Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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.

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

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

Good critical writing is measured by the perception and evaluation of the subject; bad critical writing by the necessity of maintaining the professional standing of the critic.

Chandler, Raymond

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.

Keats, John

The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.

Algren, Nelson

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

Buxton, Charles

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

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

Epictetus

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

Erasmus, Desiderius

10.

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

Kundera, Milan

11.

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

Little, Lynn M.

12.

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge

Hill, Napoleon

13.

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

14.

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

Pollock, Channing

15.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

16.

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

Clurman, Harold

17.

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

Churchill, Charles

18.

The text is merely one of the contexts of a piece of literature, its lexical or verbal one, no more or less important than the sociological, psychological, historical, anthropological or generic.

Fiedler, Leslie

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

22.

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

Mizner, Wilson

23.

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

Paz, Octavio

24.

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

25.

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

Shenstone, William

26.

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

Johnson, Samuel

27.

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

Hugo, Victor

28.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

29.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

30.

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

Raphael, Frederic

31.

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

Lowell, James Russell

32.

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

33.

God knows people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp following eunuchs of literature. They won't even whore. They're all virtuous and sterile. And how well meaning and high minded. But they're all camp followers.

Hemingway, Ernest

34.

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.

35.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

36.

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

37.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

38.

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

Benjamin, Walter

39.

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

Richard Pryor

40.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Carruthers, Charles Edwin

44.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

45.

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.

46.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

47.

Criticism should be a casual conversation.

Auden, W. H.

48.

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

Native American Proverb

49.

For if there is anything to one's praise, it is foolish vanity to be gratified at it, and if it is abuse -- why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

50.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph