filled in the gaps—indeed, became Shakespeare’s biography. The Warwickshire countryside elucidated his love of nature; the half-timbered house on Henley Street, his idyllic childhood.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
Readers advancing through Knight’s reverie would encounter many more happy visions in Stratford: a romantic scene of Shakespeare’s betrothal to Anne Hathaway; a pious scene of his Christian devotion before his death. The biography was closer to hagiography, to the lives of the saints, than to any documented historical truth. Critics faulted Knight for building “hypothesis upon hypothesis” and expressed their wish that he would “confine his fancy within the bounds.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
wanting to create a monument to Shakespeare in the US capital. “The poet is one of our best sources, one of the wells from which we Americans draw our national thought, our faith, and our hope,” Emily Folger explained, drawing on a strain of American literary criticism that saw Shakespeare, paradoxically, as America’s poet. He had influenced the founding fathers, who saw in his villains and tyrants the dangers of monarchy and the need for institutional checks on power. Shakespeare’s history plays heralded the “inauguration of modern democracy,” Walt Whitman wrote, for they put “on record the first full exposé—and by far the most vivid one… of the political theory and results” of a feudal system “which America has come on earth to abnegate and replace.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
The editor of a 1793 edition of Shakespeare’s works simply omitted the sonnets because “the strongest act of Parliament that could be framed would fail to compel readers into their service.” Scholars continued wringing their hands well into the twentieth century. “The story Shakespeare recounts of his moral—or rather his immoral—predicament… must certainly, in the interests of the British Empire, be smothered up,” the critic L. P. Smith concluded in 1933.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
In my experience, the lack of solid requirements is the biggest source of confusion, disputes, and overruns in product development. Gaining agreement on the details of what we’re creating is critical to ensuring that everyone’s working toward a shared goal.
Alan Cohen (Prototype to Product: A Practical Guide for Getting to Market)
One of the biggest misconceptions of atheism is the desire of atheists not to declare themselves believers but only "critical thinkers".
Vladimir Živković (A Guide to the Psyche of Atheism, Religion and Philosophy and Their Impact on Contemporary Spirituality)
Pauli was the biggest cynic in physics and a critic of Einstein's program. He was famous for saying, "What God has torn asunder, let no man put together"--that is, if God had torn apart forces in the universe, then who were we to try to put them back together?
Michio Kaku, Pauli
Is Israel really the biggest, baddest wolf on the block? Heck no. Even if you put every single one of Israel’s mistakes under a microscope, they still wouldn’t come close to those of many other countries around the world. In Saudi Arabia, Chop Square is literally a place for weekly public decapitations. In Dubai, the working class are literal slaves. In China, disappearances are normal and Muslims are being tracked and put into camps. In Turkey, journalists and activists are imprisoned and killed. In Iran, LGBTQ+ people are executed. In Syria, the government uses chemical weapons against its own people. In Russia, there is arbitrary detention, and worse. In Myanmar, the army is massacring the Rohingya Muslim population. In Brunei, Sharia law was just enacted. In North Korea—no description needed. All over the world, millions of people are dying because of tyrannical leaders, civil wars, and unimaginable atrocities. But you don’t see passionate picket lines against Dubai or Turkey or even Russia. The one country that’s consistently singled out is… Israel. The UN has stated values of human dignity, equal rights, and economic and social advancement that are indeed fantastic, and they are the values upon which Israel was established and is operating. The sting is it that countries that certainly do not adhere to some or any of these values are often the ones who criticize Israel while keeping a straight face. “Look over there!” those leaders say, so the world will not look at their backyards and see their own gross human rights violations. All this led to a disproportionate number of UN resolutions against the only Jewish state and the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is an easy punching bag, but this obsession over one country only is being used to deflect time and energy away from any real discussion of human rights in the world’s actual murderous regimes. And Israelis aren’t the only ones who have noticed this disproportionate censorship. The United States uses its veto power to shut down almost every Security Council resolution against Israel, and it does this not because of “powerful lobbies” (sorry to burst your bubble). The reason the US shuts down most of these resolutions is because the US gets it. In a closed-door meeting of the Security Council in 2002, former US ambassador to the UN John Negroponte is said to have stated that the US will oppose every UN resolution against Israel that does not also include: condemnation of terrorism and incitement to terrorism, condemnation of various terrorist groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, and a demand for improvement of security for Israel as a condition for Israeli withdrawal from territories. If a resolution doesn’t include this basic and rational language, the US will veto it. And it did and it does, thank the good Lord, in what we know today as the Negroponte Doctrine.
Noa Tishby (Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth)
In 1589 the critic George Puttenham (who himself wrote anonymously) emphasized the prevalence of anonymity among persons of rank.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
Shortly after the registration of Venus and Adonis, the critic Gabriel Harvey boasted that he knew the identity of a masked author: “I could here dismaske such a rich mummer,” he wrote, “as would undoubtedly make this Pamphlet the vendiblest booke in London.” Harvey didn’t “dismask” the author, being “none of those, that utter all their learning at once,
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
• What do you think are my best qualities? • What do you think are my greatest weaknesses? • Do you believe I consistently tell the truth? • How well do you think I know myself? • What do you think is the biggest deception I have about myself? • Do you feel you can depend on me in an emergency or a crisis? • In what ways have I earned your respect? • Do you trust me? • What one thing do you think I could do to improve my life and my ability to relate to others? • Do you think I treat other people with honor and respect? • Do I have a good record of keeping my word and doing what I say I will do? • Do you believe I am open to constructive criticism and to making personal adjustments when others speak the truth lovingly to me?
