Criticism Quotes

As long as people believe in the written word and a good story.. They will believe in me. ~ Solange Nicole

Compliments and criticism are all ultimately based on some form of projection. ~ Billy Corgan

To my eye Rubens' colouring is most contemptible. His shadows are a filthy brown somewhat the colour of excrement. ~ William Blake

When I decided to go into politics I weighed the costs. I would get criticism. But I went ahead. So when virulent criticism came I wasn't surprised. I was better able to handle it. ~ Herbert Hoover

I divide criticism into two categories - one coming from those who understand music, who are worthy of being critical because they are knowledgeable about what they are saying; and then there is another category of people who would criticise you anyway, whether your work is good or bad. ~ A.R. Rahman

The Church being what she is cannot have the instincts of a gentleman. ~ George Everett Macdonald

Praise is more obtrusive than a reproach. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I always say that I'm an artist who works with pictures and words, so I think that the different aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism, or doing visual work that incorporates writing, or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth, and I don't make any separation in terms of those practices. ~ Barbara Kruger

There certainly are some women who treat their male partners badly, berating them, calling them names, attempting to control them. The negative impact on these men's lives can be considerable. But do we see men whose self-esteem is gradually destroyed through this process? Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives? How about the ones who try to get to a phone to call for help, but the women block their way or cut the line? The reason we don't generally see these men is simple: They're rare.
I don't question how embarrassing it would be for a man to come forward and admit that a woman is abusing him. But don't underestimate how humiliated a woman feels when she reveals abuse; women crave dignity just as much as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward, no one would tell. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Constructive criticism is about finding something good and positive to soften the blow to the real critique of what really went on. ~ Paula Abdul

Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen. ~ George Jean Nathan

Every man who is not for us in this prolonged struggle for liberty is responsible for the present degradation of the mothers of the race. It is pitiful to see how few men ever have made our cause their own, but while leaving us to fight our battle alone, they have been unsparing in their criticism of every failure. Of all the battles for liberty in the long past, woman only has been left to fight her own, without help and with all the powers of earth and heaven, human and divine, arrayed against her. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I feel like oversized trousers on sale, not even made of good material, that no one wants to buy. They just hang in there hoping that someone someday will compromise for its low cost. ~ Pawan Mishra

As long as scepticism is based on a sound understanding of science it is invaluable, for that is how science progresses. But poor criticism can lead those who are unfamiliar with the science involved into doubting everything about climate change predictions. ~ Tim Flannery

I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that. ~ Steven Spielberg

Some people were like that; they could not escape criticism, because they never quite managed to convince themselves of the role everyone believed they should fill. ~ Meredith Duran

If you plan to be an artist you need to learn how to take criticism and stand up for your work. If you don't love it, no one will. ~ Jen Frederick

We had some port, and drank damnation to the play and eternal remorse to the author. ~ James Boswell

Always be ready for criticism for there shall always be people who shall be ready always to criticize you. The positive lesson you learn from your critics, is the most important thing which matter and not just the matter! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

If someone feels afraid to tell you honest criticism, then you're never going to improve. ~ Cole Sprouse

And you, my Critics! in the chequer'd shade,
Admire new light thro' holes yourselves have made. ~ Alexander Pope

In the modern conflict between the Smile and the Laugh, I am all in favor of laughing. The recent stage of culture and criticism might very well be summed up as the men who smile criticizing the men who laugh. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Praise is sunshine; it warms, it inspires, it promotes growth; blame and rebuke are rain and hail; they beat down and bedraggle, even though they may at times be necessary. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about this process. I joke about it: My kids have made me a better person, and I only need, like, 34 more of them to be a really good guy. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Particularly with MFA students, who have so much invested - literally and figuratively - I feel like honest criticism is something they're owed. It's not going to be easier in the real world, surely. ~ Tod Goldberg

The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means. ~ Susan Sontag

People play small for lots of reasons, but at the core of them all is fear. Playing small means playing safe - avoiding risk, failure, criticism, and the list goes on. But just imagine how incredibly different the world would be if everyone committed to playing big - taking on audacious goals, trying to make a meaningful difference, being all they could possibly be. ~ Margie Warrell

