Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Famous Inspirational Daily Quotes

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Native American Proverb

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

James, Henry

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

Smith, Sydney

You know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism.

Maugham, W. Somerset

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

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

Hampton, Christopher

There are two insults no human will endure. The assertion that he has no sense of humor and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

Lewis, Sinclair

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you're two steps ahead!

Flagg, Fannie

10.

Any jackass can kick a barn down, but it takes a carpenter to build it.

Rayburn, Sam

11.

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

Sontag, Susan

12.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

13.

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

14.

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

Byron, Lord

15.

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

16.

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

James, Clive

17.

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

Mascotte, John P.

18.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

19.

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

20.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

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

Mizner, Wilson

22.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

23.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

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

Elbert Hubbard

25.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

26.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

27.

Hardly a book of human worth, be it heaven's own secret, is honestly placed before the reader; it is either shunned, given a Periclean funeral oration in a hundred and fifty words, or interred in the potter's field of the newspapers back pages.

Dahlberg, Edward

28.

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.

Johnson, Samuel

29.

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

30.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

31.

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

32.

Neither praise or blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe, and honestly to award. These are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Simms, William Gilmore

33.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Rosenberg, Harold

34.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

35.

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

36.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Epictetus

37.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

38.

It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.

Wilson, Woodrow T.

39.

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

40.

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

41.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Updike, John

44.

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

45.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

Paglia, Camille

46.

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

Hugo, Victor

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analyzing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.

Lawrence, D. H.

50.

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

Little, Lynn M.