The real wisdom here isn't merely that you should ignore critics—it's that opinions have a peculiar power to *feel* like facts if we let them settle into our bones long enough. Les Brown is pointing to something subtler: the moment between hearing a judgment and choosing whether to metabolize it. A hiring manager's rejection letter, a parent's disappointment, a friend's offhand remark that you're "not the artistic type"—these don't land as abstract statements. They arrive with weight, with the authority of someone else's conviction. The gap Les Brown wants us to notice is that gossamer-thin space where we get to decide if that weight becomes ours to carry or theirs to own.