[He] seems to want it both ways: the freedom to hold and express beliefs, and immunity from criticism for those beliefs. This is the kind of attitude that leads inexorably to totalitarianism. It is to be decried, particularly in a university environment where the search for truth necessitates that no belief be treated as sacred or above scrutiny. ~ Jeffrey Shallit

People say you should read your criticism because it will make you a better person but it doesn't. It just makes you a sad bitter old showbiz nightmare. ~ Jo Brand

I think I'd rather be liked than loved.
It just seems as if more criticism and chastening is shown to those we love, while kind manners and compassion are reserved for those we simply like.
So, I hope you like me. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you're wonderful, then you start believing you're fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too! ~ Angelina Jolie

Small people have small minds, and thus deride big dreamers.
Small people have small hearts, and thus disparage big chancers.
Small people have small souls, and thus disdain big achievers. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Don't expect perfection and things to go the way you want
them to when it comes to people, business, your prospects,
and your social life. When things don't go according to your desires, when the weather of life is foul, be creative and
consider what may be the higher reasons why this is
happening and why you must adjust. Perhaps it's to gain forbearance, patience, inner strength, flexibility, or the
ability to withhold criticism while serving as a loving model. ~ Michael Goddart

Most of the makers of the twentieth-century mind, figures such as Freud, Heisenberg, Picasso, Joyce, and Eliot, have in common an about-face on the subject-object question and the mindmatter question; they all reject the dualism that arbitrarily and irreversibly splits the world into pieces. This rejection of dualism and the corresponding reach for monism are of the essence in understanding the revolutionary nature of twentieth-century science and art. ~ Jewel Spears Brooker

One does not lash hat lies at a distance. The foibles that we ridicule must at least be a little bit our own. Only then will the work be a part of our own flesh. The garden must be weeded. ~ Paul Klee

The dread of criticism is the death of genius. ~ William Gilmore Simms

Unmixed praise is not due to any one. It leaves behind a sense of unreality. We can only do justice to a great man by a discriminating criticism. Hero-worship, which paints a faultless monster, whom the world never saw, is like those modern pictures which are a blaze of light without any shadow. ~ James Freeman Clarke

I know the Smiths, I snapped, because lord knows you can launch any kind of criticism at me, lord knows I've heard it all before, but don't you dare doubt my musical knowledge. There's not much I can do right, just this one thing, but you cannot take this one thing from me. ~ Leila Sales

Anyone can criticize. It is important to be a person who can appreciate and show the way to betterment. ~ Debasish Mridha

To maintain our own economy,we are disturbing the nature's economy ~ Siddharth Seksaria

There is no such thing as constructive criticism. There is constructive advice, constructive guidance, constructive counsel, encouragement, suggestion, and instruction. Criticism, however, is not constructive but a destructive means of faultfinding that cripples all parties involved. Don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Criticism changes with the fashion of the time. A story is always a story. ~ V.S. Pritchett

If you truly have faith in your convictions, then your convictions should be able to stand criticism and testing. ~ DaShanne Stokes

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.
[Defend the right to be offended (openDemocracy, 7 February 2005)] ~ Salman Rushdie

Criticism surprises the soul in the arms of convention. ~ George Santayana

Employers who understand human nature, get the best there is in men, not by criticism, but by constructive suggestion. ~ Napoleon Hill

Criticism in good faith is good. When it's targeted solely to destruction, I'm not interested. ~ Andrea Bocelli

The four laws of learning are: the first is demonstration of what you want. The second is the criticism of the demonstration. The third is the imitation of the correct model, and the fourth is repetition, over and over until it becomes habit where is you don't think about it. ~ John Wooden

That, in brief, is the problem - criticism as the first step in a discussion stops the discussion and is therefore, generally the last step as well. It is an entirely different matter if I hear the other person first, understand what she is trying to do, then talk with her about better ways to do it. ~ R. Brian Stanfield

