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

Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting.

Fox, Dr. Emmit

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

Little, Lynn M.

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

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

Henry Fielding

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

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

10.

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

James, Clive

11.

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Symons, Arthur

12.

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

Schlegel, Friedrich

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.

Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath.

Bible

15.

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

16.

The rule in carving holds good as to criticism; never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.

Buxton, Charles

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.

Frye, Northrop

22.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

23.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

24.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Benjamin, Walter

25.

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

Hampton, Christopher

26.

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

Kundera, Milan

27.

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

Turner, Ted

28.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

29.

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

Native American Proverb

30.

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

Nolan, Sir Sidney

31.

It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.

Mcluhan, Marshall

32.

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

Shenstone, William

33.

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

Elbert Hubbard

34.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Tynan, Kenneth

35.

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

36.

Each generation produces its squad of moderns with peashooters to attack Gibraltar.

Pollock, Channing

37.

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

38.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

39.

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

40.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Woolf, Virginia

41.

Strike the dog dead, it's but a critic!

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

42.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

43.

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

Aikman, Leo

44.

Reviewers are usually people who would have been, poets, historians, biographer, if they could. They have tried their talents at one thing or another and have failed; therefore they turn critic.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

45.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

James, Clive

46.

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

47.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

48.

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

49.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

50.

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!