Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Kundera, Milan

Best Quotes about Criticism

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

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

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

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

Franklin P. Jones

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Kundera, Milan

All my life people have said that I wasn't going to make it.

Turner, Ted

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

10.

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

Clurman, Harold

11.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

12.

You're never s good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose.

Holtz, Lou

13.

The whole effort of a sincere man is to erect his personal impressions into laws.

Gourmont, Remy De

14.

A negative judgment gives you more satisfaction than praise, provided it smacks of jealousy.

Baudrillard, Jean

15.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

16.

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

Benjamin Disraeli

17.

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

Holtz, Lou

18.

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

19.

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

Paz, Octavio

20.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

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

26.

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

Churchill, Charles

27.

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

28.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

29.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

30.

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

Elbert Hubbard

31.

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

32.

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

Kundera, Milan

33.

We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall -- which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.

Carlyle, Thomas

34.

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

35.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

37.

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

38.

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

39.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Helvetius, Claude A.

40.

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

Cioran, E. M.

41.

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

James, Clive

42.

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

43.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

Lowell, James Russell

44.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished, but nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.

Buxton, Charles

45.

Never make the mistake of assuming the critters will beat a path to your door.

Mascotte, John P.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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