Quotes About Perfectionism

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.

Of course, there will always be more you could do, but you have to remind yourself that perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor.

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I'm sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we're supposed to be writing.

Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)

a struggle with perfectionism [which is] the most toxic condition for the soul. The next most toxic is the ensuing and chronic contempt for oneself, the belief that one is secretly defective and less-than. The next is the obsession that one is right and better-than.

I also learned that you didn't come onto this earth as a perfectionist or control freak. You weren't born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then. You have paid through the nose--paid but good. It is now your turn to reap.

When we relate to ourselves with loving kindness, perfectionism naturally drops away.

The wholesome pursuit of excellence feels quite different from perfectionism.

They make a mess," Jared told her. "Tulip foliage dies and turns an ugly yellow. Pansies aren't hardy. The bloom stalks on lavender drop their buds. Violets seed themselves." His tone of voice made it clear that seeding oneself was a perversion.

I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes.

I would have been in mortal misery all my life for fear my wife might say, "That's a pretty little thing," after I had finished a picture.

When Michelangelo finished the painting of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, he spent the rest of his life trying to remove the paint that had poured into his sleeve.

When you play the 12-string guitar,you spend half your life tuning the instrument and the other half playing it out of tune.

This obsession with dignity can ruin your life if you let it.

There is a phase in the life of every copy editor when she is obsessed with hyphens.

Once it is pointed out to them, these patients have little trouble recognizing that they are the kind of perfectionist, highly responsible people who generate a lot of subconscious anger and anxiety in response to the pressures of everyday life.

It is likely that for most of us, the compulsive need to do well, succeed, and achieve is a reflection of deep-seated feelings of inferiority.

these patients have little trouble recognizing that they are the kind of perfectionist, highly responsible people who generate a lot of subconscious anger and anxiety in response to the pressures of everyday life.

Perfectionism is simply putting a limit on your future. When you have an idea of perfect in your mind, you open the door to constantly comparing what you have now with what you want. That type of self criticism is significantly deterring.

tidying with what a couple of the other pianists had called her obsessive-compulsive neatness. Well, could she help it if she liked the sheet music alphabetized? And then put in numerical order according to the year it was written?

All librarians, deep down, loathe their buildings. Something is always wrong—the counter is too high, the shelves too narrow, the delivery entrance too far from the offices. The hallway echoes. The light from windows bleaches books. In short, libraries are constructed by architects, not librarians.

By clearly emphasizing all that was lacking in others, by mapping and raising to an art form the catalog of their flaws, Veblen's mother had inversely punched out a template for an ideal human being, and it was the unspoken assumption that Veblen would aspire to this template with all her might.

If a writer starts worring about what he or she has left out or forgotten, they might not be able to write even a single line.