With a few exceptions, the critics of children's books are remarkably lenient souls ... Most of us assume there is something goodin every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory. ~ Katharine Sergeant Angell White

Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value. ~ George Jean Nathan

The question of the acceptance of theories should, I propose, be demoted to the status of a minor problem. For science may be regarded as a growing system of problems, rather than as a system of beliefs. And for a system of problems, the tentative acceptance of a theory or a conjecture means hardly more than that it is considered worthy of further criticism. ~ Karl R. Popper

The character and the play of Hamlet are central to any discussion of Shakespeare's work. Hamlet has been described as melancholic and neurotic, as having an Oedipus complex, as being a failure and indecisive, as well as being a hero, and a perfect Renaissance prince. These judgements serve perhaps only to show how many interpretations of one character may be put forward. 'To be or not to be' is the centre of Hamlet's questioning. Reasons not to go on living outnumber reasons for living. But he goes on living, until he completes his revenge for his father's murder, and becomes 'most royal', the true 'Prince of Denmark' (which is the play's subtitle), in many ways the perfection of Renaissance man.
Hamlet's progress is a 'struggle of becoming' - of coming to terms with life, and learning to accept it, with all its drawbacks and challenges. He discusses the problems he faces directly with the audience, in a series of seven soliloquies - of which 'To be or not to be' is the fourth and central one. These seven steps, from the zero-point of a desire not to live, to complete awareness and acceptance (as he says, 'the readiness is all'), give a structure to the play, making the progress all the more tragic, as Hamlet reaches his aim, the perfection of his life, only to die. ~ Ronald Carter

For both men and women, Good Men can be somewhat disturbing to be around because they usually do not act in ways associated with typical men; they listen more than they talk; they self-reflect on their behavior and motives, they actively educate themselves about women's reality by seeking out women's culture and listening to women…. They avoid using women for vicarious emotional expression…. When they err - and they do err - they look to women for guidance, and receive criticism with gratitude. They practice enduring uncertainty while waiting for a new way of being to reveal previously unconsidered alternatives to controlling and abusive behavior. They intervene in other men's misogynist behavior, even when women are not present, and they work hard to recognize and challenge their own. Perhaps most amazingly, Good Men perceive the value of a feminist practice for themselves, and they advocate it not because it's politically correct, or because they want women to like them, or even because they want women to have equality, but because they understand that male privilege prevents them not only from becoming whole, authentic human beings but also from knowing the truth about the world…. They offer proof that men can change. ~ Bell Hooks

The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It feels like the more I'm out there in the public eye, the more criticism I get. You need to have confidence - that's what it takes to walk out there and sing a song in front of a huge group of people. ~ Gwen Stefani

Those who doubt themselves will doubt you. Those who limit themselves will try to limit you. Do not fight them. Smile, go your own way, and trust that your example is enough. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

We don't criticize. Criticism is an enemy. You've got to make loving, positive suggestions. ~ Dorothy Sarnoff

You believe in a loving God. Then along comes criticism, or rejection (say, a relationship breaks up), or some failure that's a blow to your reputation in some realm. Anyone in such a situation will feel quite crestfallen and downcast. But there is a difference between being discouraged and being devastated, between sliding into despondency and not being able to function. If God's love is an abstraction, it is of no consolation. But if it is a felt and lived reality through prayer, then it buoys you up. ~ Timothy Keller

The Romantics were whipping boys of the New Criticism, but they appealed to me anyway. I was recalcitrant. It was clear to me that they had thought innovatively. ~ M.H. Abrams

Driving home to Iowa from Marion, Indiana, I went through Chicago, sure, but it was far easier to find a field than a town. Far easier to find empty spaces than people. Even in my town, Cedar Rapids, the second-largest city in Iowa, you are never more than minutes from a cornfield. It's a bigness that can feel limiting if you are the only one of you that you see. But the internet is an equalizer - bringing together voices that once felt alone, realigning boundaries, creating spaces where there were none before.

