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Criticism Quotes

Always bring money along with your complaints.

Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only l...

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Picture of Rainer Maria Rilke
Rainer Maria RilkeLetters to a Young Poet

As long as all that is said is said against me, I feel a certain sublime assurance of success, but a...

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Picture of Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo EmersonJournals of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicte...

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More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader a...

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There is something essentially ridiculous about critics, anyway: what is good is good without our sa...

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Not much to say except to warn you not to get too serious about all this, if you want to become a wr...

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There is no, and cannot be, any situation in which we don't respect the law and the judiciary. It is...

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To those who suspect that intellect is a subversive force in society, it will not do to reply that i...

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Critics! Appalled I ventured on the name.Those cutthroat bandits in the paths of fame.

Ivanov had been a party member since 1902. Back then he had tried to write stories in the manner of ...

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I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approa...

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For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Read...

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The critic is the duenna in the passionate affair between playwrights actors and audiences - a figu...

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A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man i...

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I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that ...

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A question I have often asked is, ‘What would an inoffensive political cartoon look like?’ What woul...

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The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secul...

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Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to ...

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The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secul...

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When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? Wh...

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All I’m arguing for really is that we should have a conversation where the best ideas really thrive,...

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To point out nonepistemic motives in another’s view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, ...

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Picture of Sam Harris
Sam HarrisThe Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

The test of a good critic is whether he knows when and how to believe on insufficient evidence.

No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with w...

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To silence criticism is to silence freedom.

It was like orderin a hamburger and getting only the buns"(After Brooke White of season 7 on america...

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You sounded like Dolly parton on helium."(After kristy lee cook of season 7 on american idol,sang he...

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And, instead of pelting these babbling idiots with their own freshly toasted marshmallows, everyone ...

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Picture of Stephen King
Stephen KingOn Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what t...

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Picture of Stephen King
Stephen KingOn Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Your function as a critic is to show that it is really you yourself who should have written the book...

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To listen to critics, pro or con, and take their words to heart is to subcontract your self-esteem t...

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Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.

This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades no...

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The best criticism, and it is uncommon, is of this sort that dissolves considerations of content int...

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Picture of Susan Sontag
Susan SontagAgainst Interpretation and Other Essays

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the ...

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Picture of Susan Sontag
Susan SontagAgainst Interpretation and Other Essays

It seems this is an age of clever critics who keep bewailing the fact that there are no works worthy...

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When they first emerged in their present shape around the turn of the 18th century, the so-called hu...

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Any writer who puts his words and thoughts out into the public is going to be criticized.

[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the d...

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Criticism as a form of knowledge is capable of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and e...

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I only object when any one particular group...gets a stranglehold on American criticism and squeezes...

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Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism he...

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I want to say to the literature teacher who remains wilfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major el...

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Picture of Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le GuinThe Secret History of Fantasy

I had rather be hissed for a good verse than applauded for a bad one.

In the beginning God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favor ever s...

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Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the mo...

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Anyone who has the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of [two] facts: first, that of all g...

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A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her c...

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Would it not be wiser, then, to remit this part of reading and to allow the critics, the gowned and ...

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Picture of Virginia Woolf
Virginia WoolfThe Second Common Reader

Every author believes, when his first book is published, that those that acclaim it are his personal...

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Picture of Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir NabokovLook at the Harlequins!

The hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the best of ...

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The hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the best of ...

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Picture of W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du BoisThe Souls of Black Folk

Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of write...

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Picture of W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du BoisThe Souls of Black Folk

I repeat here what you will find in my first chapter, that the only thing that signifies to you in a...

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People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction betw...

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Analysis goes a step farther still, and assures us that those impressions of the individual mind to ...

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Picture of Walter Pater
Walter PaterThe Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution of impressions, images, sensations, that ...

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Picture of Walter Pater
Walter PaterThe Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry

Critics are biased and so are readers. (Indeed a critic is a bundle of biases held loosely togethe...

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

If the world like it not, so much the worse for them.

Picture of William Cowper
William CowperLetters of William Cowper

Only fools imply compliments. The wise man comes right out with it, point-blank. Imply criticism--un...

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Dear lady, ... dear gentleman, reader, [it's] not right ... to put down this writer on his writing ....

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The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

(Feedback) People become addicted to it. That’s why journalism is so popular, because you want to he...

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Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write...

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Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, orperhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn't know. But...

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He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

He has a right to criticize who has a heart to help.

China and the U.S. are two societies with very different attitudes towards opinion and criticism. In...

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[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of...

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This book is dedicated to Israel's constructive and nuanced critics, whose rational voices are too o...

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Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace’s objection, which stated that the machine can only do w...

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Picture of Alan Turing
Alan TuringComputing machinery and intelligence

Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace’s objection, which stated that the machine can only do w...

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Picture of Alan Turing
Alan TuringComputing machinery and intelligence

Nature gives children great emotional resilience to help them survive the oppressions of being small...

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Whenever those immersed in the bureaucratic culture of the age try to think their way through to the...

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Picture of Alasdair MacIntyre
Alasdair MacIntyreAfter Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

He liked to think of himself as a merciless vivisector probing into the palpitating entrails of his ...

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Most critics, fond of subservient artstill make the whole depend upon a part.They talk of principles...

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Picture of Alexander Pope
Alexander PopeAn Essay on Criticism

Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.

Picture of Alexander Pope
Alexander PopeAn Essay on Criticism

The factor in human life provocative of a noble discontent is the gradual emergence of a sense of cr...

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The absence of models, in literature as in life, to say nothing of painting, is an occupational haza...

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Success needs vision to see, passion to transcend, patience to withstand and the character to overco...

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The tower of success stands on the pillars of vision, action, patience and the character to withstan...

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The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.

...if anyone who speaks up to criticise something obviously evil is punished merely for speaking, ci...

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The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did'st by my side...

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Though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least will not be more than y...

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If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in ...

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If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in ...

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