Quotes About Validation

My success, I feel like, is credit - credit for a good job. I haven't even gotten a Grammy, yet I've already decided I want an Emmy.

My career has been: first you have to prove yourself, then there's the sophomore record, then there's this thing and that thing, and you always want to be understood.

Actors want to show off and dance in front of you and get your love, because they don't think they're worthy of it in any other way.

When you're trying to prove something, it helps to know it's true.

Simulation is no substitute for math—it could never provide a proof—but if Peskin's conjecture was false, this approach would save me a lot of time by revealing a counterexample. This sort of evidence is extremely valuable in math. When you're trying to prove something, it helps to know it's true. That gives you the confidence you need to keep searching for a rigorous

Certitude is not evidence of truth. Nor does repetition make it true. If anything, repetition should make you suspicious. Truth always stands up to scrutiny on its merits.

To listen to critics, pro or con, and take their words to heart is to subcontract your self-esteem to strangers. (from Workbook)

People don't want to be loved, they want to feel loved.

Even a battered child is sure that it's his fault that his parent beats him. He hopes someday to become good enough so that the beating will stop. I guess the scariest thing for a child to believe is that a parent might be wrong about him—or her.

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

Conspiracy theories may also allow people to feel that they possess rare, important information that other people do not have, making them feel special and thus boosting their self-esteem.

I don't at all mean to say that the early Greeks decided to write poetically in order to avoid the need to validate their theories. They felt no such need. Today we test our speculations about nature by using proposed theories to draw more or less precise conclusions that can be tested by observation. This did not occur to the early Greeks, or to many of their successors, for a very simple reason: they had never seen it done.

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?

You had to face the fear to be worthy of acceptance.

Your name works wonders in Little Moor, Barbara. It's like a free pass.

Will you ever accept me for what I am?

Insecure people have a special sensitivity for anything that finally confirms their own low opinion of themselves.

But it's a little like that children's book, THE VELVETEEN RABBIT, but in reverse: if you're not loved for who you are, you cease to be real. Definitely for the other person, and maybe for yourself, too.

It's so important to break the pattern of looking outside ourselves for self-esteem.

Being aware of our feelings sounds easy, but it's not because many of us spend our entire lives pushing feelings aside as we try to please others.

It seemed that all her life she'd been seeking someone's approval: Father's, Grandmother's... hell, all of society's. Well, she was through. She hadn't asked for anything this time—not a blessed thing—but even that wasn't good enough.

I've been looking for that same secret message, that same confirmation that I matter most to whoever is sending the code.

The Internet is filled with so-called experts who couldn't lace up a pair of boots.

Part of the problem is that if anybody has a gut reaction about an issue, they can go online and have it backed up. That said, they can also find support for their ideas in the mainstream media - because when the mainstream media gives a so-called balanced view, it's often misleading.