Motivational Quotes

Criticism

They condemn what they do not understand.

- Cicero, Marcus T.

Best Quotes about Criticism

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense.

Coen, Ethan

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

Orwell, George

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

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

When the critics come around it's always too late.

Nolan, Sir Sidney

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

Unlike other people, our reviewers are powerful because they believe in nothing.

Clurman, Harold

10.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

11.

You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

Whistler, James Mcneill

12.

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

13.

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

14.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

16.

The author himself is the best judge of his own performance; none has so deeply meditated on the subject; none is so sincerely interested in the event.

Gibbon, Edward

17.

Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Kundera, Milan

18.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

19.

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

20.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

Hoffman, Dustin

21.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

22.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

23.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

24.

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

Sontag, Susan

25.

I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.

Connolly, Cyril

26.

Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.

27.

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

28.

Satire is often the reflection of a kind of moral nausea.

Briton, Crand

29.

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

Churchill, Charles

30.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

31.

A film is just like a muffin. You make it. You put it on the table. One person might say, Oh, I don't like it. One might say it's the best muffin ever made. One might say it's an awful muffin. It's hard for me to say. It's for me to make the muffin.

Washington, Denzel

32.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

33.

As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.

James, Clive

34.

Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the scores.

Wolfe, Thomas

35.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

36.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

Miller, Henry

37.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

Fiedler, Leslie

38.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

39.

If I make a move, like raise my eyebrows, some critic says I'm doing Nicholson. What am I supposed to do, cut off my eyebrows?

Slater, Christian

40.

If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.

Franklin, Benjamin

41.

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.

42.

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

Harold Rosenberg

43.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

44.

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.

Aikman, Leo

45.

We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.

Beecher, Henry Ward

46.

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

Flagg, Fannie

47.

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

48.

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

Pope, Alexander

49.

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

50.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De