Perfectionist Quotes

“Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“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, The Glass Bead Game

“I think deeply about things and want others to do likewise. I work for ideas and learn from people. I don’t like excluding people. I’m a perfectionist, but I won’t let that get in the way of publication. Except for education and entertainment, I’m not going to waste my time on things that won’t have an impact. I try to be friends with everyone, but I hate it when you don’t take me seriously. I don’t hold grudges, it’s not productive, but I learn from my experience. I want to make the world a better place.”
― Aaron Swartz

“People call me a perfectionist, but I'm not. I'm a rightist. I do something until it's right, and then I move on to the next thing.”
― James Cameron

“The desire for perfection often leads to the awakening of the Procrasdemon. Allowing yourself to make mistakes is the single most effective way to get rid of it.”
― Neeraj Agnihotri, Procrasdemon - The Artist's Guide to Liberation from Procrastination

“Perfectionists are not all negative, miserable, unhappy and over controlling individuals”
― Asa Don Brown

“Don't worry about not doing "it" perfectly right now. It's ok, just keep at it, you will soon settle in it and then you'll be glad you didn't give up.”
― TemitOpe Ibrahim

“When Stephen talked about stalking chamois his whole expression changed. The features became more aquiline, the nose sharpened, the chin narrowed, and his eyes-steel blue - somehow took on the cold brilliance of a northern sky. I am being very frank about my husband. He attracted me at those times, and he repelled me too. This man, I told myself when I first met him, is a perfectionist. And he has no compassion. Gratified like all women who find themselves sought after and desired - a mutual love for Sibelius had been our common ground at our first encounter - after a few weeks in his company I shut my eyes to further judgment, because being with him gave me pleasure. It flattered my self-esteem. The perfectionist, admired by other women, now sought me. Marriage was in every sense a coup. It was only afterwards that I knew myself deceived. ("The Chamois")”
― Daphne du Maurier, Echoes from the Macabre: Selected Stories

“When you ruminate, you mistake replay for reflection. When you catastrophize, you mistake worrying for preparation.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“You live with an attachment to a future outcome that generates chronic excess anxiety and you call that anxiety "hope.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“Energy management beats time management.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“For so long, I honestly believed that whatever I accomplished didn't count if I had to ask for help along the way. I used to never ask for help, for anything from anyone.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“Let people be the pursuits of happiness, you be the pursuit of perfection.”
― Amit Kalantri

“The therapist version of "Live laugh love," is "Feelings aren't facts.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“You still love planning, you still love organizing, you still love making it beautiful-but you do it because you want to, not because everything will fall apart if you don't. You operate from a well of desire, not a pit of desperation. Your life may or may not look the same on the outside, but on the inside, much has changed. You stop working to curate a programmed experience. You allow yourself open access to all that you think and feel. You allow yourself to be free.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“Clients come to acknowledge that their desire was never to be perfect; it was only to be loved. To simply be seen, accepted, and embraced without conditions is what the child, who is now an adult, has been obsessed with-not perfect.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“A restored perfectionist understands that it's not that you long for some external thing or for yourself to be perfect, it's that you long to feel whole and to help others feel whole.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“Humans have a special talent for complicating simplicity. We make a spectacle out of simple.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“When you understand that closure is a fantasy, you have all the closure you'll ever need.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“In a notable study from the 1990's, researchers examined counterfactual thinking and contract effects in silver and bronze medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics. What they discovered was that silver medalists tend to feel worse than bronze medalists because the most salient counterfactual thought after winning silver is, I could have won gold, whereas the most salient counterfactual thought after winning bronze is, I could have not placed. As the researchers put it, "Imagining what might have been can lead those who do better to feel worse than those they outperform.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“It's hard when a vision exists in a perfect state in your mind because ushering that dream into the real world feels like you're endangering it, like you're taking a baseball bat to something you love.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“The reason people binge on immediate gratification is not that they want too much. The reason people binge on immediate gratification is that they're burnt the fuck out.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“Forgiveness is not a line you cross, it's a path you walk on.”
― Katherine Morgan Schafler, The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power

“You ask me, is there a perfect soul!
I say, imperfect souls chase perfection,
perfect souls wield their imperfection
as their greatest strength.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Aşk Mafia: Armor of The World

“Perfection is imperfections we've made peace with.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Rowdy Scientist: Handbook of Humanitarian Science

“Flawless life is fragile life,
Flawed life is resilient life.
Greatest resilience is self-correction,
the seed of true civilization,
Flaws aware are instrument of flight.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion

“Sonnet of Flaws (1254)

Seek for literature without flaws,
You'd have no literature.
Seek for culture without flaws,
You'd have no culture.

Seek for science without flaws,
You'd have no science.
Seek for sapiens without flaws,
You'd have no sapiens.

Seek for friends without flaws,
You shall remain friendless.
Seek for humanity without flaws,
You'll freeze to death in flawlessness.

Flaws are our greatest source of forte,
Flawlessness facilitates blandness.
Correct where flaws cause blindness,
Embrace the flaws where they add sweetness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Right or Human: 300 Limericks of Inclusion

“If you set out to create something perfect, you will be stressed, you may not be able to create anything good, so set out to create something good, relax, as you walk, perfection will come out of the fog and come to you!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Don’t ever strive to be perfect! Live. Love. And let go!”
― Henry Johnson Jr

“I bought a narrow blue one with white spots and square ends, took off my long-striped tie and rolled it up in my top jacket pocket, leaving a bit sticking out. After a few attempts at the speckled mirror, I manage to get the bow tie almost right, if a little lopsided. In the world of bow ties, it is important that it should be ever so slightly imperfect; this is to show that: a) you tied it yourself; and b) that you are slightly 'devil may care' and not at all prissy. Perfection is the sign of an amateur, perhaps someone who works with great skill but without connection to his animal nature, to passion and lust. Perfection is not for living things, certainly not for human beings; if you are not capable of loving flaws and faults, then you are not capable of love. I have lived most of my life in poverty, but I can tie a bow tie and to some this will be a mystery, but somebody who knows me would say, 'Of course he can tie a bow tie.' Such imperfections - wrinkles in the world - are where all of life's best stories are.”
― Marc Hamer, Spring Rain