Motivational Quotes

Criticism

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

- Kael, Pauline

Best Quotes about Criticism

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

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

Hoffman, Dustin

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

Benjamin, Walter

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

Culture is only true when implicitly critical, and the mind which forgets this revenges itself in the critics it breeds. Criticism is an indispensable element of culture.

Adorno, Theodor W.

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

10.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

11.

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.

12.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

13.

People want you to be a crazy, out-of-control teen brat. They want you miserable, just like them. They don't want heroes; what they want is to see you fall.

DiCaprio, Leonardo

14.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Sontag, Susan

18.

We have been educated to such a fine -- or dull -- point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it's all about. We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

Miller, Henry

19.

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.

20.

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

21.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

22.

A critic is a man who knows the way, but can't drive the car.

Tynan, Kenneth

23.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.

Hampton, Christopher

24.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

25.

No sadder proof can be given of a person's own tiny stature, than their disbelief in great people.

Carlyle, Thomas

26.

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

27.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

28.

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

Churchill, Charles

29.

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

Richard Pryor

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

33.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

34.

I never read a book before reviewing it; it prejudices a man so.

Smith, Sydney

35.

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.

36.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

37.

When a man spends his time giving his wife criticism and advice instead of compliments, he forgets that it was not his good judgment, but his charming manners, that won her heart.

Rowland, Helen

38.

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

39.

You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.

Hemingway, Ernest

40.

When subjected to the rain of criticism, let?s not curse the rain. Let?s accept it as a part of life. Let?s remember that the more criticism we can successfully handle, the more zest we will experience in our lives.

Sinha, Shall

41.

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

42.

Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another.

Erasmus, Desiderius

43.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

44.

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

Harold Rosenberg

45.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

46.

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

James, Clive

47.

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

Hill, Napoleon

48.

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

Guinon, Albert

49.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.