There is a danger too of creating ideological bubbles. Of filtering out dissent. It's a criticism that was leveled heavily against blue states after the 2016 election. But when you are in the minority - the voice that is silenced - you are never in a bubble, even if you try. And finding a place where you don't have to fight for acceptance, where you can just be accepted, even if that is online is the difference between pain and hope. ~ Lyz Lenz

Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don't reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I'm very fond of it; it's done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don't work, you must throw them away. ~ Carl Sagan

If there's a criticism of 'Cassadaga' that I agreed with, it's that we left things in the oven too long, that songs were overstuffed, with too many ideas competing for space. ~ Conor Oberst

Anyone living, especially your peers, is a threat. You're judging them, they're judging you. This sort of criticism is as close to human nature as you can get. That can be a good thing sometimes. Jealously, rancor, competition, those can be good things in art. But it mostly puts you in a dangerous and disadvantageous position, and one that just takes away from you so much. ~ Raymond Pettibon

You can waste a perfectly good life trying to meet the standards of someone who thinks you're not good enough because they can't understand who you are. ~ Barbara Sher

Perhaps the grumbler will object on the ground that he considers p a vital commodity, much more important than q, and that therefore the production of p should be expanded and that of q restricted. If this is really the meaning of his criticism, he is at variance with the valuations of the consumers. He throws off his mask and shows his dictatorial aspirations. Production should not be directed by the wishes of the public but by his own despotic discretion. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Norman Rockwell saved my life. ~ Jane Allen Petrick

People who avoid all criticism fail. It's destructive criticism we need to avoid, not criticism in all forms. ~ Tim Ferriss

All moralistic judgments, whether positive or negative, are tragic expressions of unmet needs. ~ Marshall B. Rosenberg

The idea of innovation is the idea of progress stripped of the aspirations of the Enlightenment, scrubbed clean of the horrors of the twentieth century, and relieved of its critics. ~ Jill Lepore

Unlock joy in any situation!
True understanding and mutual respect do not bridge blames, destructive, negative criticisms, false excuses and gossips. To express disappointments and ill-feelings are normal however to gossip around certain people and events in order to put another person down and destroy one's credibility is a form of bullying whether one expresses it publicly or privately.
Beware of segregation, regionalism, individualism, discrimination, stereotyping, destructive criticism, false accusations, biased wrong assumptions, prejudice, senseless comparison and unwanted competition because life is much more meaningful to live for where there is unity and harmony. ~ Angelica Hopes

The 1980s: feminism, postmodernism, sexual/textual politics

While it might be tempting to generalise that Woolf 's writing was being discussed almost in two separate camps during the 1980s, formalists on the one hand, and feminists on the other, this would be to simplify things too far.
Many critics were attempting to make sense of and connect her feminist politics with her modernist practices. Such investigations coincided with the explosion of theory in literary studies, and once again the work of Virginia
Woolf was central to the framing of many of the major theoretical developments in literary critical engagements with feminism, postmodernism, deconstruction and psychoanalysis. In the context of the rise of 'high theory'
and the questioning of old-school Marxist, materialist, humanist and historicist literary theories, Woolf studies wrestled with the locating of her radical feminist politics in the avant-garde qualities of the text itself, and its endlessly transgressive play of signifiers, with the Woolfian inscription of radically deconstructed models of the self and of sexuality and jouissance. ~ Jane Goldman

The higher you rise, the smaller your enemies. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

What I couldn't help noticing was that I learned more about the novel in a morning by trying to write a page of one than I'd learned in seven years or so of trying to write criticism. ~ Philip Pullman

Nobody kicks a dead dog ~ Dale Carnegie

[Henry James'] essay's closing lines can either be read neutrally or as a more purposeful wish that this mystery [of Shakespeare's authorship] will one day be resolved by the 'criticism of the future': 'The figured tapestry, the long arras that hides him, is always there ... May it not then be but a question, for the fullness of time, of the finer weapon, the sharper point, the stronger arm, the more extended lunge?' Is Shakespeare hinting here that one day critics will hit upon another, more suitable candidate, identify the individual in whom the man and artist converge and are 'one'? If so, his choice of metaphor - recalling Hamlet's lunge at the arras in the closet scene - is fortunate. Could James have forgotten that the sharp point of Hamlet's weapon finds the wrong man? ~ James Shapiro

