Quote Of The Day By Tina Fey: 'Don't Waste Your Energy Trying To Educate Or Change Opinions...'

Tina Fey has never let her critics stand in her way.

The Emmy-winning actor and writer has emerged as one of TV's greatest comedic voices, starting with her time as a writer on the long-running NBC sketch show "Saturday Night Live." She joined the "SNL" writers' room in 1997 and was soon promoted to head writer, becoming an on-screen cast member as well and anchoring "Weekend Update" with Jimmy Fallon, and later with Amy Poehler.

When Fey left "SNL" in 2006, she launched her own NBC sitcom, "30 Rock," creating the series and starring as Liz Lemon, the beleaguered head writer of an NBC sketch show. (Actually, her initial pitch for the show was quite different.) "30 Rock" became a comedy classic, earning more than 100 Emmy nominations and running for seven seasons. Since then, Fey has lent her unique comedic sensibility to shows like "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," "Great News," and "Girls5eva" as an executive producer, and she now stars along with fellow "SNL" alum Will Forte in the Netflix comedy "The Four Seasons." 

All in all, it's been a very successful run for Fey, but she's had her share of naysayers along the way — and that's what inspired TVLine's quote of the day. 

The full quote reads: "Don't waste your energy trying to educate or change opinions. Go 'Over! Under! Through!' and opinions will change organically when you're the boss. Or they won't. Who cares? Do your thing, and don't care if they like it."

This quote comes from Tina Fey's 2011 memoir "Bossypants," a humor-laced look back at her rise to fame from "SNL" to "30 Rock" and beyond. It became a bestseller, selling more than 2 million copies and topping the New York Times hardcover nonfiction list for six straight weeks. Fey even earned a Grammy nomination for narrating the audiobook version. 

It earned rave reviews as well from the likes of the New York Times, which called the book "a spiky blend of humor, introspection, critical thinking and Nora Ephron-isms for a new generation." But Fey has also earned some less-than-glowing reviews over the years, which brings us back to the quote above.

Yes, Tina Fey has had incredible success, but plenty of people have tried to drag her down over the years. "30 Rock" was viewed by many as a silly afterthought compared to Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," another series about the making of a network sketch comedy show which launched on NBC the same year. But "Studio 60" was canceled after just one season, and "30 Rock" lived on.

In her book "Bossypants," Fey even reprinted a mean comment from an anonymous online hater that said: "Tina Fey is an ugly, pear-shaped, b***hy, overrated troll." Fey wittily responded to the comment with a polite letter that said in part: "To say I'm an overrated troll, when you have never even seen me guard a bridge, is patently unfair."

That shows the kind of resilience and self-assurance that characterizes the quote above. Anyone who attempts to do anything worth doing these days is going to face criticism, but if you're confident in your own inner voice and talents, you can let those criticisms bounce right off of you, because they're irrelevant. In fact, as Fey points out, as you succeed, those opinions might change, and your former haters may become your biggest fans. But it doesn't matter either way.

Any time spent trying to convince your haters to love you is time wasted, Fey is saying. Trust your instincts and follow your heart, and don't fritter away your valuable energy worrying what anyone has to say about it.

* "So, my unsolicited advice to women in the workplace is this. When faced with sexism, or ageism, or lookism, or even really aggressive Buddhism, ask yourself the following question: 'Is this person in between me and what I want to do?' If the answer is no, ignore it and move on. Your energy is better used doing your work and outpacing people that way. Then, when you're in charge, don't hire the people who were jerky to you." — from "Bossypants"

* "Because we were raised around art and went to museums and the women I grew up around were curvy... there wasn't this value on skinny, skinny, skinny. Curvy was clearly meant to be the winner. I go up and down a few pounds with a relative amount of kindness to myself. And I have a daughter, and I don't want her to waste her time on all of that." — from a 2010 Vogue interview

* "Don't be too precious or attached to anything you write. Let things be malleable. For sketch writers, remember they're called sketches for a reason. They're not called oil paintings. Some of them are going to stink. You have to let them stink." — from a 2010 Esquire interview

* "I really love cursing a lot. But as I get older, I realize it's a little unseemly for women of a certain age. But then once you pass 65, you can hit it full tilt again and it's charming. Once you're Lauren Bacall's age, you can be like, 'What the f**k.'" — from a 2010 Esquire interview