Van Moody (The People Factor: How Building Great Relationships and Ending Bad Ones Unlocks Your God-Given Purpose)
According to Arsène Wenger (current manager of Arsenal football club), “the biggest difficulty you have in this job is not to motivate the players but to get them relaxed enough to express their talent
Aidan P. Moran (A Critical Introduction to Sport Psychology)
« your biggest enemy and critic is no one else but YOU.Before anyone else, you know what you are up to, and before anyone can, you pass judgments on your next move based on ‘what you think people will think of you’Look around you, no one’s judgments are louder than your own in your life. »
Renuka Gavrani (The Art of Being ALONE: Solitude Is My HOME, Loneliness Was My Cage)
As I unbutton his shirt and press my lips over his heart, I silently promise that I’ll never go to bed angry with him, that I’ll always be generous with my affection, that I’ll never stop defending him, even when he’s his own biggest critic.
Sophia Travers (One Billion Reasons (Kings Lane Billionaires, #1))
Huq, being the leader of the KPP, opened negotiations with the Congress to form a coalition. However, talks between the two parties soon broke down. The Congress insisted on giving immediate importance to the release of political prisoners while for the KPP, the settlement of agrarian debt was the primary concern. As negotiations between the KPP and the Congress broke down, the KPP saw no option but to form a coalition ministry with the League, with Huq as the Chief Minister. However, this turned out to be the biggest political blunder for Huq – the selection of personnel of the Ministry was not in his hands, and nine out of eleven members were from the zamindar class. This was deeply resented by other members of the KPP, who soon began to distance themselves from the new coalition party. Faced with severe criticism from both the KPP and the Congress for completely deviating from his electoral promises, Huq joined the Muslim League in October 1937. With this, the ministry practically became a League ministry.
Anwesha Roy (Making Peace, Making Riots: Communalism and Communal Violence, Bengal 1940–1947)
To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Timothy Snyder (author)
The biggest decision of a young person’s life, to present themselves as the opposite sex, needs time and thorough investigation of the root causes prompting the request for drastic measures of drugs and permanent surgery to remove healthy body parts.
Lisa Shultz (The Trans Train: A Parent's Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology)
L-Boogie, this your award too, ma. Thank you for everything. Always my muse and my motivation. My biggest cheerleader and critic, you a real one. You don’t ever have to wonder cause it’s always you for me.
BriAnn Danae (From The Hood With Love 3)
Finally, it’s not clear that government and the tech industry are competing for exactly the same people. The biggest bidding wars among the tech giants and startups is for technologists who work with advanced technologies like AI and machine learning. Outside of national security and defense (where such skills are very much in demand), government is rarely competing for this talent pool. The skills most needed in government are good product management and service design. The work is hard not because the tech is complicated but because the environment is. Arrogance can be an asset in startups; in government, humility is not only necessary but soon acquired if one doesn’t start out with it. While emotional intelligence matters in all jobs more than the Silicon Valley caricature allows for, it is critical in public-sector work, which is more about change and human responses to change than about technology. The same goes for ethics: a sense of responsibility to the common good and a willingness to think deeply about what harm might come from your actions are assets in any field, but if you’re not already considering these factors, working in government will bring them front and center. When entrepreneurs say that government will never do tech well because lower pay means it won’t get the best people, it’s worth asking what they mean by “best.
Jennifer Pahlka (Recoding America: Why Government Is Failing in the Digital Age and How We Can Do Better)
Maybe you can fool some people but you can’t fool everyone, especially the people closest to you. And when you look at yourselfin the mirror and face your biggest critic there’s no way you can fool yourself.
Michael Bernoff (Average Sucks: Why You don’t get what you want (And what to do about it) ǀ Small Motivational Tools for Big Improvements in Life)
Giving up is something that never entered my mind. Not for one second, and that’s the reason I think I confounded my critics. They were trying to skewer me, but it had the opposite effect. It just made me want to make a comeback, and in a big way. I knew I could prove them wrong by being stubborn, being tenacious and not giving in or giving up. I’m not advising you to ask for the same pressure, but know that if you’re met with some set backs, refusing to give up is probably your best strategy.
Donald J. Trump (Trump Never Give Up: How I Turned My Biggest Challenges into Success)
When I was a teenager, I would have said that I rejected the health and wealth gospel. Gothard himself would have criticized what prosperity preachers were teaching. But I did believe that obedience was the key to success in life. I was convinced that if I obeyed, God would reward me with the blessings. In other words, I believed the health and wealth gospel. It looked a little different from the popular version that shows up on television and in some of America’s biggest churches, but it was essentially the same message. In recent years, I’ve started to understand that what I thought was the key to success was actually a recipe for spiritual failure.
Jinger Duggar Vuolo (Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear)
Shakespeare’s women are rebellious and clever, critical of women’s subordinate status, quick to point out the folly of men, and adept at outwitting patriarchal controls. “Why should their liberty than ours be more?” Adriana exclaims in The Comedy of Errors, bemoaning the limitations of her life. Instructed that “a wife’s will must be bridled by her husband’s,” she retorts, “There’s none but asses will be bridled so!” When Beatrice’s uncle suggests she find a husband in Much Ado About Nothing, she laughs and says, “Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a piece of valiant dust? To make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, Uncle, I’ll none.” Shakespeare’s women follow their own consciences, refusing to be subdued into feminine silence, and they use language itself as a tool of liberation.
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)