Quotes About Criticism

I don't have a very high opinion, actually, of the world of criticism - or the practice of criticism. I think I admire art criticism, criticism of painting and sculpture, far more than I do that of say films and books, literary or film criticism. But I don't much like the practice. I think there are an awful lot of bad people in it.

For the critic, criticism is a form of natural self-expression, as poetry is to the poet. So, for a critic, criticism is a true thing. Criticism isn’t written for poets, it’s written for other readers. One hopes it is true for other readers if it’s true for oneself.

Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

I play in New York, man. Criticism is part of the game. You take criticism as a challenge.

The criticism of Religion is the beginning of all criticism

It is peculiar to “ressentiment criticism” that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.

Doubt is an element of criticism, and the tendency of criticism is necessarily skeptical.

Virgil Thomson, the great classical music critic, who was also a composer, but said that criticism was the only antidote he knew to pay publicity. Critics at their best are independent voices people take seriously their responsibility to see as many things as they can see, put them in the widest possible perspective, educate their readers, I really do think of myself as a teacher. Newspapers that don't carry arts criticism at all while not fulfill this function. And probably their arts journalism will be deprived as a result.

I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.

I think the biggest hole is in criticism. I think there should be more informed criticism. Part of the problem is that in the '90s, the newspapers started losing their A-section and department-store advertising, and that paid for fashion writers and for the big feature space.

Both criticism and praise is part of putting yourself out there.

Those who have chosen the path of least resistance in life, who cannot bear to bring themselves to make a stern value-judgment in criticism of their own most intimate feelings, achieve what they deserve: not self-understanding but radical self-superficialization, not a discovered but a self-ascribed identity that explains nothing, reveals nothing, means nothing, and ultimately accomplishes nothing culturally or intellectually.

Constant criticism can wear one down and weaken knees.

Narcissism is actually a clever guise adopted to mask its exact opposite, which is a deep well of self-loathing, a well of low self-esteem, rather than high self-esteem. This helps explain why narcissists are so sensitive to criticism, why narcissists tend to break into outrage if they're criticized, because their self-esteem is actually much more brittle than it seems, and once they're challenged, that mask falls apart.

I'm a bit of a connoisseur of Google criticism.

I gave up music criticism because of the increasingly obvious conflict of interest. I couldn't say anything bad about the records when I might be meeting that person's manager backstage an hour later.

To love without criticism is to be betrayed.

The best defense against a powerful and positive dynamic ideology is neither verbal attack nor criticism, which are useful, but to set up an equally powerful and dynamic ideology against it.

Great leaders inspire. They maintain a hopeful attitude, even in the face of discouraging setbacks, constant criticism and abundant opposition. People don't follow discouraged leaders. They follow those who persist with hope.

Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult.

Persons of delicate taste endure stupid criticism better than they do stupid praise.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.

We also have no taboos against freedom of expression. Although I am president, I must confront the criticism of party members in my election district once every three months. In addition, people pay close attention to what my wife does and how my children live.

We as the band are passionate and energetic musicians. We have minimised the amount of self-criticism. Fear of death, total impatience and an unconcerned attitude to weary notions of good and bad is what's making us exceed speed limits. We're hijacking the holy inspiration from otherness, and we don't spoil it with personal aesthetic preferences. We are panthers and gazelles, not slugs and tortoises. Though it must be said that after turning forty I've started to resemble a sloth more and more.

The one who knows himself isn't deceived by either praise or criticism.

Mere abuse is no criticism.

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

Only the very rarest of princes can endure even a little criticism, and few of them can put up with even a pause in the adulation.

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.

I've done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don't want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that's enough.

Art criticism, I would say, is about the most ungrateful form of 'elevated' writing I know of. It may also be one of the most challenging.. if only because so few people have done it well enough to be remembered.. but I'm not sure the challenge is worth it.

The values learned on the playing field-how to set goals, endure, take criticism and risks, become team players, use our beliefs, stay healthy and deal with stress-prepare us for life.

A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law.

The media are used to being able to control the agenda of both their friends and their enemies, their buddies and their opponents, and Trump doesn't play by their rules because Trump is not afraid of them. And Trump knows that he doesn't need them. That's the big equalizer. Unlike most Republicans who think they can't get anywhere without at least some favorable treatment in the media or at least less criticism from the media, Trump doesn't need the media. He's got his Twitter account and he's got his rallies.

Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.

I've learned to be careful of becoming a critic. Criticism really sours your heart.

I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist.

Nothing enrages me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization...I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities.

It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism.

What is new about Barthes's posthumous reputation is the view of him as a writer whose books of criticism and personal musings must be admired as serious and beautiful works of the imagination.

Those who do not read criticism will rarely merit to be criticised.

When I write provocative social and cultural criticism that causes readers to stretch their minds, to think beyond set paradigms, I think of that work as love in action. While it may challenge, disturb and at times even frighten or enrage readers, love is always the place where I begin and end.

When you receive criticism from well-meaning people, it pays to ask, ‘Are they right?’ And if they are, you need to adapt what they’re doing. If they’re not right, if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention.

Criticism is a surreal state, like a good drug gone bad. When it's bad you wish it would stop, and when it's good, you can't get enough.

We unified, we looked past and we're impervious to the constant criticism of naysayer.

The sharpest criticism often goes hand in hand with the deepest idealism and love of country.

There is only one justification for universities, as distinguished from trade schools. They must be centers of criticism.

Learn to use the criticism as fuel and you will never run out of energy.