“Approval is a lover who will always break your heart.”
“In terms of approval, the Internet is a seductive place. Part of this is because the Internet makes approval feel more tangible. No one in real life can like or star or retweet something you say. The best they can do is laugh a little harder, smile a little bigger.
Not so with the Internet. The approval you feel is instantly measured by how much a post is shared, liked, “favorited,” or reposted. The danger of posting something online for me lies in the way I track its reception like a new iPhone about to be delivered to my doorstep: obsessively and compulsively. I want to feel the rush of approval.”
SAMMY RHODES, This Is Awkward
“A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.”
IDRIES SHAH, Reflections
“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.”
JOHANNES KEPLER, attributed, The Radical Humanist, 1969
“The named it Ovation from the Latin ovis, a sheep.”
PLUTARCH, attributed, The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations
“Do not trust to the cheering, for those very persons would shout as much if you and I were going to be hanged.”
OLIVER CROMWELL, attributed, The New Speaker’s Treasury of Wit and Wisdom
“The conformist is filled with the need for approval. He can never get enough. He runs from one person to another seeking compliments and endorsements for his behavior and actions. As a child, he turned to parents and teachers; when he started to work, to his boss and fellow workers; in marriage, he turned to his mate. He must always have someone around to pat him on the head and tell him he is doing a good job. This bolsters up his poor self-esteem.”
ROBERT ANTHONY, The Ultimate Secrets of Total Self-Confidence
“We’re high on the adrenaline of feeling, even though we know it’s fleeting and evanescence. And we’re getting worse — checking texts and emails and Facebook every five minutes, always searching for that next hit of feeling, that next morsel of approval.”
DEBORAH MEYLER, The Bookstore
“Once we realize that the wish for love and approval is a universal motivator, we can begin to dance with the flow of love by helping others to meet that need through their connections with us. And as we help others to meet those needs by being with us, the positive flow of giving Love comes back to us.”
PERRY WOOD, Secrets of the People Whisperer
“Once you get rid of the idea that you must please other people before you please yourself, and you begin to follow your own instincts — only then can you be successful. You become more satisfied, and when you are, other people tend to be satisfied by what you do.”
RAQUEL WELCH, attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
“Most children were taught from a young age to seek approval from their parents for the things they said or did. Since the need for approval, love and acceptance from our parents is strong, we become conditioned over time to seek approval from others as well. Whenever we don’t receive approval from someone who is not our parent, there is an automatic trigger and desire to win it back.”
LAUREN SUVAL, ‘What Drives Our Need For Approval?’, Psych Central, September 20, 2012
“Letting the need for approval determine your life has hugely stressful ramifications — look at the rate of celebrity-suicide. Did you know that there is a website called Kevo that tracks the approval rating of celebrities? Imagine the stress of perpetually living in fear that the ratings will go down!”
RACHNA SINGH, ‘Love Yourself First’, Deccan Herald, February 21, 2016
“Acceptance is approval, a word with a bad name in some psychologies. Yet it is perfectly normal to seek approval in childhood and throughout life. We require approval from those we respect. The kinship it creates lifts us to their level, a process referred to in self-psychology as transmuting internalization.
Approval is a necessary component of self-esteem. It becomes a problem only when we give up our true self to find it. Then approval-seeking works against us.”
DAVID RICHO, How to Be an Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving
“Not all approval is good news and not all disapproval is bad news. Imagine that you meet somebody and you think that he likes you. You wonder why. Then it dawns on you that he is a taker and that he probably likes you because he sees that he can take advantage of you. You realize that he approves of you for a rather unflattering reason. When you think through the meaning of this approval, it feels more like a criticism than a compliment.
Well, what if we turn this scenario around: you meet somebody and you think he doesn’t like you. You wonder why. Then it dawns on you: this person is threatened by your intelligence. You realize that his dislike of you is actually an indirect compliment. This disapproval confirms to you something that you do value about yourself.
My point? Evaluating yourself solely on the basis of others’ approval or disapproval can be misleading. The mere fact of others’ approval or disapproval of you is meaningless unless you understand and agree with the reasons behind others’ evaluations of you.”
PAVEL SOMOV, Present Perfect
