Daily Inspiration Quote by Sydney Schanberg

A journalist saying "I don't judge myself by what someone says" isn’t self-help; it’s a survival tactic. In a profession built on public reaction - praise from editors, fury from officials, the instant verdict of readers - Schanberg’s line draws a hard boundary between external noise and internal standards. The sentence is blunt on purpose. It refuses the currency of reputation, that anxious, fragile thing that can be inflated by a good headline and demolished by a bad-faith smear.

The subtext is combative: I’m not here to be liked, I’m here to be right. Coming from Schanberg, whose name is inseparable from the Cambodia reporting that exposed atrocities and embarrassed powerful institutions, it also reads as a quiet indictment of the way journalists are often evaluated. Not by the accuracy of their work, but by who they angered, who they embarrassed, who they threatened. In that environment, "what someone says" isn’t casual opinion; it’s pressure, retaliation, a coordinated attempt to reframe facts as bias.

The intent, then, is ethical more than personal. He’s asserting a private yardstick: evidence, rigor, conscience. It’s a reminder that credibility can’t be crowdsourced from the loudest voices. The line works because it’s almost defensively small - no grand claims about truth, no heroic posture - just a refusal to let gossip, spin, or institutional disapproval become the mirror he uses to see himself.