The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Fox News is nothing if not impressive. No matter how harsh the criticism it endures, the network somehow always manages to prove itself even worse than we had previously imagined. ~ Eric Alterman

The attacks of which I have been the object have broken the spring of life in me ... People don't realize what it feels like to be constantly insulted. ~ Edouard Manet

We have then, in the first part of The Faerie Queene, four of the seven deadly sins depicted in the more important passages of the four several books; those sins being much more elaborately and powerfully represented than the virtues, which are opposed to them, and which are personified in the titular heroes of the respective books. The alteration which made these personified virtues the centre each of a book was probably part of the reconstruction on the basis of Aristotle Ethics.
The nature of the debt to Aristotle suggests that Spenser did not borrow directly from the Greek, but by way of modern translations. ~ Janet Spens

I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images. ~ Georges Duhamel

It's never the same relationship. I see my job as filling in the blanks. Whatever it is that the artist lacks in the process of making a record, I'm supposed to fill that in. And sometimes it's a lot of stuff and I have to hector them about working on the material and that sort of thing. Sometimes you have an artist that's really fairly self-sufficient; they just need another ear to offer some objective criticism, but otherwise pretty much know what they're doing. It varies a lot. ~ Todd Rundgren

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. ~ Walter Benjamin

Healthy, well-informed, balanced criticism is the ozone of public life. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

If criticism had any power to harm, the skunk would be extinct by now. ~ Fred Allen

Surely you do not think that criticism is like the answer to a sum. The richer the work of art the more diverse are the true interpretations. There is not one answer only, but many answers. I pity that book on which critics are agreed. It must be a very obvious and shallow production. ~ Oscar Wilde

When people ask what kind of nonfiction I write, I say 'all kinds,' but really I mean I don't write any kind at all: I'm trying to dissolve the borders between memoir and journalism and criticism by weaving them together. ~ Leslie Jamison

Don't be distracted by criticism. Remember ~ the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you. ~ Zig Ziglar

No longer was a defection, a leaked document, or some other treasonous act a prerequisite for being deemed an SP, though only serious offenses like those would seem to merit such severe condemnation. It meant, after all, expulsion from the church and the loss of salvation - a severe penalty. But now anyone who expressed even the smallest criticism of church policy or leadership was in danger of being cast out. ~ Janet Reitman

Long ago, I made up my mind that when things were said involving only me, I would pay no attention to them, except when valid criticism was carried by which I could profit. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

She always harboured my criticism: it was only praise that slid from her like the snow. ~ Graham Greene

Strict rules of evidence would destroy psychoanalysis and literary criticism. ~ Mason Cooley

And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters' mouths, you'll find that you've let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism. ~ Stephen King

As a piece of literacy criticism, Freud's best writing is about Dostoyevsky. It's a kind of displaced literacy criticism. ~ Dennis Potter

In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry than prose, but now it is in prose where you find things being put together well, where there is great ambition, and equal talent. Poets have gotten so careless, it is a disgrace. You can't pick up a page. All the words slide off. ~ William H Gass

Our normal tendency is to feel dissatisfied and to criticize our body, speech, and mind - My body is out of shape; my voice is unpleasant; my mind is confused. - We are so caught up in this pointless, neurotic habit of criticism that we disparage others as well as ourselves. This is extremely damaging. ~ Thubten Yeshe

How often it is that we set ourselves in the high seat, judging others, not having read their book but merely having glimpsed the cover. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Not only is the Kyoto approach to global warming wrong-headed, the climate change establishment's suppression of dissent and criticism is little short of a scandal. The IPCC should be shut down. ~ Nigel Lawson

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism. ~ Narendra Modi

There is an odd assumption that compassion and care are finite or that critics can be everything to everyone - commenting on everything simply because they can. That's not what cultural criticism is. ~ Roxane Gay