50 Feedback Quotes For Being More Receptive

Reflect on your performance with these feedback quotes.

Feedback is one of the essential tools we employ in our growth. 

What is feedback?

We receive it every day, even if we are not aware of it.

Feedback is not advice.

It is different from praise or evaluation. 

Feedback is something we all have to grow into understanding how to receive.

Giving and receiving are essential parts of feedback.

Feedback can come from written or electronic comments, meetings, or suggestions from peers. 

Quality feedback provides constructive criticism that helps us improve.

People can grow from feedback.

Unfortunately, poorly done feedback can negatively impact people’s self-esteem and mental health. 

In education, communication, relationships, sports, or the workplace, effective feedback occurs during the time of learning when there is still time to act on it.

It is possible to condemn behaviors and not people.

Feedback is not attacking a person for who they are. 

Take a moment and look through our collection of feedback quotes and sayings.

Feedback quotes from Brene Brown

1. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I’m willing to own my part.” — Brene Brown

2. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I’m ready to sit next to you rather than across from you.” — Brene Brown

3. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I can hold you accountable without shaming or blaming you.” — Brene Brown

4. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I’m willing to put the problem in front of us rather than between us.” — Brene Brown

5. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I can model the vulnerability and openness that I expect to see from you.” — Brene Brown

6. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I want to acknowledge what you do well instead of picking apart your mistakes.” — Brene Brown

7. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I recognize your strengths and how you can use them to address your challenges.” — Brene Brown

8. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I can genuinely thank you for your efforts rather than criticize you for your failings.” — Brene Brown

9. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I’m ready to listen, ask questions, and accept that I may not fully understand the issue.” — Brene Brown

10. “I know I’m ready to give feedback when: I can talk about how resolving these challenges will lead to your growth and opportunity.” — Brene Brown

Feedback quotes for colleagues

11. “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” — Ken Blanchard

12. “Make feedback normal. Not a performance review.” — Ed Batista

13. “I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.” — Elon Musk

14. “An important skill for all SpaceXers is the ability to accept critical feedback. This is key to anyone’s growth and becoming better at what they do.” — Gwynne Shotwell

15. “We get prompt feedback on a social network. The overseas audience is quick to convey what they feel about a film, and we realize whether we are up to date.” — Anil Ravipudi

16. “Other times, you’re doing some piece of work, and suddenly you get feedback that tells you that you have touched something that is very alive in the cosmos.” — Leonard Nimoy

17. “If I post something, and my audience doesn’t really like it, or if they have other suggestions on how to make it better, I can take that feedback and instantly apply it to the next video.” — iJustine

18. “I don’t care what people say about my relationship; I don’t care what they say about my boobs. People are buying my songs; I have a sold-out tour. I’m getting incredible feedback from my music.” — Katy Perry

19. “I usually tell people upfront what to expect and that I really want their feedback and their ideas, and if they think I’ve got a hair out of place or food stuck in my teeth, gosh, I want to know that.” — Greg Brenneman

20. “One of the things I try to work with white people on is letting go of our criteria about how people of color give us feedback. We have to build our stamina to just be humble and bear witness to the pain we’ve caused.” — Robin DiAngelo

Feedback quotes for school, teachers, and students

21. “Having that feedback is essential for beginners.” — Jillian Michaels

22. “I can grow as a leader only if I’m willing to accept feedback.” — Jennifer Hyman

23. “Once people take ownership over the decision to receive feedback, they’re less defensive about it.” — Adam Grant

24. “I think of feedback as constructive, not positive or negative. You choose to do what you want with it.” — Denise Morrison

25. “By creating a feedback culture within your office, you ensure that people continue to learn, grow, and challenge themselves.” — Neil Blumenthal

26. “I believe in accessibility. I believe in honesty and a culture that supports that. And you can’t have that if you’re not open to receiving feedback.” — Mindy Grossman

27. “If you go into any physics lab, everybody is depressed and feels isolated. We don’t get any feedback that anybody cares about what we’re doing.” — Aaron D. O’Connell

