Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Mcluhan, Marshall

Best Quotes about Criticism

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

He who throws dirt always loses ground.

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

Conrad, Joseph

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

As much as we thirst for approval we dread condemnation.

Selye, Hans

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

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

Cocteau, Jean

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.

Blame is safer than praise.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Miller, Henry

14.

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

15.

Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.

16.

Even the lion has to defend himself against flies.

Proverb, German

17.

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

Hugo, Victor

18.

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

Kundera, Milan

19.

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

20.

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

Sontag, Susan

21.

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

Rayburn, Sam

22.

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

23.

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

Nunn, Gregory

24.

The great critic must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.

Maugham, W. Somerset

25.

The best criticism doesn't trap an employee or child in a dead end. It gives them an escape route.

26.

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

Flagg, Fannie

27.

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

28.

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

Churchill, Charles

29.

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

Richard Pryor

30.

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

Jones, Franklin P.

31.

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

Collins, Jackie

32.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world -- though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst -- the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

Sterne, Laurence

33.

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

Hill, Napoleon

34.

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

35.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

36.

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

37.

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

38.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Sontag, Susan

39.

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

Dale Carnegie

40.

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

41.

It is wrong to be harsh with the New York critics, unless one admits in the same breath that it is a condition of their existence that they should write entertainingly about something which is rarely worth writing about at all.

Chandler, Raymond

42.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

Rostand, Jean

43.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

Baudelaire, Charles

44.

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

Hoffman, Dustin

45.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

France, Anatole

46.

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

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

47.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

Berger, John

48.

I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

Aragon, Louis

49.

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

Mcluhan, Marshall

50.

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis