Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- James, Henry

Best Quotes about Criticism

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

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

The easiest thing a human being can do is to criticize another human being.

Little, Lynn M.

Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.

Kundera, Milan

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

Jones, Franklin P.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

Eliot, T. S.

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

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

They condemn what they do not understand.

Cicero, Marcus T.

10.

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

11.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

12.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

13.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

14.

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

Conrad, Joseph

15.

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

16.

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Edwards, Tryon

17.

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

Hill, Napoleon

18.

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

Kundera, Milan

19.

A man must serve his time to every trade save censure -- critics all are ready made.

Byron, Lord

20.

Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

21.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

22.

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

23.

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

24.

Social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings.

Paz, Octavio

25.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.

Mizner, Wilson

26.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

27.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

28.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

29.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn't make your house look any better.

Holtz, Lou

30.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

31.

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.

32.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

34.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

35.

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

Ziglar, Zig

36.

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

James, Clive

37.

Abuse if you slight it, will gradually die away; but if you show yourself irritated, you will be thought to have deserved it.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

38.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

39.

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

West, Rebecca

40.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

41.

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

Briton, Crand

42.

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

43.

You should never assume contempt for that which it is not very manifest that you have it in your power to possess, nor does a wit ever make a more contemptible figure than when, in attempting satire, he shows that he does not understand that which he would make the subject of his ridicule.

Melbourne, Lord

44.

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

Chandler, Raymond

45.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

46.

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

47.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

48.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art -- and, by analogy, our own experience -- more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

Sontag, Susan

49.

I know I'm never as good or bad as one single performance. I've never believed in my critics or my worshippers, and I've always been able to leave the game at the arena.

Barkley, Charles

50.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset