Self Critic Quotes

Behind every humorist who delights in knifing hypocrites is a major self-critic. ~ Wendy Aron

The field of creativity that exists within each individual is freed by moving out of ideas of wrong-doing or right-doing. If we can answer 'yes' to the question. 'Is my self-worth as strong as my self-critic?' then we are ready to engage our creative expression. ~ Angeles Arrien

If EXCELLENCE is one of your values, not only you self-critic and evaluate your performance consistently, you BEG others for honest feedback... ~ Assegid Habtewold

There is no magic. Harry Potter was probably the last one. There are no Harry Potters in politics. There are people who should be hard working, admit their mistakes - and we made a lot of mistakes - make an honest self-critic but change what we did wrong. What did we do wrong? We built a state which is big, which is corrupted, which is a state which should radically change. What is Mr Tsipras saying - keep it as it is, so everything that is old belongs to him. ~ Dora Bakoyannis

This Church is true. It will weather every storm that beats against it. It will outlast every critic who rises to mock it. It was established by God our Eternal Father for the blessing of His sons and daughters of all generations. It carries the name of Him who stands as its head, even the Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. It is governed and moves by the power of the priesthood. It sends forth to the world another witness of the divinity of the Lord. Be faithful, my friends. Be true. Be loyal to the great things of God which have been revealed in this dispensation. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

My husband is my most ruthless critic ... sometimes he will say, 'It's been said better before.' Of course it has. It's all been said better before. If I thought I had to say it better than anybody else, I'd never start. Better or worse is immaterial. The thing is that it has to be said; by me; ontologically. We each have to say it, to say it our own way. Not of our own will, but as it comes out through us. Good or bad, great or little: that isn't what human creation is about. It is that we have to try; to put it down in pigment, or words, or musical notations, or we die. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

The repeat run of Fawlty Towers drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of The Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics. ~ Clive James

There are artists with palettes and easels selling the kind of modern art that Soviet art critics used to critique with bulldozers. Judging by the paintings I saw, the Soviets were right the first time. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

No statue has ever been put up to a critic. ~ Jean Sibelius

I winced. My subconscious could be a harsh critic sometimes. ~ Jason Collins

I realize that sometimes we are our biggest critic, and that the person we have the hardest time gaining approval from is usually ourselves. ~ Lindy Zart

My daughter, Lila, is my style critic. She'll say, "No, Mummy, you can't wear that." She's very good. I do trust her instinct. ~ Kate Moss

My play opens with an actor walking down into the audience, where he strangles the critic, then reads aloud from a little black book all the humiliations he has noted therein. Then he throws up on the audience, after which he exits and puts a bullet through his head. ~ Ingmar Bergman

If God has given you a mission, you must be tough enough to handle what people say and still not be distracted while doing what you were created to do. Are you tough enough? God and the enemy know the truth about you, and remember even great people doing great things for great causes meet negative criticisms. All criticism is not bad, just like all flattery is not good. Many times people don't criticize you because they are evil; they do it because they have been trained to think anyone who doesn't perceive and see things in the same manner is an enemy. The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth. When you acknowledge your critics, you give them your power and validate their words. They are not important until you respond. ~ Bishop T. D. Jakes

I think my expectations for myself are much more severe and much more direct. You can't work on a film for six years without being your own toughest critic. So you can't really be distracted by the expectations based on your previous performance. ~ Ken Burns

If Bill O'Reilly is calling you a far-left critic, in my book, no matter what your political persuasion is, that's probably - that probably means you're doing a good job. ~ Michael Hastings

I'm not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now. ~ Gordon Ramsay

To a professional critic (I have been one myself) theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better. ~ George Bernard Shaw

PERFECTION, n. An imaginary state of quality distinguished from the actual by an element known as excellence; an attribute of the critic. ~ Ambrose Bierce

In 2009 i was nominated for the 'best dutch poetry debute' called 'the buddingh award'. It's supposed to be the most important debut price. However the event proved rather hallucinogenic. It started with my publisher expressing 'great surprise' that 'I still managed to get nominated'. The surprise was out of place, since my book simply got the best reviews of all books that year. I went to Poetry International and noticed only 2 of the 3 jury members where present, and the female one kept looking at me in sort of a guilty fashion. Then the award was granted to Misscha Andriessen, which was sort of weird since his book was not seen as universally the best by critics. 'Too lightweight' one review of an important critic read. Later on I read that jurymember Wim Brands one year prior to the price already made clear that 'he is a big fan of Mischa Andriessen'. I always assumed that they were friends somehow but this morning I solved the mystery: they are from the same little village, so it had nothing to do with poetry, just tribal culture at its best. Kind of a relief to know that. ~ Martijn Benders

If you are going to do anything, you must expect criticism. But it's better to be a doer than a critic. The doer moves; the critic stands still, and is passed by. ~ Bruce Barton

Not everyone is an artist but everyone is a fucking critic. ~ Marcel Duchamp

A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist. ~ E. M. Forster

No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. I can quite understand how any ordinary critic would be strongly prejudiced against a work that was accompanied by a premature and unnecessary panegyric from the publisher. A publisher is simply a useful middle-man. It is not for him to anticipate the verdict of criticism. ~ Oscar Wilde

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author. ~ Oscar Wilde

Arnold's notion of the intellectual as disinterested critic distinguished him from both Marx and Hegel. For Marx, the proper function of the intellectual was to be a partisan on behalf of the proletariat, criticizing bourgeois society for its fundamental, structural oppression. For Hegel, the role of the intellectual was to stand above particular group interests, and to bring to consciousness the ethical basis of modern, capitalist society, in the process creating standards by which to guide politics and culture. Arnold's conception of "aliens" has obvious affinities with this Hegelian image of the intellectual. But "disinterestedness" for Arnold had a rather different meaning. It implied the ability to free oneself from partisanship, to take a distanced enough view to be able to criticize the side of the issue to which one had been committed, as circumstances required. "Living by ideas" he wrote, means that "when one side of a question has long had your earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when you hear all around you no language but one, when your party talks this language like a steam-engine and can imagine no other--still to be able to think, still to be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the opposite side of the question..." The role of the intellectual, then, was to embody and encourage that quality of mind that allowed individuals to get some distance from their social, political, and economic milieu; to reflect critically, ~ Jerry Z. Muller

Women in music have the bigger balls anyhow we endure much more harassment and critic. ~ Iggy Azalea

What I do requires fantastic concentration ... but you can't be totally alone, or you lose all contact with reality, so even when I'm engrossed and secluded, Jack Dunphy can be there. He's my oldest and best friend, and best critic too. ~ Truman Capote

There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife - a tyrannical midwife. ~ Stephen Spender

I've never been competitive with other actors. I've been competitive with myself and I'm my own worst critic, a terrible critic I am, and unless I get something right, I feel very unhappy. ~ Michael Caine

The job of the critic, as it might have been conceived in the 1950's or 1960's, was some kind of role of moral arbiter for people, not a huge number of people, but people who were, you know, fairly educated, well-placed people. ~ Louis Menand

When Earth's last picture is painted And the tubes are twisted and dried When the oldest colors have faded
And the youngest critic has died
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it
Lie down for an aeon or two
'Till the Master of all good workmen Shall put us to work anew
And those that were good shall be happy They'll sit in a golden chair
They'll splash at a ten league canvas With brushes of comet's hair
They'll find real saints to draw from Magdalene, Peter, and Paul
They'll work for an age at a sitting And never be tired at all.
And only the Master shall praise us. And only the Master shall blame.
And no one will work for the money.
No one will work for the fame.
But each for the joy of the working, And each, in his separate star,
Will draw the thing as he sees it.
For the God of things as they are! ~ Rudyard Kipling

When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra Pound is seriously offered as a poem, there is some justification for the plain reader and orthodox critic who shrinks from anything that may be labelled 'modernist' either in terms of condemnation or approbation ... Better he thinks, that ten authentic poets should be left for posterity to discover than one charlatan should be allowed to steal into the Temple of Fame. ~ Laura Riding

The music critic Harold Schonberg goes further: Mozart, he argues, actually "developed late," since he didn't produce his greatest work until he had been composing for more than twenty years. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Not a moment passes these days without fresh rushes of academic lemmings off the cliffs they proclaim the political responsibilities of the critic, but eventually all this moralizing will subside. ~ Harold Bloom

The Bible is our fire-guard. Some read God's Word critically but the Word is their critic and by their own attitude towards the Word they condemn themselves. ~ Reinhard Bonnke

The House Beautiful is, for me, the play lousy. ~ Dorothy Parker