Criticism

Did anybody else read Copyblogger today? Brian Clark collected a fantastic group of quotes demonstrating how even the brightest people can lack foresight in matters of creativity, and reject things that would have made them (more?) famous, rich, or renowned. His point is that you shouldn’t make assumptions, but my take?

Rejection happens to the best of us. Everybody gets rejected sometimes. Your book manuscript comes back with “No, thanks” scrawled across it. Your dream date sneers at you when you work up the courage to offer dinner and a movie. Your child shouts “No!” when you ask for a hug. No life, no matter how golden and blessed, comes without someone saying no at some point or another.

Those quotes that Brian pulled together are fabulous because they have inspiration and hope built right in. If people could say no to the Beatles and give the idea that started Fedex a grade of a C, well, we’re in good company. Apple computer did turn out to be a success, and I think we’ve all managed to come up with a few things to invent since 1899.

The trick to success is to not listen when people tell you something won’t work. Especially when it’s something you believe in.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

President Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910