I think as you get older, you realize there's always going to be critics. Critics are going to win every time because they can change their critique based on the stats and their own personal feelings.
I never place limits on the potential success of my students. If they're going into acting, they're going to win the Oscar... If they're going into law, they're going to be chief justice.
Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic—that is, he frequently kicks and scratches at the inside of the boxes, but does not leave them. Neither are ideologies that loosen their grip easily, and people who need the security of adherence to a big dominating ideology, however much they kick and scratch but without daring to leave go, hold on to it every bit as tightly as it holds onto them. The result is of course strangulation, but alas not mutual strangulation: the ideology always wins.
Therefore I say: know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.
I have more fans and more followers and more supporters. Because the people who actually saw the Joe Frazier Muhammad Ali fight, they saw me win at least nine rounds - the people who know boxing.
Every day, man is making bigger and better fool-proof things, and every day, nature is making bigger and better fools. So far, I think nature is winning.