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.

I also encourage my students to read literary criticism that is deeply personal yet formally inventive and intellectually expansive... books that offer unorthodox ways of doing double duty as literary criticism and as love letters to the power of literature per se.

Criticism at the wrong time, even if it's legitimate criticism, can be seriously damaging and make the writer lose faith in what he's doing. It's the timing that's all-important.

You can't learn to act unless you're criticized. If you tie that criticism to your childhood insecurities you'll have a terrible time. Instead, you must take criticism objectively, pertaining it only to the work being done.

People refuse to take chances in business, because they fear the criticism which may follow if they fail. The fear of criticism, in such cases is stronger than the DESIRE for success.

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.

Criticism of my alleged views was widespread and highly successful. I have yet to meet a criticism of my views.

A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he candivide.

I've always been terribly uninterested in criticism. And one of the reasons, I just thought recently, is that you know there are various schools of criticism that will compete, and one will supercede the other.

For some reason if we hear 100 praises and one criticism, we focus on that one hurtful thing.

To be successful you have to deal with CRAP. Criticism, Rejection, Assholes and Pressure.

There has been a lot of talk lately about the burdens of the Presidency. Decisions that the President has to make often affect the lives of tens of millions of people around the world, but that does not mean that they should take longer to make. Some men can make decisions and some cannot. Some men fret and delay under criticism. I used to have a saying that applies here, and I note that some people have picked it up, If you cant stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

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

I can have fairly crippling self-criticism. It doesn't really put me in a vulnerable state, I just get glum and intolerable, but it certainly is a vulnerability.

The whole point of free expression is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

I really fell into drama school - I had a lot of lot of luck. I didn't take criticism very well while I was there; in fact, I took it personally. With every note I got, I felt like they were telling me I was a bad person.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don't have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

What if criticism is a science as well as an art? Not a pure or exact science, of course, but these phrases belong to a nineteenth-century cosmology which is no longer with us.

I discovered very quickly that criticism is a form of optimism, and that when you are silent about the shortcomings of your society, you're very pessimistic about that society. And it's only when you speak truthfully about it that you show your faith in that society.

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

Be sure to expose yourself to criticism: A fine polish requires an abrasive.

There are some books and characters so pleasant, or rather which contain so much that is pleasant, that criticism is perplexed or silent. The hounds are perpetually at fault among the sweet-scented herbs and flowers that grow at the base of Etna.

It is said that the fear of public speaking is a fear greater than death for most people. According to psychiatrists, the fear of public speaking is caused by the fear of ostracism, the fear of standing out, the fear of criticism, the fear of ridicule, the fear of being an outcast. THE FEAR OF BEING DIFFERENT PREVENTS MOST PEOPLE FROM SEEKING NEW WAYS TO SOLVE THEIR PROBLEMS.

Literary criticism now is all pranks and polemics.

I have moments of weakness, but mostly I brush the criticism off... Who cares if I'm not a size zero? I don't want to be. I love my body; I'm healthy, I work out.

The purpose is to help, to prevent, to correct, to improve, rather than to punish. Criticism is not meant to punish, but rather to correct something that is preventing better results. The only goal is improvement.

On the road halfway between faith and criticism stands the inn of reason. Reason is faith in what can be understood without faith, but it's still a faith, since to understand presupposes that there's something understandable.

The world will not know liberty until all that is religious and political is transformed into something simple and human and made susceptible to criticism and denial.

I think I have always sort of cultivated a flowery writing style. I've always sort of over - written in every genre that I've attempted. I went to college and took a couple of writing classes and I remember my teachers were always incredibly encouraging. But it was inevitable to get the criticism: "Take it down a notch!" But the nice thing about screenwriting is that you don't really have to.

Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. 'Respect for religion' has become a code phrase meaning 'fear of religion.' Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.

There's a myth among amateurs, optimists and fools that beyond a certain level of achievement, famous artists retire to some kind of Elysium where criticism no longer wounds and work materializes without their effort.

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

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.

There will be this mix of people like me who write for major national newspapers and amateur critics, practitioner critics, whose primary way of distributing what they talk about is through blogs and on the web. The line between professional and amateur criticism will become increasingly blurred. The problem here is that if you want to do this for a living, you have to be able to earn a living doing it.

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

I believe in clear-cut positions. I think that the most arrogant position is this apparent, multidisciplinary modesty of "what I am saying now is not unconditional, it is just a hypothesis," and so on. It really is a most arrogant position. I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.

The lawyers have escaped most criticism [and undeservedly so]. The tax shelters [were approved by lawyers, who got paid huge commissions to do so] and every miscreant had a high-falutin' lawyer at his side. Why don't more law firms vote with their feet and not take clients who have signs on them that say, "I'm a skunk and will be hard to handle?" I've noticed that firms that avoid trouble over long periods of time have an institutional process that tunes bad clients out. Boy, if I were running a law firm, I'd want a system like that because a lot of firms have a lot of bad clients.

It is this capacity for relentless self-criticism that should be - everywhere - the true measure of intellectual freedom and cosmopolitanism, not the entrenched cultural power and self-congratulatory moral rhetoric of some people in countries long accustomed to telling other societies what to do and how to behave.

A common fallacy in much of the adverse criticism to which science is subjected today is that it claims certainty, infallibility and complete emotional objectivity. It would be more nearly true to say that it is based upon wonder, adventure and hope.

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

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.

Criticism is concerned with evaluation. There may be evaluative principles implicit in this or that form of theory, but theory in and of itself is not prescriptive.

Also, when we did "Smallville," we didn't have an opportunity to interact with people who watched the show. And see what they had to say and listen to criticism and listen to praise at the same time. So a lot of this is a new experience and it's very interesting and rewarding for us. I think we get honest feedback. You get hate. You get a lot of love as well. And I'm actually very curious what people think of the show. For us, it's been a passion project of ours, and an incredibly challenging show to make.

It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

It would be very easy for us to do a collection that everybody would like and not criticize. But criticism is a part of life. You have to take it.

Speaking of food, English cuisine has received a lot of unfair criticism over the years, but the truth is that it can be a very pleasant surprise to the connoisseur of severely overcooked livestock organs served in lukewarm puddles of congealed grease. England manufactures most of the world's airline food, as well as all the food you ever ate in your junior-high-school cafeteria.

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.

Nothing is complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism.