Quotes about Criticism

Not the least of the problems in clarifying one's consciousness is developing the stoic determination to criticize one's own softness or sentimentality toward oneself. Ego, self-solicitous about its own tenderness, is the ultimate policeman over its own false consciousness, dementedly uprooting every healthy seedling of insight into the truth. As Kierkegaard remarked, most people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, but the real trick and task of life is to learn to be just the very opposite.

Inner change has a far greater effect on the world than any amount of criticism

When you grow and rise above the masses, you will always become a target. Just as the flower grows above the grass, it becomes a target for the nourishment of the rays of sunshine, it also becomes a target to be cut down.

The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have time to read reviews.

It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.

Those who have chosen the path of least resistance in life, who cannot bear to bring themselves to make a stern value-judgment in criticism of their own most intimate feelings, achieve what they deserve:  not self-understanding but radical self-superficialization, not a discovered but a self-ascribed identity that explains nothing, reveals nothing, means nothing, and ultimately accomplishes nothing culturally or intellectually. 

Theory does everything in its power to remove the living soul of literature, tear its heart out, make of the study of Art a hard-edged Science. Never mind that Art is as far removed from measurement as Science is from love. As writers confronting theory, it’s incumbent on us not to let our prose dry up in that desert, but to allow it to become a desert rose, our prose, flourishing in the heat and sands of what passes for knowledge.

Instead of telling the world
What it is supposed to do,
Why don’t you immediately do it yourself ?
In this way, I assure you,
Your happiness will be surprisingly multiplied.

The problem with fault-finding
Is that he who finds fault with others
Is in no way a happy person
Even after he has successfully
Accomplished his task.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

Each time we think of anothers imperfections
We must feel most sincerely
That we are misusing and losing
The most precious life-breath
Of our God-Realisation dream.

Shantideva, a sixth-century Buddhist commentator, addressed the challenge of hearing criticism in Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. He asks, "Suppose someone disparages your 'good name'?" What I had inferred from my friend's relayed message about the overheard conversation was that "Sylvia isn't doing the right thing" or "Sylvia is making a mistake." If I had followed Shantideva's advice, I would have reflectied, "Is that person correct? If her criticism isn't valid, there is a problem." Either way it need not have been a problem and need not have caused suffering. What that person said was, after all, just an idea, something to think about. I should have remembered the second Noble Turth of the Buddha, the explanation of suffering as the extra tension in the mind in response to challenge, the tension of greed or aversion rathe rthat the simplicity of clear, wise response. If my mind had not reacted with flurry to what it perceived as a challenge, the remark would have been a nonevent.

Shambhala:  [Laughing]  Actually, the most common ad hominen criticism as of late is that you are a very controlling person.  You have tried to build a huge and encompassing system because psychologically you want to control everything and everybody.

KW:  Yes, I've heard that, but only from critics who have never met me, which suggests to me that these critics are simply projecting their own shadow onto me.  Because the people who know me don't say that I am competitive or controlling.

Shambhala:  What do they say that you are?

KW:  Borderline psychotic.

Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.

You are not only a man, you are a superior man: a man who does his best to live as love in the world and in his intimacy, a man whose heart remains open and whose truth remains strong...

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway.

Any coward can sit at home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather by far die on a mountainside than in bed.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.

I do not resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it parts for the time with reality.

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

Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.

Neither praise nor blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe and honestly to award - these are the true aims and duties of criticism.

Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me - and I may not forget you

It has been said that England invented the phrase, 'Her Majesty's Opposition'; that it was the first government which made a criticism of administration as much a part of the polity as administration itself. This critical opposition is the consequence of cabinet government.

Don't criticize your wife's judgment - look whom she married.

All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

Don't mind criticism. If it is untrue, disregard it. If it is unfair, keep from irritation. It if is ignorant, smile. If it is justified, learn from it.

Criticize, generalize everyone's strange Yet you choose to refuse to try and change And through your eyes you surmise what isn't there Because your dream isn't what it seems now you don't even care.

The real aim of criticism is not the destruction of cherished traditions - although a due regard for the facts does often compel us to revise older opinions - but a fuller appreciation of the beauty and truth of the creative work on which it fixes its regard. The word "criticism" is derived from the Greek word kritikos, which means "the ability to select or discriminate," hence, to decide or judge. The meaning of criticism is thus discriminating judgment.

It's easy to criticize; it's like shooting fish in a barrel