Motivational Quotes

Criticism

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.

- Carnegie, Dale

Best Quotes about Criticism

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius

A man generally has the good or ill qualities he attributes to mankind.

Shenstone, William

A sneer is the weapon of the weak.

Lowell, James Russell

If what they are saying about you is true, mend your ways. If it isn't true, forget it, and go on and serve the Lord.

Ironside, H. A.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

Sontag, Susan

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meanings.

Sontag, Susan

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

10.

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

11.

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Conrad, Joseph

12.

Though by whim, envy, or resentment led, they damn those authors whom they never read.

Churchill, Charles

13.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

14.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule to never criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home.

Churchill, Winston

15.

Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

17.

Writing prejudicial, off-putting reviews is a precise exercise in applied black magic. The reviewer can draw free-floating disagreeable associations to a book by implying that the book is completely unimportant without saying exactly why, and carefully avoiding any clear images that could capture the reader's full attention.

Burroughs, William S.

18.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

19.

In my conscience I believe the baggage loves me, for she never speaks well of me herself, nor suffers any body else to rail at me.

Congreve, William

20.

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

Cioran, E. M.

21.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

22.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil'd; if right, I kiss'd the rod.

Pope, Alexander

23.

David Lynch came out of it a genius, and I came out of it a fat girl. I'm sorry that the only comment I get about the part is the way I look. [Commenting on the critics' response to her performance in Blue Velvet]

Rossellini, Isabella

24.

Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

Lawrence, D. H.

25.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

26.

Honest criticism is hard to take, especially from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Jones, Franklin P.

27.

When everyone is against you, it means you are absolutely wrong -- or you are absolutely right.

Guinon, Albert

28.

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay.

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

29.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

30.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

31.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

32.

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton

33.

He cannot be strict in judging, who does not wish others to be strict judges of himself.

Cicero, Marcus T.

34.

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

35.

There is an air of last things, a brooding sense of impending annihilation, about so much deconstructive activity, in so many of its guises; it is not merely postmodernist but preapocalyptic.

Lehman, David

36.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

37.

Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however, and you'll condemn them all!

James, Henry

38.

The person of analytic or critical intellect finds something ridiculous in everything. The person of synthetic or constructive intellect, in almost nothing.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

Meir, Golda

40.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

41.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy, as its subject is concrete and not abstract, real and not vague. It is the only civilized form of autobiography.

Wilde, Oscar

42.

Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled wrong.

Smullyan, Raymond

43.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

44.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

Johnson, Samuel

45.

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

46.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Schlegel, Friedrich

47.

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded.

Klee, Paul

48.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

49.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

50.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German