Perfectionism Quotes

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.

~ Anne Lamott

Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.

~ Brené Brown

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

~ William Faulkner

HOW do you define a word without concrete meaning? To each his own, the saying goes, soWHYpush to attain an ideal state of being that no two random people will agree isWHERE you want to be? Faultless. Finished. Incomparable. People can never be these, and anyway,WHENdid creating a flawless facade become a more vital goal than learning to love the personWHOlives inside your skin? The outside belongs to others. Only you should decide for you -WHATis perfect.

~ Ellen Hopkins

Too many people spend too much time trying to perfect something before they actually do it. Instead of waiting for perfection, run with what you go, and fix it along the way…

~ Paul Arden

Whenever I think of something but can't think of what it was I was thinking of, I can't stop thinking until I think I'm thinking of it again. I think I think too much.

~ Criss Jami

There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.

~ Hermann Hesse

Embrace being perfectly imperfect. Learn from your mistakes and forgive yourself, you’ll be happier.

~ Roy Bennett

Perfection is fragile, interacting with something that seems perfect puts it in peril.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Clinging to our ideas of perfection isolates us from life and is a barrier.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Don't aim for perfection. Aim for 'better than yesterday'.

~ Izey Victoria Odiase

The wholesome pursuit of excellence feels quite different from perfectionism.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Perfection is not to be attained, but to be pursued infinitely.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Don't waste your whole lifetime waiting for the perfect life when there's a perfectly good one within and right in front of you.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

You are magnificent beyond measure, perfect in your imperfections, and wonderfully made.

~ Abiola Abrams

Perfection is born of imperfection.

~ Richie Norton

Perfectionism is a disease. Procrastination is a disease. ACTION is the cure.

~ Richie Norton

When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense — first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it.If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right.

~ Maureen Brady

There is no perfection, only beautiful versions of brokenness.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Flaws.We all have them. BUT, they are all about perception. What I consider as a flaw may not be what someone else considers as a flaw. To me, a flaws is an imperfection or a fault in MY eyes. I consider my flaws to be things that I do not like about myself and things that I would like to change.

~ Horacio Jones

Her beauty is laced in her strength and interwoven through her flaws. She embodies perfection.

~ Kierra C.t. Banks

There is no greater suffering than constantly measuring yourself and coming up short, except perhaps the realization that your suffering is hurting others. But where do we learn these things? Because, really, they are learned. We don't come crying out of the womb because of our birth weight or because we have no money in this brand new world. We learn to measure and we learn to attach our self-worth to those measurements.These patterns we're stuck in aren't just painful for us, they're also distracting us. Every day, the gap between rich and poor grows while the people of developed societies do nothing, because we are too busy worrying about looking good. We're distracted, but not because we've chosen to be. Being distracted by our illusory inadequacy keeps us from changing the world. And believe me, we all have the power to change the world. If we only make the time. If we only free some head space.If you can't learn to love yourself for yourself (and how could you with such a paradoxical motivation?)... then do it for us. Do it for the world. We need you. We need your mind. We need your attention. We need your thoughts. Change your focus, and you will (not can, but will) change the world. You already matter. You just have to realize it for yourself.

~ Vironika Tugaleva

Learning to let go is not giving up! It is simply passing the burden to a better fighter, so you can fight another day. (God)

~ Shannon L. Alder

Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order.

~ Anne Wilson Schaef

Sometimes it’s hard to know when you’ve crossed the line from conscientious to compulsive. When you’re in the thick of an assignment, it’s easy to believe that you must spend so much time brainstorming, researching, writing, testing, revising or what-have-you. Often, it’s only after you’ve been working for hours on end that you realize that half the work you’ve been doing wasn’t actually necessary and that you’ve just wasted a lot of time.

~ Michael Law

If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.

~ Richard Louv

A perfect work of art is not the one that has no mistakes. It is the one people will like. Creation is not perfect but god is praised for having created it

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

The notion of the perfect time is more than myth. It's the ultimate self-delusion.

~ Gina Greenlee

Under this aura of perfection he knows how flawed he really is but his intact denial system keeps this awareness suppressed in the far recesses of his mind.

~ David W. Earle

An entrepreneur is not deterred by his lack of perfection, he knows no one else is

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

As we try to achieve perfection, society changes and we just become more imperfect

~ Joao Matod

It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced and photoshopped world very dangerous.

~ Brené Brown

Perfectionism is adaptive if you are mindful of your humanhood.

~ Asa Don Brown

Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome ...and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher; a philanthropist, statesman, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a ‘tone poet’ and saint. But the thing is simply impossible…Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereupon become unreal…

~ William James

Perfection is inexistent. It is the short-lived joy of muddling in the dips of a superficial life in a bid to bury who we really are.

~ Chinonye J. Chidolue

I really believe that it is honesty about our imperfect selves that makes everyone do better and be better.

~ Dan Pearce

Productivity is about looking forward. Looking back too much, or trying to be too much of a perfectionist, can destroy that productivity. So keep going. Keep creating. Keep building.

~ Audrey Moralez

It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don’t have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable: It’s a myth and a trap and a hamster wheel that will run you to death. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: “So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun... The most evil trick about perfectionism, though, is that it disguises itself as a virtue.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The unfolding over time of a great idea is like the growth of a fractal crystal, allowing details and refinements to multiply endlessly — but only in ever-increasing scale.

~ David Bayles

Relax your expectations, in fact, purposely lower them so low that you feel excitedly naughty about showing up to perform your work with reckless abandon. If that’s hard, open to doing it that way just 5%. Deliberately perform below your skill-level to get started and to see what ideas fall out of a relaxed approach. And in that choice you will create an world of joy within yourself, you’ll truly be an artist of being alive.

~ Jill Badonsky