If you find yourself criticizing other people, you're probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.

One criticizes in others what one recognizes and despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.

Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.

Whenever anyone criticizes or wrongs you, remember that they are only doing or saying what they think is right. They cannot be guided by your views, only their own; so if their views are wrong, they are the ones who suffer insofar as they are misguided.

If you have compassion and are imbued with the spirit of the Way, it is of no consequence to be criticized, even reviled, by the ignorant. But if you lack the spirit of the Way, you should be wary of being thought of by others as having the Way.

If you’re growing a garden, you need to pull out the weeds, but flowers will die if all you do is pick weeds. They need sunshine and water. People are the same. They need criticism, but they also require positive and substantive language and information and true support to really blossom. If you’re perceived as a negative person — always picking, pulling, criticizing — you will simply get tuned out by those around you. Your influence, ability to teach, and opportunity to make progress will be diminished and eventually lost. When that happens, you become useless, a hindrance to progress. When your feedback is interpreted as a personal attack rather than a critique with positive intentions, you are going backward. Constructive criticism is a powerful instrument essential for improving performance. Positive support can be equally productive. Used together by a skilled leader they become the key to maximum results. Most of us seem to be more inclined to offer the negative. I don’t know why, but it’s easier to criticize than to compliment. Find the right mixture for optimum results.

All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm which is in your power to do) and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you.

I have always been mystified by the speed with which people condemn one another. Feeling as righteous as Christ chastising the money-changers in the temple, they cast their fellows into the outer darkness of their disapproval. This seems to give them intense pleasure. Whenever I am tempted by this pleasure, I remember some impulse in myself that could have led me, granted certain circumstances, into the condemned position. This has caused me to distrust the part of myself that would relish self-righteousness.

Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others' faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others' faults, then naturally seniors and venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate others' faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions.

One of the reasons we judge each other so harshly in this world of parenting is because... we perceive anyone else who's doing anything differently than what we're doing as criticizing our choices.

If somebody treats you with unkindness, if they judge or criticize you, it’s likely they have endured similar treatment from others in the past, and they are only repeating unconscious patterns in search of a love they cannot find.

It should be recognised as a crime (in reality it is a crime of the worst nature) for any parent to build inferiority complexes in the mind of a child through unnecessary criticism. Employers who understand human nature get the best there is out of people not by criticism but by constructive suggestion. Parents may accomplish the same results with their children. Criticism will plant fear or resentment in the human heart but it will not build love or affection.

Jack Canfield

Every time we are negative about someone else, we are actually affecting ourselves. And the other thing that’s important is every time you judge someone else, it’s just a projection of our own self-judgement. Parts of ourselves we don’t accept. Parts of ourselves we won’t give permission to express. And so basically, the old thing when you’re pointing your finger, there’s three fingers pointing back. And so I always tell people that whatever you focus on, you get more of. So if I’m gossiping about someone that I’m judging or being negative about, then I’m actually creating more negativity inside of me, and I’m not focusing on what I want.

We tend to reduce everyone else to the limits of our own mental universe and begin privileging our own ethics, morality, sense of duty and even our sense of utility. All religious conflicts arose from this propensity to judge others. If we indeed must judge at all, argued Vivekananda, then it must be `according to his own ideal, and not by that of anyone else'. It was important, therefore, to learn to look at the duty of others through their own eyes and never judge the customs and observances of others through the prism of our own standards.