28. “I’m always thrilled when I get feedback from young people, particularly from ‘The New Normal,’ young gay people – when they say they want that when they grow up, that means a lot to me.” — Andrew Rannells

29. “You make decisions, take actions, affect the world, receive feedback from the world, incorporate it into yourself, then the updated ‘you’ makes more decisions, and so forth, ‘round and ‘round.” — Douglas Hofstadter

30. “From the very beginning, we just sort of made things up together. That’s one of the great things about having a twin brother; you have a sort of feedback loop, where you can bounce things off of each other.” — Aaron Dessner

Feedback quotes for employees, customers, and restaurants 

31. “Dig for feedback on yourself.” — Scott Cook

32. “You need to have the courage to ask for feedback.” — Scott Cook

33. “Ideas alone are worth very little; it’s in the execution and market feedback that companies are made.” — Aaron Patzer

34. “Making small talk about what someone is wearing is just another form of unsolicited feedback.” — Sophia Amoruso

35. “Tell your idea to whomever will listen, and you’ll get valuable market feedback before writing a single line of code.” — Aaron Patzer

36. “A positive feedback from the customer is critical to your business, and what’s more important is their referral.” — Fabrizio Moreira   

37. “Negative feedback is better than none. I would rather have a man hate me than overlook me. As long as he hates me, I make a difference.” — Hugh Prather

38. “Listen to clients, employees, and peers and stay open to their ideas, feedback, and answers. Doing so is vital to the success of any leader.” — Adena Friedman

39. “When we make progress and get better at something, it is inherently motivating. In order for people to make progress, they have to get feedback and information on how they’re doing.” — Daniel H. Pink

40. “I don’t think as a creator that I could create an experience that truly feels interactive if you don’t have something to hold in your hand if you don’t have something like force feedback that you can feel from the controller.” — Shigeru Miyamoto

Feedback quotes from Bill Gates

41. “We improve through feedback.” — Bill Gates

42. “Our teachers deserve better feedback.” — Bill Gates

43. “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” — Bill Gates

44. “If you’re smart, you often want a feedback loop so you know if what you’ve done is… is right.” — Bill Gates

45. “We win because we hire the smartest people. We improve our products based on feedback until they’re the best.” — Bill Gates

46. “Bill Gates’ Success Factors for Microsoft 1. Long-term Approach 2. Passion for Products and Technology 3. Teamwork 4. Results 5. Customer Feedback 6. Individual Excellence.” — Bill Gates

47. “Computers are great because when you’re working with them, you get immediate results that let you know if your program works. It’s feedback you don’t get from many other things.” — Bill Gates

48. “Until recently, over 98 percent of teachers just got one word of feedback: Satisfactory. If all my bridge coach ever told me was that I was ‘satisfactory,’ I would have no hope of ever getting better.” — Bill Gates

49. “Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.” — Bill Gates

50. “Virtually every company will be going out and empowering their workers with a certain set of tools, and the big difference in how much value is received from that will be how much the company steps back and really thinks through their business processes, thinking through how their business can change, how their project management, their customer feedback, their planning cycles can be quite different than they ever were before.” — Bill Gates

What did you learn from these feedback quotes?

Feedback scares some people.

In a workplace, the term “feedback” might cause worry. 

People imagine fearful situations where supervisors dissect their work at the most meticulous levels to find mistakes.

That is not how effective feedback works. 

Feedback does not always have to be positive.

Growth can occur as a result of negative feedback.

Sometimes knowing what not to do is more important than knowing what to do.

None of us have all of the answers, even when it comes to ourselves. 

Feedback from others is a powerful reflection of who we are and how things around us are perceived. 

Feedback allows us to determine who we wish to be by providing opportunities to see aspects of who we are. 

From there, we can let go of what does not work for us and embrace what does.

What’s your biggest takeaway from these feedback quotes and sayings?

How do you like to give feedback?

Let us know in the comments below.