Quotes About Criticism

You see an artist, a creative person, can accept criticism or can live with the criticism much more easily than with being ignored. Criticism makes you feel alive. If somebody is bothered enough to speak vituperatively about it, you feel you have touched a nerve and you are at least 'in touch.' You are not happy that he doesn't like it, but you feel you are in contact with life.

Face your path with courage, don't be scared of people's criticism. And, above all, don't let yourself get paralyzed by your own criticism.

Destructive criticism is the biggest single enemy of human potential. It is worse than cancer or heart disease. While those diseases can ultimately lead to the deterioration and death of an individual, destructive criticism kills the soul of the person but leaves the body walking around.

The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

The basis of democracy is tolerance to criticism. If you can't face criticism, if you can't accept it, then you cannot guard democracy, you are not eligible for it.

You can't operate a company by fear, because the way to eliminate fear is to avoid criticism. And the way to avoid criticism is to do nothing.

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

In one sense, you put a lot of yourself into a small press - it's your personal tastes that are on the line - so when criticism is levelled it can feel personal. But, on the other hand, it can be very welcome and necessary. You're never entirely impervious, and one of the main benefits of being a small operation is that you can change the way you do things quickly in response to criticism. In all instances it pays to have a sense of humour and perspective.

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 wouldn't be worth my salt if I weren't attracting some controversy and criticism. Everyone in the world who has done something in life has attracted criticism.

A public that tries to do without criticism, and asserts that it knows what it wants or likes, brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory. Art for art's sake is a retreat from criticism which ends in an impoverishment of civilized life itself.

Criticism can bother you, but you should be more bothered if there’s no criticism. That means you’re too safe

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.

If I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the difference.

If there is truth or merit in the criticism, try to learn from it. Otherwise, let it roll right off you.

The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.

Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publication, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. ... Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. ... fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes in the land.

If a man is often the subject of conversation he soon becomes the subject of criticism.

I would just imagine there's a criticism for just about everything, if you want to take something down. No one's invincible. The Jicks are a work in progress and we don't think everything we do is the bee's knees or something, we're just trying our best to get turned on by what we're doing.

I like a lot of hardcore, but it's just a genre about which I don't have much to say. It's kind of a thing where, unless you're active in the hardcore community, what could you have to say of value about it? It resists criticism because it's not just a style but an entrance into several different worlds of ideas- political, philosophical, societal. The music is really only part of the whole scene. In that sense, the music doesn't change much because it shouldn't: It needs to be there as a signal that you're entering into a certain discursive mode, maybe.

You should recognize that criticism is not always a put down. If you take it to heart, maybe it will guide the way you ought to be going.

I regret that some on the extreme right have been so critical of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and have adamantly opposed the naming of a successor who shares her judicial philosophy and qualities. And their criticism actually reflects poorly upon them.

Criticism is the seed of divorce, and it develops rebellion in our young.

Even after the Rosenthal column, nobody responsible in the Republican Party said, 'Yes, Pat Buchanan is an anti-Semite.' They didn't join in. Very few journalists joined in. What happened was, when he entered the presidential politics, then he entered a new level of criticism and attack on him.

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.

Courage is telling our story, not being immune to criticism.

Nonviolent Communication shows us a way of being very honest, but without any criticism, without any insults, without any put-downs, without any intellectual diagnosis implying wrongness.

To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp.

I don't think of myself as a critic or teacher either, but simply - and at the obvious risk of disingenuousness - as someone who teaches, writes drama criticism (and other things) and feels that the American compulsion to take your identity from your profession, with its corollary of only one trade to a practitioner, may be a convenience to society but is burdensome and constricting to yourself.

Literary criticism now is all pranks and polemics.

One of the things I always underscore when I teach criticism is that young critics, or would be critics, frequently have this illusion that if they write about music they're somehow part of music, or if they write about movies they're part of movies, or of they write about theater they're part of theater, or write about literature. Writing is a part of literature, we belong the species of literature. If you add all the music reviews together that have ever been written, they don't create two notes of music.

The ball of rumor and criticism, once it starts rolling, is difficult to stop.

A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity.

I don't know but a book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf--at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel--you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety--& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.

For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.

I am the object of criticism around the world. But I think that since I am being discussed, then I am on the right track.

With success comes unhelpful criticism - ignore it.

There's always criticism in any process and I think that's a healthy thing.

One difference with the political writings, whether about feminism or class, is that the intent is to change how people think of a certain political reality; whereas with cultural criticism, the goal is to illuminate something that is already there.

If we are to have such a discipline we must have standards, and to get our standards under existing conditions we must have criticism.

Though bitter, good medicine cures illness. Though it may hurt, loyal criticism will have beneficial effects.

Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage of the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today. Absolute reification, which presupposed intellectual progress as one of its elements, is now preparing to absorb the mind entirely. Critical intelligence cannot be equal to this challenge as long as it confines itself to self-satisfied contemplation.

All truth is valuable, and satirical criticism may be considered as useful when it rectifies error and improves judgment; he that refines the public taste is a public benefactor.

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!

So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

There is no fate more distressing for an artist than to have to show himself off before fools, to see his work exposed to the criticism of the vulgar and ignorant.

Why do we wrap things? Usually to protect them. The more fragile they are, the more important the wrapping. Your dream is prey to many perils. It may shatter under the blows of criticism, evaporate with competition's heat, sink to the bottomless depths of others' indifference. Tend to your dream. Protect it as you would a fallen nestling. Until the day when it—and you—will fly.