The things we hate about ourselves aren't more real than things we like about ourselves.

Goodman’s line challenges the common bias toward self-criticism: we often treat our perceived flaws as the most “objective” facts about who we are, while dismissing strengths as luck, vanity, or exception. The quote argues for parity in self-assessment—negative self-judgments are not inherently more truthful than positive ones. Implicitly, it critiques the psychological habit of magnifying shortcomings and shrinking virtues, a pattern that can fuel shame and distort identity. The significance lies in its ethical and emotional corrective: a call to grant one’s admirable qualities the same reality-status as one’s defects, and to build self-understanding on a fuller, fairer inventory of the self.