Said Sayrafiezadeh Quotes

I think I have a tendency to look at things subjectively rather than objectively when I reflect on my experience.

The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.

I hate all that woozy political and psychotherapeutic crap applied to books and art.

I get emotionally attached with every film I do, and that stops me from being critical. I can't fight my emotions.

There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.

If a person can be said to have the wrong attitude, there is no need to pay attention to his arguments.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

Basically, whenever I watch my mother on screen, I never judge her as a performer; I always see her as my mother and I become emotional.

Several people I had conversations with were hugely influential. People who found internal inconsistency in Westboro's ideology. It was the first thing that allowed me to recognize that Westboro was wrong.

Literary criticism has about it neither rigour nor proof. Where it is honest, it is passionate, private experience seeking to persuade.

We look at the world through our likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, opinions and judgments. We want everyone to behave as we think they should; otherwise we get agitated. But we are here to accept the world as it is, even as we work to make it better.

My parents were open about sex. And my dad makes paintings that have a sexual component and it still scares me.

I think it's for the critics to decide whether or not their loathing of the play is based on something other than the play's merits or demerits. They must search their own souls, or whatever.

I don’t like facts, because facts get in the way of my feelings.

Where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?

In short, numbers are accepted as evidence when they agree with preconceptions, but not when they don’t.

We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.

It is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense

Think against your feelings; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking.

To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.

Interest blinds some people, and enlightens others.

One of the difficulties of politics is that politicians are shocked by those who are really prepared to let their thinking reach any conclusion. Political thinking consists in deciding upon the conclusion first and then finding good arguments for it. An open mind is considered irresponsible- and perhaps it really is.

I do not mean to object to a thorough knowledge of the famous works we read. I object only to the interminable comments and bewildering criticisms that teach but one thing: there are as many opinions as there are men.

Much of appreciating art or music is really the interpretation of the listener. To a certain extent it's projection - it's what people need or lack in themselves that they then put upon these people that they admire.

Critics should help people see for themselves; they should never try to define things, or impose their own explanations, though I admit that if... a critic's explanations serve to increase the general obscurity, that's all to the good.