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.

Immortality is a by-product of good work. Masterpieces are not for artists, they're for critics. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together. My message to the world is 'Let's swing, sing, shout, make noise! Let's not mimic death before our time comes! Let's be wet and noisy!'

I'm a musician and, just as the critics are hard on me, I'm hard on the critics.

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'.

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

Critics like to build you up, tear you down, and then, if you're lucky, build you up again.

I'm not a comedian. I can play off of people, but I'm not that guy. I don't want people being like, 'Yeah, he should have stuck with drama.' It would not be my choice to have critics mumbling that.

As the book writer for one big smash and one big smelly flop, I always wondered if anyone knows just what goes into making a great musical. When a show is a hit, the critics trip over themselves not knowing who to laud and applaud the loudest. It's that marvelous score, those urbane lyrics, that irreplaceable star. But only when a show is a flop, does anyone notice the book writer. And then it's always our fault.

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.

Critics should stick to their convictions.

I think we're going to transition with our comedy programming, trying to broaden the audience and broaden what the network does. Those Thursday comedies, which the critics love and we love, tend to be a bit more narrow than we'd ultimately like, as we go forward.

Critics haven't taught me my cricket, and they don't know what my body and mind are up to.

My second play, The Birthday Party, I wrote in 1958 - or 1957. It was totally destroyed by the critics of the day, who called it an absolute load of rubbish.

Critics don't really affect the fact that we live in this paradise and what the meaning of that [is]. And what luck to have this!

Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them.

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

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

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

It used to worry me what people said about me. I'm learning not to worry as much. Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don 't take objection to it, because that's the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind.

I used to respond to people who are dismissive of my work, but as I grow older, I think it's best to ignore your critics. For one thing, they can't stand it, and secondly, you're never going to change them.

I have a work presently in the Press named 'Six Months in Hell' which you may one day read. I consider it will be worth perusing, bruising badly the morals of Britain and America, while Royalty, clergy, critics, society and bloodhounds of law must all incur its censure.

Generally people are afraid. They pretend they aren’t; it’s part of the denial. We’re all part of it. As much as we pretend otherwise, we want what’s comfortable, and we’re afraid of the different. We’re afraid of change. It happened in Los Angeles, too, when the first models of Disney Hall were shown. You should have heard the outcry from the public, critics and press. It was called “broken crockery,” “outlandish” and blah blah blah. Of course now the feeling is different.

We have gotten some terrible reviews at times but if we depended on the judgment of the studios or critics, we never would have made more than one movie.

A few. . . critics are the only people I ever heard use the phrase 'imminent threat.' I didn't, the president didn't.

This is a landmark work in the history of African American studies and American intellectual history. Writing with verve, Jackson brings to life a large cast of characters and traces an ongoing conversation among the writers and critics of this period. This book is likely to become a model for a new generation of scholars, both for the breadth of its engagement and the depth of its archival research.

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.

Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

Critics of art are like eunuchs in harem. They see how it's done when the men come to see the women, but they can't do it themselves.

You have to channel the interpretation and performance into 100 people. And with the audience, the critics.

Some critics will say Coca-Cola made a marketing mistake. Some cynics will say that we planned the whole thing. The truth is we are not that dumb, and we are not that smart.

The word 'art' is very slippery. It really has no importance in relation to one's work. I work for the pleasure, for the pleasure of the work, and everything else is a matter for the critics.

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.

No matter what happens, you're always going to have those critics and those haters. You just have to learn how to deal with that. I think I have and accept that.

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.

We think craft is important, and the irony has always been that horror may be disregarded by critics, but often they are the best-made movies you're going to find in terms of craft. You can't scare people if they see the seams.

More and more in the art world are becoming moralistic, telling artists and critics what they should and shouldn't write, do, or make art about. Never mind the intellectual hypocrisy of this: Those who violate the clublike code are made out to be wrong, immoral, corrupt.

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.

Critics say the OWS protesters hate the rich. Come on! Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning - they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

One of the best things that ever happened to me was Rocky Horror being a total flop in New York as a play. I mean, it was a disaster, and it was the night of the long knives as far as the critics were concerned.

It is the will of God that we must have critics and missionaries and congressmen and humorists, and we must bear the burden

All players are their own worst critics. We are harder on ourselves than anyone else is.

There is always an audience for different individuals, but critics sometimes stop the audience finding the show and the show finding the audience.

Critics have a job to do. They do not criticize you without reason.

I love magazines and film critics, so I eat it up. I'm not one of those people who says 'I never read anything.' I generally read all of it.

I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.

The critics - how come you never see any of them on TV?

I've been lucky. The critics never went out of their way to single me out for doing bad work.