Skip to content

Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.

— Marilyn vos Savant Perfectionism : What's Bad About Being Too Good? (1987)

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: As quoted in Perfectionism : What's Bad About Being Too Good? (1987) by Miriam Adderholdt and Jan Goldberg, p. 85
Work: Perfectionism : What's Bad About Being Too Good?, 1987
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Marilyn vos Savant

What women want is what men want. They want respect.

Evergreen : A Guide to Writing with Readings (2003)

The original answer defines certain conditions, [...] Anything else is a different question.

If your head tells you one thing and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.

Loose Cannons: Devastating Dish from the World's Wildest Women (1998)

As quoted in The Truth in Words: Inspiring Quotes for the Reflective Mind (2002) by Paras, p. 92

All Marilyn vos Savant quotes →

More quotes by Marilyn vos Savant

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

Courage: the heart and spirit of every woman : reclaiming the forgotten virtue (2001)

A good idea will keep you awake during the morning, but a great idea will keep you awake during the night.

What Type Am I? : Discover Who You Really Are (1998)

The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth.

The Reader's Digest (1992)

What is the essence of America? The essence of America is finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom "to" and freedom "from."

Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses.

Proceedings of the Twenty-fifth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (1991)

All Marilyn vos Savant quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Marilyn vos Savant (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.