Quotes About Critics

People think I'm against critics because they are negative to my work. That's not what bothers me. What bothers me is they didn't see the work. I have seen critics print stuff about stuff I cut out of the film before we ran it. So don't tell me about critics.

I would have been a lot more nervous if I would had known that Matthew McConaughey was [on 30th Annual Television Critics Association Awards] and Julia Louis-Dreyfus was there and all that, and I was like, "Wait a minute and Bryan Cranston's here..." I think I would have got more nervous. But I think thinking it was just like, "Oh yeah critics, we're good." It was great.

With a few exceptions, the critics of children's books are remarkably lenient souls.... Most of us assume there is something goodin every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory.

Many of my sharpest critics have decided to take a position of ignoring me - because they feel that by attacking me, they would draw attention to my book and give me more publicity and help me sell more books. So I think that they decided that the best thing for them to do is to say nothing. Also, I think that some of my critics simply can't refute my argument - and so it's easier for them to ignore it as well, so that they're not forced to confront the logical contradiction in their own position.

Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.

Book critics or theatre critics can be derisively negative and gain delighted praise for the trenchant with of their review. But in criticisms of religion even clarity ceases to be a virtue and sounds like aggressive hostility. A politician may attack an opponent scathingly across the floor of the House and earn plaudits for his robust pugnacity. But let a soberly reasoning critic of religion employ what would in other contexts sound merely direct or forthright, and it will be described as a 'rant'.

The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics - and our external ones too - the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices, and to feel comfortable with who we are.

Would it be nice to win a film award one day? Yes. But the critics are going to have to wait till I'm ready. Right now, my gift is making big movies that audiences want to see.

Remind your critics when they say you don't have the expertise or experience to do something that an amateur built the ark and the experts built the Titanic

I just think to pose for the Body Issue is a good idea for people that are bigger-boned. If people can look at me, a guy that's 325-plus, doing an issue like this, I'm pretty sure that they might have a little confidence. There will be critics, just like with everything else. I think a lot of people will get a laugh out of it, I'll tell you that. I'm looking forward to what the locker room's going to say. But at the end of the day, I'm perfectly fine with who I am as a person and what I have accomplished. It shows a lot of my personality.

My play Safe Sex was picked apart because critics thought it was untrue. It was a play in which no one had AIDS, but the characters talked about how it was going to change their lives.

Well, they are critics of the Bush administration generally on the human rights record of the administration, and in particular, they are very, very critical of this use of science.

In a world that has gone global, we no longer have a choice. If we don't export freedom, we risk importing the viruses which have corrupted other nations. ... Some critics complained that President Bush was arrogant when he suggested America can and should export freedom to other countries. This implies the people of unfree countries may not wish to be free. Which is the greater arrogance?

Critics should stick to their convictions.

Those of us and so many other stalwart critics and opponents and questioners and dissidents in conservative media were attacked for doing what those people in the mainstream media should have been doing. Do your job! Subject these political candidates to the same amount of scrutiny that you are now trying to compensate for with the incoming Trump administration!

If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.

All critics should be assassinated.

Critics have noted Schwarzenegger's only previous government experience was serving under President Bush senior as Chairman of the Council of Physical Fitness, a largely symbolic office, where Schwarzenegger's only responsibility was doing hundreds of jumping jacks he was going to do anyway.

Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so far short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.

Music critics are part of the world, and I am part of the world.

The critics don't interest me because they're concerned with what's past and done, while I'm concerned with what comes next.

There is probably no hell for authors in the next world - they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically larger public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does.

Some critics have written that I wanted to teach through singing. Not at all. I was learning I went to school every time I gave a song recital.

I just didn't want to get out there anymore; I didn't want to get back into what I call 'the swamp.' And the other reason why is I don't think it's good for the presidency for a former president to be opining about his successor. President Obama's got plenty of critics - and I'm just not gonna be one.

There are good and bad critics like good or bad artists. A good critic says why they didn't like it. A bad critic gives it away that they don't like you as a person. I quite like that as well, because it means that I've won.

I'd love to work on something that gets some type of critical respect. This business is sometimes so brutal - you work on something for months and really feel like the project is good and you're doing the best work you can, and then it just gets hammered by critics. It's such a bummer sometimes, because everything seems to build up to the release and a couple of bad reviews can make it seem like it was all a waste, which you know it wasn't.

Critics only make you stronger. You have to look at what they are saying as feedback. Sometimes the feedback helps, and other times, it's just noise that can be a distraction.

I think sometimes the critics want me to beat people down, and that's not in me. I want to lift people up.

I have always noticed that when people consider others eccentric, it is because they are reveling in some form of enjoyment that their critics can neither compass nor share.

Senator Albert Gore Sr. was one of the first outspoken critics of the Vietnam War.

Take heed of critics even when they are not fair; resist them even when they are.

I don't write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, But I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them.

I think a single sentence by Van Gogh is better than the whole work of all the art critics and art historians put together.

Money drives the world, but when everything falls apart to leave the underpinnings of our life bare to the scrutiny of critics and thieves, the only thing remaining, the only thing that can't be taken away, is the love you hold for the people you care about.

I think women are excellent social critics.

Some critics will write 'Maya Angelou is a natural writer' - which is right after being a natural heart surgeon.

When I did the album Electric Circus, not only was it not commercially received. But even the critics and hip-hop community was like "What is this?" At that moment, I could've been written off. But I had to believe because I really love what I do. I'm passionate about it. If 12 million recognize it, that's beautiful. If 12,000 do, that's beautiful. But I'm always going to put my heart and soul in it and I'm going to shoot for the stars and go for the highest levels of recognition and creativity. I definitely doubted myself at the time. But it always come back to believing what I do.

It is a shame to see in the work of an artist the limitations of his critics.

You can't make your choices based on what critics think. You have to make your choices based on what's honest for you.

When you do something that you know is authentic - embrace it, run with it, and trust yourself before the critics.

Sometimes the critics review me harshly for not being critical of government but it's not me who has said I was political.

Critics have always questioned whether players like Pele from the 50s could play today. Lionel Messi could play in the 1950s and the present day, as could Di Stefano, Pele, Maradona, Cruyff because they are all great players. Lionel Messi without question fits into that category.

There is no virtue in being uncritical; nor is it a habit to which the young are given. But criticism is only the burying beetle that gets rid of what is dead, and, since the world lives by creative and constructive forces, and not by negation and destruction, it is better to grow up in the company of prophets than of critics.

So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards - well, you have no control over that.

Obviously all writers, all artists, have their own internal critics; as they write they are being self-critical.

Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.

every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works, yet we require critics to explain the one and biographers to expound the other. That time hangs heavy on people's hands is the only explanation of the monstrous growth.