Life & Wisdom Quote by Anne Lamott

Lamott’s line lands like a slap because it recasts a trait we’re taught to admire as a mechanism of control. “Perfectionism” usually gets marketed as high standards with good lighting; Lamott strips it down to its real acoustic: a “voice,” an internal narrator that never shuts up. It’s not a personal quirk so much as a constant commentary track, one that pretends to be motivation while quietly policing the self.

Calling it “the oppressor” is the sharp turn. Oppression isn’t just external force; it’s the way power gets reproduced inside people until they do the disciplining for free. The subtext is that perfectionism keeps you compliant: you don’t submit the draft, don’t ship the project, don’t ask for the raise, don’t make the art, because you’re busy auditioning for approval in a rigged system. The standard is always moving, the verdict always pending. That’s how control works best: it feels like your own choice.

Context matters because Lamott writes from the messy trenches of creativity, recovery, and faith, where “good enough” isn’t laziness but survival. Her broader body of work treats writing as an act of honesty rather than performance, and perfectionism as a spiritual and psychological dead end: it promises safety, delivers paralysis. In a culture of metrics, optimization, and curated selves, the quote reads like a refusal to be managed by impossible ideals. It’s also a feminist tell: perfectionism is disproportionately sold to women as virtue, then used to punish them for being human. Lamott doesn’t offer a self-help slogan; she names an enemy so you can stop mistaking it for your conscience.