Quotes About Criticism

Certainly professionally, yes [I was interested more in history]. And literary criticism, the structure of poetry. But it is primarily as a historian that I work, although text criticism and literary criticism are very much a part of my interests.

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.

The way we respond to criticism pretty much depends on the way we respond to praise. If praise humbles us, then criticism will build us up. But if praise inflates us, then criticism will crush us; and both responses lead to our defeat.

I made some changes, I didn't go around telling everybody I was ready to make changes, I just remained me. I may get more criticism today in putting this book out than I have. You know, maybe this is my time, but I'm ready to take the criticism and answer anybody's questions.

Criticism is a destroyer of self-worth and esteem. It is heartbreaking how criticism can wound children and diminish their self-esteem.

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.

How do I respond to criticism? Critically. I listen to all criticism critically.

We might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.

A lot of what I've written in criticism of my lust for virtue - my discovery that I've committed idolatry, making of the good an idol - is open to the charge of being still caught within the dialectic of idolatry. I've made a moral criticism of my moral consciousness. Meta-idolatry.

I don't think the criticism is fair. I think the criticism is assuming that Donald Trump giving up on something. He's not. I think if you do end up seeing - if you do end up seeing - some type of agreement regarding DACA and this massive-but-not-wall border security, talking about technology and people, all the things that we need to stop drugs and illegals from coming across the border. If that does become the framework for an agreement that does not mean the president's giving up on his priorities.

Was any criticism of Obama permitted? It was not. We can't criticize the president of the United States. Why? Because he's African-American. And any criticism is said to be racist. And so we have more racists in America today than we've ever had by definition of criticizing the president.

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

[On The Waste Land:] Various critics have done me the honor to interpret the poem in terms of criticism of the contemporary world, have considered it, indeed, as an important bit of social criticism. To me it was only the relief of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life; it is just a piece of rhythmical grumbling.

I don't have to hear that criticism, that idotic criticism anymore.

A good scientist values criticism almost higher than friendship: no, in science criticism is the height and measure of friendship.

Take criticism, smash it into dust. Add color and use it to paint breathtaking images of unicorns frolicking through endless fields of greatness.

My criticism hasn't necessarily been informed by the critics I've read. The conversations I've had with friends and fellow musicians have shaped my thinking more than the work of any critic.

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.

A gentleman is one who doesn't and can't forgive himself for self-committed mistake even if others forget it and the self-criticism is a mark of his right attitude towards life.

Not taking criticism of your writing personally is an enormous step towards surviving the studio system.

When I first started out, I got criticism for the way I looked. I think, now, it's a good thing because, why would you want to look like everyone else?

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.

In the visual arts, for example, the semiological approach to graphics provides a rigorous analysis of the visual means used by the artist. It defines the basic properties and laws governing the arts and suggests objective criteria for art criticism.

As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.

The truth is that the more responsible the media outlet, the more responsive they are to constructive criticism.

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

A devotee should be fixed in the conclusion that, the spiritual master cannot be subject to criticism and should never be considered equal to a common man.

There was a criticism that stuck with me a little bit, which is that somebody said that I was jumping on a bandwagon by talking about sexuality. Obviously that's not a massive takedown, but I found that personally quite offensive because it's something that I've been living with and dealing with my whole life, and just because I decided to speak about it now is not me jumping on a bandwagon; it's a reflection of how I feel within this industry and how I've grown in the past five years.

Barack and I have been in the public eye for many years now, and we've developed a thick skin along the way. When you're out campaigning, there will always be criticism. I just take it in stride, and at the end of the day, I know that it comes with the territory.

I totally accept that it's a legitimate criticism that when you are involved in the day-to-day scrum of government that what can get lost is the narrative, the hymn sheet the song that inspires and lifts people's sights.

A woman's flattery may inflate a man's head a little; but her criticism goes straight to his heart, and contracts it so that it can never again hold quite as much love for her.

If you and I want to stir up a resentment tomorrow that may rankle across the decades and endure until death, just let us indulge in a little stinging criticism - no matter how certain we are that it is justified.

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.

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.

The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement.

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.

I was trying to release emotions, exercise emotions, and then I entered the art world. Even after grad school, some of [the earlier works] were still lingering in my head. I realized there were some pieces where I felt that I had to respond to the criticism.

The next time you look into the mirror, try to let go of the storyline that says you're too fat or too sallow, too ashy or too old, your eyes are too small or your nose too big; just look into the mirror and see your face. When the criticism drops away, what you will see then is just you, without judgment, and that is the first step towards transforming your experience of the world.

A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying, 'Of course I do not like green cheese. I am very fond of brown sherry.

If we could only make our hands move as actively as our tongues, what wonders we could accomplish! Almost everyone loves to hear his own voice. It is so easy, too! Yet if we could say less and do more for each other's good, not alone would every home be happier, but communities would be enriched thereby. Instead of criticism by speech, to show someone a better way to do a thing would be of much greater value.

Some men at the approach of a dispute neigh like horses. Unless there be an argument, they think nothing is doing. Some talkers excel in the precision with which they formulate their thoughts, so that you get from them somewhat to remember; others lay criticism asleep by a charm. Especially women use words that are not words,--as steps in a dance are not steps,--but reproduce the genius of that they speak of; as the sound of some bells makes us think of the bell merely, whilst the church chimes in the distance bring the church and its serious memories before us.

It's useful for activists just to be out there to keep you mindful and not get complacent, even if ultimately you think some of their criticism is misguided.

The fact that Obama is getting criticism from the left and the right might reflect his understanding of the underlying political dynamics.

David Simon goes to the Jewish Weekly and said he's made all this money, but he can't enjoy it because of criticism by people like Ishmael Reed.

Criticism is not religion, and by no process can it be substituted for it. It is not the critic's eye, but the child's heart, that most truly discerns the countenance that looks out from the pages of the gospel.

It is often said that the progression from simple to complex runs counter to the normal statistics of chance that are formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strictly speaking, we could avoid this criticism simply by insisting that the Second Law does not apply to living systems in the environment in which we find them. For the Second Law applies only when there is no overall flow of energy into or out of a system, whereas all living systems are sustained by a net inflow of energy.

So-called "natural language" is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in, to cheat or to make love in (and Theorists of Literary Criticism can even be content-free in it), but it is hopelessly inadequate when we have to deal unambiguously with situations of great intricacy, situations which unavoidably arise in such activities as legislation, arbitration, mathematics or programming.