Quotes About Criticism

I take criticism so seriously as to believe that, even in the midst of a battle in which one is unmistakably on one side against another, there should be criticism, because there must be critical consciousness if there are to be issues, problems, values, even lives to be fought for... Criticism must think of itself as life-enhancing and constitutively opposed to every form of tyranny, domination, and abuse; its social goals are noncoercive knowledge produced in the interests of human freedom.

In the spiritual domain, criticism is love turned sour. In a wholesome spiritual life there is no room for criticism. The critical faculty is an intellectual one, not a moral one. If criticism becomes a habit it will destroy the moral energy of the life and paralyse spiritual force. The only person who can criticise human beings is the Holy Spirit.

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.

Learn to control ego. Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

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.

My literary criticism has become less specifically academic. I was really writing literary history in The New Poetic, but my general practice of writing literary criticism is pretty much what it always has been. And there has always been a strong connection between being a writer - I feel as though I know what it feels like inside and I can say I've experienced similar problems and solutions from the inside. And I think that's a great advantage as a critic, because you know what the writer is feeling.

Expressions of sharp and even violent criticism of religion and the church have been welcomed, for they usually imply sincerity of thought. If caustic criticism of religious institutions and practices is irreligious, then Amos, Isaiah, and Jesus were very irreligious men. In fact, that is exactly what many of their contemporaries took them to be.

The success of the Inklings also helps us to see criticism in a positive light. There are, unfortunately, people who boost their own sense of importance by criticizing others as a matter of principle. Yet within this community, criticism was a mark of respect and commitment.

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.

There will always be critics. On one hand, criticism can be positive. On the other hand, criticism can be negative. But critics will always be watching the game. If you listen to everybody, you can go crazy. I have my own point of view, and I always try to keep it.

When I teach criticism, the first thing I say, and this sometimes pisses off younger - I mean, students, is that, opinions are the least part of criticism. We've all had the experience of going with a friend to a movie or a concert and you leave the theater and one of you loved it and one of you hated it, and that doesn't mean that one of you is an idiot. That's the way things work.

I don't want to grow a thick skin. Some people say, "Oh, you're an actress, you have to get used to criticism." But I don't accept that. I'll never get used to criticism, and I'll always care about whether or not people like my performances - because I'm an entertainer, and I want to please.

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.

The concept of loyalty is distorted when it is understood to mean blind acceptance. It is correctly interpreted when it is assumed to cover honest criticism.

I don't necessarily "deal" with the criticism of others. I used to, but now I'm so confident in my walk with Christ that it simply no longer impacts me. I can't allow it to. I'm on a mission!

Congress suffers a great deal of criticism for its partisan acrimony. But while we may disagree politically, and air our opposition in this chamber, it is the conversation behind the scenes that cements and defines our relationships.

I need a little criticism while I make a record so that I kind of feel like: okay, I know that I'm doing the best that I can do because someone is actually here challenging it.

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.

Even the greatest idea can become meaningless in the rush to judgement. To gauge an idea as feasible we must cut our ties to the status quo and find the balance between constructive criticism and judgment. Within that balance we will uncover crucial input for making our ideas a reality.

Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing.

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

The best defense against a powerful and positive dynamic ideology is neither verbal attack nor criticism, which are useful, but to set up an equally powerful and dynamic ideology against it.

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.

The greatest danger to the State is independent intellectual criticism.

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

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.

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.

There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.

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.

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

Difficulties, opposition, criticism-these things are meant to be overcome, and there is a special joy in facing them and in coming out on top. It is only when there is nothing but praise that life loses its charm and I begin to wonder what I should do about it.

We are paying a heavy political price for 20 years in which, as a party, we have played down our criticism of capitalism and soft-peddled our advocacy of socialism

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.

It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.

If you can't fully believe in your ideas, it very quickly communicates to a group of actors who need something to hold onto. They need to believe that whatever criticism, whatever comment is received, is meant.

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

We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical ill-considered criticism.

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.

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.

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.

A work of morality, politics, criticism will be more elegant, other things being equal, if it is shaped by the hand of geometry.

... until both employers' and workers' groups assume responsibility for chastising their own recalcitrant children, they can vainly bay the moon about "ignorant" and "unfair" public criticism. Moreover, their failure to impose voluntarily upon their own groups codes of decency and honor will result in more and more necessity for government control.

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

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

Now, as when I made films that were too autobiographical, the problem is how to escape naturalism. If you tell a strictly true story, because the way you are telling it is false, it creates naturalism. But I become a naturalist. And to become a naturalist is something I avoid. It is fake life - that is the problem. It is because we are familiar with situationnisme, and the critique of the spectacle, et cetera, which is a very fair criticism. People who have no life, and who watch this fake life on a screen - it's a very alienated situation. And that's what situationnisme is about.