Meyerhold said:
If the production pleases everyone, then consider it a total failure. If, on the other hand, everyone criticizes your work, then perhaps there’s something worthwhile in it. Real success comes when people argue about your work, when half the audience is in raptures and the other half is ready to tear you apart. (Quoted in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 178.)
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By Meyerhold’s measure, some of my articles in the Journal of Wildlife Management may have something worthwhile in them: researchers have argued about, and still do, certain ideas in : Romesburg, H. C. Wildlife science: gaining reliable knowledge (1981. 45:293-313). / Romesburg, H. C. More on gaining reliable knowledge: a reply (1989. 53:1177-1180). / Romesburg, H. C. On improving the natural resources and environmental sciences (1991. 55:744-756). / Romesburg, H. C. On improving the natural resources and environmental sciences: a reply (1993. 57:184-189). Opposing views are presented in: Matter, W. J., and R.W. Mannan. More on gaining reliable knowledge: a comment (1989. 53: 1172–1176). / Knight, R. L. On improving the natural resources and environmental sciences: a comment (1993. 57:182-183).
There’s a trick for not letting criticism of your ideas get you down: live knowing that the criticism is directed at the ideas and not at you.
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For a brief biography of Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, click here.
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