Quotes About Criticism

Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative "criticism" isn't criticism at all: it's just nasty, "writerly" cliché and invective.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

I don't mind critics. I mean, I wrote for Rolling Stone for a hot minute. I like criticism. I enjoy criticism. The thing I don't like is cruelty for cruelty's sake. You don't have to be a jerk to say something negative. You can say something in the negative sense and have class.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

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.

Yet the transgender lobby aggressively attacks any critical voice as transphobic and tries to censor us from speaking. There is a big difference between criticism and transphobia. The transgender lobby knows that censoring criticism allows the accusation of transphobia to prevail and appears willing to distort the words of those they disagree with.

What the internet has done is destroy film criticism. I would never have guessed that the profession of film criticism would be going the way of the dodo bird.

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

[Donald Trump] doesn't deal well with criticism and blame and I don't think he could competently manage the office of the presidency given the criticism and challenge that you face every single day as the President of the United States.

Abilities wither under criticism; they blossom under encouragement.

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

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.

We must admit that today conformity is on the Left. To be sure, the Right is not brilliant. But the Left is in complete decadence, a prisoner of words, caught in its own vocabulary, capable merely of stereotyped replies, constantly at a loss when faced with truth, from which it nevertheless claimed to derive its laws. The Left is schizophrenic and needs doctoring through pitiless self-criticism, exercise of the heart, close reasoning, and a little modesty.

Colonial governors and senior civil servants are not easy people to argue with, and I was not popular because of my criticism of the colonial service in Kenya.

When on life's journey it becomes our lot to travel with criticism of skeptics, the hate of some, the rejection of others, the impatience of many, or a friend's betrayal, we must be able to pray in such a manner that an abiding faith and a strong testimony that the Lord will be with us to the end, will compel us to say, "Nevertheless, Father, Thy will be done, and with Thy help, in patience I will follow firmly on the path that takes me back to Thee."

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

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

In the Communist Party, we address problems very openly and sometimes very vocally, and we point out abuses. This is a good thing. We exercise self-criticism once a year. Although 80 percent of the members of the National Assembly are also members of the Communist Party, this does not prevent them from sharply criticizing the administrative and governmental system.

So I was doing well academically, and I was a well-ranked tennis player and was the apple of my handsome father's eye-and then I would bring home a report card with a B-plus on it, and my parents would look at the report card as if I'd flunked. "Uh, honey?" one of them would ask, looking perplexed. "Now, this isn't a criticism but, if you could get a B-plus in philosophy, how much harder would it have been to get an A-minus?"

Criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.

Find the grain of truth in criticism-chew it and swallow it.

As for the criticism we receive, you know, even Mr. [Donald] Trump's team criticize us. For instance, one of the participants or members of his team claimed that Russia was giving money to the Clintons through some funds and that in fact Russia is controlling the Clinton family. This is nonsense.

Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.

I noticed affixed to a laboratory door the following words: "Les théories passent. Le Grenouille reste. [The theories pass. The frog remains.] &mdashJean Rostand, Carnets d'un biologiste." There is a risk that in the less severe discipline of criticism the result may turn out to be different; the theories will remain but the frog may disappear.

Conservative New Testament studies could also provide an intellectually satisfying alternative to German biblical criticism and to the liberal theology that accompanied it

The great ideas of the West - rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, thought, and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy- quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization- - remain the best, and perhaps the only, means for all people, no matter of what race or creed, to reach their full potential and live in freedom.

It is a grave error for any leader to be oversensitive in the face of criticism

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.

The fear of criticism is at the bottom of the destruction of most ideas which never reach the planning and action stage.

Forgive me for using the term 'fat little brother'. It is not a criticism, rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health.

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.

I will accept comments and criticism about change.

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.

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

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

Do you really believe in what you said or wrote – in the thing that’s bringing criticism? And if I do believe it, I can withstand anything.

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.

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.

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.

We can not fight for our rights and our history as well as future until we are armed with weapons of criticism and dedicated consciousness.

In general, the best advice I can give people is to take criticism seriously, apologize for anything you have done wrong, and pull back from conflict. Of course, if you are right on a content matter, you should press forward in the interest of quality, but conflict often has a way of taking on a life of its own, unfortunately.

One doesn't mind adverse criticism so long as it isn't stupid.

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 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.

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.

If you're trying to get something done, there will always be people who don't want to see you get something done, or who have a stake in the status quo. And if they approach that through ad hominem criticism of you, you've got to have enough confidence and thickness of skin to be able to endure.

In a world not made for women, criticism and ridicule follow us all the days of our lives. Usually they are indications that we are doing something right.

I'm afraid of being too sure, to just deliver. I think that's the biggest danger for actors - after a certain time, when you're known and recognised, people expect you to do what you're supposed to do, and there's almost no more criticism and that's very dangerous.