top of page
.png){kind=small}
Criticism Quotes
"You hear about how many fourth quarter comebacks that a guy has and I think it means a guy screwed up in the first three quarters."
8
"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."
7
"Again, conventional Catholicism does not much appeal to me."
7
"There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it's wonderful."
7
"Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick."
7
"I still think like a critic, and I still analyze films like a critic. However, it's not possible to write criticism if you're making films."
7
"I think that my main criticism in that book was directed at the general assumption that adaptation characterizes populations and species, rather than simply the individuals in the populations and species."
7
"People have the right to criticize you. You do not have the right to criticize anyone."
6
"We gathered all the stock we could find, and made an attempt to move. We left many of our horses and cattle in Wallowa. We lost several hundred in crossing the river."
6
"It is three and a half hours long, four characters wide and a cesspool deep."
6
"Pointing out people's mistakes, having intention to take advantage of people, keeps one bound to a worldly life (sansaar)."
6
"We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be."
6
"So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism."
6
"It is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be."
5
"The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors."
5
"Hem,' he said, and I knew he was a critic now, since, in conversation, they put your name at the beginning of a sentence rather than at the end."
4
"Neither worse then nor better is a thing made by being praised."
4
"Obviously there will be a backlash. If you believe the hype you have to believe a backlash too. Any criticism we get, is always stuff we've already criticised ourselves."
4
"Moynihan, when he was ambassador to the United Nations, produced the same effect when he attacked the Third World. These attacks aroused great admiration here; for example, when he denounced Idi Amin of Uganda as a "racist murderer." The question is not whether Idi Amin is a racist murderer. No doubt the appellation is correct. The question is, what does it mean for Moynihan to make this accusation and for others to applaud his honesty and courage in doing so? Who is Moynihan? He served in four administrations, those of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford - that is to say, administrations that were guilty of racist murder on a scale undreamed of by Idi Amin. Imagine that some minor functionary of the Third Reich had correctly accused someone of being a racist murderer."
3
"The planet is littered with irresponsible gods."
3
"He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animated abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarize it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely."
3
"There is a difference between criticizing people and criticizing a people's uninformed ideals. That is, unless one defines himself or others by their ideals, then he is offended, and usually offended secretly. Because oddly enough, this person is the same person quickest to resort to dismissive name-calling, such as 'bigot' or 'zealot'. And oddly enough, he is always the one, the 'open-minded' one, who adamantly protests for, not only himself, but others not to listen to any type of scholarly theological truth inherently for the sake of his own personal, moral beliefs."
3
"They were the sort who berated a man for meddling and chased him away, then berated him again for not being there when he was needed. Not that they would admit he was needed, even then, not them. Raise a hand to help and you were interfering, do nothing and you were an un-trustworthy wastrel."
3
"People have boldness to criticize but not to sensitize."
3
"Oh, and Mr. Montgomery? I think I counted about four dozen important-sounding words and almost no substance at all in that explanation. I don't think you should close the door on your diplomatic career entirely."
3
"Let Sporus tremble - "What? that thing of silk, Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?"Yet let me flap this Bug with gilded wings,This painted Child of Dirt that stinks and stings; Whose Buzz the Witty and the Fair annoys,Yet Wit ne'er tastes, and Beauty ne'er enjoys."
3
"He saw the article...which was not an expression of ideas, but a bucket of slime emptied in public-an article that did not contain a single fact, not even an invented one, but poured a stream of sneers and adjectives in which nothing was clear except the filthy malice of denouncing without considering proof necessary."
3
"The unflattering reviews are painful for short periods of time; the badly written ones are deeply, deeply insulting. That reviewer took no time to really read the book."
3
"Learn to brush off criticism as easily as you brush aside hollow compliments."
3
"Even the slightest criticism of others is an impediment (hindrance) to Absolute Knowledge (Kevalgnan, Absolute Enlightenment). It also hinders Atmagnan (Knowledge of the Self), also hinders Samkit (Self-realization)."
3
"I suspect that most authors don't really want criticism, not even constructive criticism. They want straight-out, unabashed, unashamed, fulsome, informed, naked praise, arriving by the shipload every fifteen minutes or so."
3
"Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime. This completes the already strong case for allowing her to pass the rest of her natural life span as a private citizen."
3
bottom of page