Barbara Sher Quotes

My dear Watson," said [Sherlock Holmes], "I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers.

Self-criticism, like self-administered brain surgery, is perhaps not a good idea. Can the 'self' see the 'self' with any objectivity?

You're always going to be more judgmental about your own performance than anyone else.

Sometimes it's difficult directing yourself on film because you can't quite separate yourself from the subject.

It's not my job to rate myself and judge myself. That's up to someone else.

We measure everything by ourselves with almost a necessary conceit.

Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream.

For people at the bottom who are really doing badly — those in the bottom 10th or 15th percentile — they think their work falls in the 60th or 55th percentile, so, above average. People at the bottom still think they're outperforming other people.

The nationalist does not go on the principle of simply ganging up with the strongest side. On the contrary, having picked his side, he persuades himself that it is the strongest, and is able to stick to his belief even when the facts are overwhelmingly against him.

I think I'm perfectly reasonable.

I've always been very honest about what's good and bad in my writing. That honesty might have made me sound arrogant sometimes, when I was talking about work I thought was good.

If you're writing an impartial proper biography, you speak to everyone around them who really know them, you do not need, unless you're a minister of propaganda, to have input from the person.

I'm objective because I tell the truth.

Either data supports the observations or they don't. Voting doesn't work in science.

If you think you're right 80% of the time, you're deluded.

When you're getting your facts from people, consider the way that they are being given to you.

If a man thinks he is not conceited, he is very conceited indeed.

There is a point when a personal opinion shades off into an error of fact.

No one seemed able to look at themselves, coolly, from the outside. Their reality was all that could be seen in the light cast ahead by their own wishful thinking.

Just because you're offended, doesn't mean you're right.

Objectivity means trying to give all sides a hearing. It does not, in my view, mean treating all sides as equal.

We see only that which we are.

It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, ''Know thyself,'' and too often leads to a self- estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.

There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgment when used to give an opinion on our own works. It is sound in judging the work of our enemies but not that of our friends, for hate and love are two of the most powerfully motivating factors found among living things.

It is equally a mistake to hold one's self too high, or to rate one's self too cheap.