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Criticism Quotes
"Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves."
29
"In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism."
23
"You just never give up, no matter how hard the challenges are, and observe this world with a healthy dose of criticism and don't just follow the herd like somebody else might do."
21
"I have been both praised and criticized. The criticism stung, but the praise sometimes bothered me even more. To have received such praise and honors has always been puzzling to me."
13
"The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass."
11
"So as an amateur Olympic competitor I loved criticism, because it made me better. But now as a professional I don't really know how to channel it or where to take it, so I don't take it quite as well."
11
"If you keep your feathers well oiled the water of criticism will run off as from a duck's back."
10
"I have never believed that the critic is the rival of the poet, but I do believe that criticism is a genre of literature or it does not exist."
9
"Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book."
9
"I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true.... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque."
7
"For what I wrote that started this whole controversy, I deserved to be criticized, and I felt bad about writing it. I felt bad mainly as a writer and a thinker."
6
"Anytime you put a movie out it's subject to such scrutiny and such criticism."
6
"I mean no film is beyond criticism, but I think we've made a very modest movie."
6
"One of the things that upset me was some of the criticism leveled at Simon and Garfunkel. I always took exception to it, but actually I agree with a lot of it."
6
"We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects."
6
"I do know dumb-ass questions when I see dumb-ass questions."
6
"A state that suppresses all freedom of speech, and which by imposing the most terrible punishments, treats each and every attempt at criticism, however morally justified, and every suggestion for improvement as plotting to high treason, is a state that breaks an unwritten law."
6
"Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on."
6
"He was not only a bore; he bored for England."
5
"To silence criticism is to silence freedom."
5
"Everything is entertainment; criticism is now entertainment and it seems that the French directors have woken up one day and suddenly realised that they were not backed up any more."
5
"For years Don Imus was just - boy, he was merciless in his criticism of me. Maybe it was justified, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt."
5
"I'd call it a new version of voodoo economics, but I'm afraid that would give witch doctors a bad name."
5
"To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own."
5
"It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially - like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye."
5
"We cannot let our respect for the FBI blind us from the fact the FBI has sometimes come up short of our expectations."
5
"Silence is sometimes the severest criticism."
5
"The devil's happy when the critics run you off."
5
"I have the worst ear for criticism; even when I have created a stage set I like, I always hear the woman in the back of the dress circle who says she doesn't like blue."
4
"The rich are different from you and me because they have more credit."
4
"It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds."
4
"The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it."
4
"You have to laugh, you have to be able to take criticism."
4
"Aspiring to a souffle, he achieves a pancake at which the reader saws without much appetite."
4
"The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is, the higher his reputation soars even amongst powerful princes."
4
"Philosophers, as things now stand, are all too fond of offering criticism from on high instead of studying and understanding things from within."
4
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