Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Baudrillard, Jean

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

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

Gourmont, Remy De

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

Benjamin, Walter

Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

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

The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements.

Man, Paul De

10.

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

11.

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

Shenstone, William

12.

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.

13.

Nothing would improve newspaper criticism so much as the knowledge that it was to be read by men too hardy to acquiesce in the authoritative statement of the reviewer.

Hutton, R. H.

14.

I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.

Hugo, Victor

15.

They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.

Porchia, Antonio

16.

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

Lowell, James Russell

17.

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

18.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

19.

Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge ourselves with railing against it.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

20.

Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

22.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

23.

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

24.

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

25.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

26.

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

27.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

28.

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

29.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

30.

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

Briton, Crand

31.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

32.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

33.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

34.

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- criticize.

35.

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

36.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

37.

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

38.

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

Conrad, Joseph

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Kundera, Milan

42.

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

43.

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

Kael, Pauline

44.

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

45.

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

Miller, Henry

46.

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

Buxton, Charles

47.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

Wilde, Oscar

48.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

49.

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

50.

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

Little, Lynn M.