Motivational Quotes

Criticism

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.

- Johnson, Samuel

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Mcclung, Nellie

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

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

Franklin P. Jones

No matter how well you perform there's always somebody of intelligent opinion who thinks it's lousy.

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

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

10.

There's a fine line between participation and mockery.

Adams, Scott

11.

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

12.

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

Lowell, James Russell

13.

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

Hill, Napoleon

14.

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

James, Clive

15.

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

Benjamin, Walter

16.

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

Shenstone, William

17.

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

18.

Professional critics are incapable of distinguishing and appreciating either diamonds in the rough or gold in bars. They are traders, and in literature know only the coins that are current. Their critical lab has scales and weights, but neither crucible or touchstone.

Joubert, Joseph

19.

Critical remarks are only made by people who love you.

Mayor, Federico

20.

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

21.

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

22.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Addison, Joseph

23.

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

Ziglar, Zig

24.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

26.

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

Epictetus

27.

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

Flagg, Fannie

28.

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

29.

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

Turner, Ted

30.

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

31.

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

Richard Pryor

32.

If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, then ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

Lincoln, Abraham

33.

People who ask for your criticism want only praise.

Maugham, W. Somerset

34.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

Thoreau, Henry David

35.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.

Proverb, Chinese

37.

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

38.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Wilde, Oscar

39.

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

Murdoch, Iris

40.

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

41.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

42.

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

Elbert Hubbard

43.

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

44.

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

Clurman, Harold

45.

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

46.

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

Sontag, Susan

47.

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

Kundera, Milan

48.

What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you.

Cocteau, Jean

49.

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

Pollock, Channing

50.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don't knock your friends. Don't knock your enemies. Don't knock yourself.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred