Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Guinon, Albert

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

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

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

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

Tynan, Kenneth

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

Praise those of your critics for whom nothing is up to standard.

Hammarskjold, Dag

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

10.

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

Churchill, Charles

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

Mascotte, John P.

15.

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

Rayburn, Sam

16.

Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Dahlberg, Edward

17.

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.

Collins, Jackie

18.

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

Bible

19.

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

20.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

21.

There has never been a statue erected to honor a critic.

Ziglar, Zig

22.

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

23.

Critics are those who have failed in literature and art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

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

25.

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

Updike, John

26.

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

27.

Every writer is necessarily a critic -- that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg -- nine-tenths of him is under water.

Wilder, Thornton

28.

Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe

29.

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

30.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

31.

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

32.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

33.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

34.

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

Sontag, Susan

35.

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

Pollock, Channing

36.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden

37.

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

Hampton, Christopher

38.

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

39.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

40.

The dread of criticism is the death of genius.

Simms, William Gilmore

41.

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

Briton, Crand

42.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

43.

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

Clurman, Harold

44.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

45.

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

46.

Critics are already made.

Byron, Lord

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

Little, Lynn M.

49.

Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

50.

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