Motivational Quotes

Criticism

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

- Mcclung, Nellie

Best Quotes about 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

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

Turner, Ted

Having a sharp tongue will cut your throat

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

Let me walk three weeks in the footsteps of my enemy, carry the same burden, have the same trials as he, before I say one word to criticize.

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

I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.

Pound, Ezra

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

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are.

Walker, Alice

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Elbert Hubbard

13.

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

Olivier, Sir Lawrence

14.

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

Cocteau, Jean

15.

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

Dale Carnegie

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.

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

Epictetus

18.

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

19.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

Dahlberg, Edward

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.

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

22.

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

23.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

West, Rebecca

24.

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

Mcclung, Nellie

25.

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

26.

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

Richard Pryor

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

Tynan, Kenneth

30.

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

Rayburn, Sam

31.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right. You'll be criticized anyway.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

32.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken

33.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

34.

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

35.

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

Buxton, Charles

36.

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.

37.

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

Little, Lynn M.

38.

It is impossible to think of a man of any actual force and originality, universally recognized as having those qualities, who spent his whole life appraising and describing the work of other men.

Mencken, H. L.

39.

Critics! Those cut-throat bandits in the paths of fame.

Burns, Robert

40.

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

Guinon, Albert

41.

The pleasure we feel in criticizing robs us from being moved by very beautiful things.

La Bruyere, Jean De

42.

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

Mascotte, John P.

43.

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

Bible

44.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

Steinbeck, John

45.

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

Shenstone, William

46.

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

47.

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

Mizner, Wilson

48.

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

49.

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

Hammarskjold, Dag

50.

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

Clurman, Harold