You tend to feel very hurt when people attack you and feel indifferent when you get praise. You think, ‚Of course they like it. They should like it.‘

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.

No one wants advice – only corroboration.

The last person I have ever criticized is an official. They have a tough job to do. Things are happening so quick.

It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but it is not necessary to remove them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.

In England, when an athlete gets to the top, we do our best to destroy him.

It undoubtedly feels nice when you are being appreciated and you get complimented by girls. Who doesn’t like that? Having said that, I don’t take it as any pressure.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

Having other comedians complimenting my work is the biggest accolade that I can get.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

There are some people who hate my guts. But that goes with the territory.

I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don’t even understand.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Smiling makes me feel weak and not in control and not powerful and small.

Self-worth comes from one thing – thinking that you are worthy.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.

O God, we praise Thee for keeping us till this day, and for the full assurance that Thou wilt never let us go.

I don’t think it’s a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef’s a fat pig.

It’s not bragging if you can back it up.

I’ve had big record label presidents look me in the face and say, ‚Your music sucks, you don’t know who you are, your music is all over the place, and we don’t know how to market this stuff. Pick a lane and come back to us.‘

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you’re wonderful, then you start believing you’re fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

If I’d been born ugly, you’d never have heard of Pele.

Oh, God, I struggle with low self-esteem all the time! I think everyone does. I have so much wrong with me, it’s unbelievable!

People who want the most approval get the least and people who need approval the least get the most.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

The last thing you want is to not be recognized for all of the hard work you put in.

Frank Lloyd Wright… his things were beautiful but not very functional.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act.

Everyone who is critical of Israeli policy is deluged by crazed messages intended to flood their email system or, more insidiously, passwords are accessed and messages sent out under their name! I’m sure it’s illegal. It’s also an effort to undermine free speech.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.

Self-respect knows no considerations.

The more people I reach, the more people there are that have opinions about me. Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

The President is always abused. If he isn’t, he isn’t doing anything.

There is nothing so difficult to marry as a large nose.

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes about my relationship with my own body.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.

I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry.

There’s plenty to criticize about the mass media, but they are the source of regular information about a wide range of topics. You can’t duplicate that on blogs.