Quotes About Criticism

Every man of character will have that character questioned. Every man of honor and courage will be faced with unjust criticism, but never forget that unjust criticism has no impact whatsoever upon the truth. And the only sure way to avoid criticism is to do nothing and be nothing.

But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.

Becoming critical in the face of criticism, only inspires more criticism.

When I decided to go into politics I weighed the costs. I would get criticism. But I went ahead. So when virulent criticism came I wasn't surprised. I was better able to handle it.

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.

A society needs famous people; the question is whom it chooses for that role. Any criticism of its choice is by implication a criticism of that society.

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 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.

I think where the criticism of videogames come from is where videogames are just Xeroxes of films, and when you get a film adaptation of that game, you've just Xeroxed something twice. I think that's where a lot of the criticism comes from - there are ultra-violent games that are already based on a million films. But there's definitely beauty and art and design in games. I don't think anybody could deny that.

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.

The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.

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.

One of my constant reminders was, "End practice on a happy note." I wanted the boys to want to come out to practice, and I wanted them to get a certain amount of pleasure out of basketball. It's a game. It should be fun. So I always tried to counterbalance any criticism in practice with a bit of praise. I wanted my players to feel that the worst punishment I could give them was to deny them the privilege of practicing. If they did not want to practice, I did not want them there.

You'll never do anything creative, innovative or world changing if you fear criticism. Pioneers are easy targets for arrows!

There prevails among men of letters, an opinion, that all appearance of science is particularly hateful to Women; and that therefore whoever desires to be well received in female assemblies, must qualify himself by a total rejection of all that is serious, rational, or important; must consider argument or criticism as perpetually interdicted; and devote all his attention to trifles, and all his eloquence to compliment.

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.

I've never felt like I needed to change. I've always thought, 'If you want somebody different, pick somebody else.' But sure, criticism can sometimes still get to me. Some things are so malicious, they knock the wind out of you. It's like I'm managing to achieve all this success in spite of my affliction... Would you ever put [America's plus-size sweetheart] in the headline for a male star?

There are floods of praise coming in as well as criticism.

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

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.

The only way I will leave this job will be because of results. I'm too stubborn to quit because of criticism - too stubborn.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

A hilarious academic novel that'll send you laughing (albeit ruefully) back into the trenches of the classroom. . . . [A] mordant minor masterpiece. . . . Like the best works of farce, academic or otherwise, Dear Committee Members deftly mixes comedy with social criticism and righteous outrage. By the end, you may well find yourself laughing so hard it hurts.

Foolishness and criticism are so apt, do so naturally go together!

Didn't Lionel Richie just make a country album? No one is giving him a hard time... and God bless him - I love Lionel and should be able to do what he wants to do, like Madonna should, too. Both are having success and I applaud them. If you don't like it, don't buy it. The ageism criticism is getting old.

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.

Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.

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.

Even when I was an actor in training, one criticism my teachers had was that I should think about directing instead of acting because the best actors see the material they’re working on through blinders. They can’t see anything but their role. I could never really do that.

I learn something from criticism because when it comes from sources you respect you always examine it and learn.

Very often adverse criticism goes to craft, and that sounds an alarm to which attention should be paid.

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.

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.

The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.

I can't deal with criticism very well. I've already got it from one angle. I don't need it from anything else.

I guess it really didn't even dawn on me that you could be a rock critic as a job until I was maybe almost out of college. I knew criticism existed. I read Rolling Stone and Spin. Siskel and Ebert were on television. But I had absolutely no idea how to get that kind of life. And moreover, it didn't interest me that much. I just sort of read normal books growing up. I wasn't that media-conscious. I felt like the one thing I was able to do was to listen to a record and decide whether I liked it.

I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.

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.

According to my principles, every master has his true and certain value. Praise and criticism cannot change any of that. Only the work itself praises and criticizes the master, and therefore I leave to everyone his own value.

To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism.

I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it-how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that, the critics can write what they please. I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.

Criticism is valuable... and self-congratulatory experiences are not.

Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.

I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that.

Sir, there is no end of negative criticism.

I was amplifying the negative at the expense of the positive, not to serve any useful function, not to make my writing better, but to destroy it. The lizard brain, so attuned to people laughing behind our backs, was on high alert for this sort of criticism and would do anything it could to stop me from writing again. I haven't sought out and read a review or a tweet since.

You also know you’re surrendered when you don’t react to criticism and rush to defend yourself. Surrendered hearts show up best in relationships. You don’t edge others out, you don’t demand your rights, and you aren’t self-serving when you’re surrendered.