Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

Best Quotes about Criticism

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

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

Collins, Jackie

We protest against unjust criticism but we accept unarmed applause.

Narosky, Jose

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Wilde, Oscar

Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

Chandler, Raymond

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

Buxton, Charles

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

Miller, Henry

In an age of unscrupulous and shameless book-making, it is a duty to give notice of the rubbish that cumbers the ground. There is no credit, no real power required for this task. It is the work of an intellectual scavenger, and far from being specially honorable.

Hutton, R. H.

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

Fielding, Henry

10.

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

11.

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

Kundera, Milan

12.

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

Murdoch, Iris

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions.

Fuller, Margaret

16.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

17.

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

Epictetus

18.

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

Pollock, Channing

19.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture; it's a really stupid thing to want to do.

Costello, Elvis

20.

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

21.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

23.

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

Conrad, Joseph

24.

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor

25.

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

Guinon, Albert

26.

Do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend's forehead.

Proverb, Chinese

27.

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

28.

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

29.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

30.

One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.

Moliere

31.

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

Paz, Octavio

32.

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

Flagg, Fannie

33.

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

Holtz, Lou

34.

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

Dale Carnegie

35.

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

36.

A louse in the locks of literature.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred

37.

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

38.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

James, Henry

39.

Never retract, never explain, never apologize; get things done and let them howl.

Mcclung, Nellie

40.

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

Turner, Ted

41.

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

Baudrillard, Jean

42.

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

Briton, Crand

43.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labor in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

Raphael, Frederic

44.

Give me the critic bred in Nature's school, who neither talks by rote, nor thinks by rule; who feeling's honest dictates still obeys, and dares, without a precedent, to praise.

Shee, Sir Martin Archer

45.

All the world's a stage, and all the clergymen critics.

Nunn, Gregory

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Jones, Franklin P.