Critics Quotes

“The mob is the most deadly of all critics in that it thinks critically only towards critical thinkers.”
― Criss Jami

“my god," they will say, "all Chinaski writes about
are cats!"
"my god," they used to say, "all Chinaski writes about
are whores!"
the complainers will complain and keep buying my
books: they love the way I irritate them.”
― Charles Bukowski, On Cats

“You say my performance was great. Did you come up with that conclusion observing me or the audience?”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“This applause is a plagiarism. Yesterday another audience applauded in exactly the same manner.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“Structuralists, formalists, linguistic philosophers who tell us that works of art are like trees-simply objects for perception-all avoid on principle the humanistic questions: who will this work of art help? what baby is it squashing? The business of criticism has become definition, morality reduced to the positivist ideal of clarity. The trouble is that clarity on the wrong subject can be dangerously misleading, as when we define Count Fosco's crocodile as a smiling animal weighing four hundred pounds.”
― John Gardner, On Moral Fiction

“Upon returning, the bloody, wounded warrior needs only to laugh at the spotless, armchair critic.”
― Criss Jami

“Never let critics pour misery into your cup.
Never let doubters place hesitation in your steps.
Never let cheaters plant suspicion in your heart.
Never let bullies provoke fear in your chest.
Never let evil pierce hatred in your soul.
Never let rivals play games in your head.
Never let slackers pull taut on your reins.
Never let hardships put worry in your rest.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year

“People often miss out on human genius because they're trying to be more perfect than the gods.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“Worry about your own sins, karma won't ask you about mine.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Don't overestimate yourself because of compliments and don't underestimate yourself because of criticism.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Advice is often free but context worth a king's ransom”
― Abhysheq Shukla, KISS Life "Life is what you make it"

“Critics and scholars have always been suspicious of popular success; often their suspicions are justified. In other cases, these suspicions are used as an excuse not to think. No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person. Give smart people half a chance and they'll ship their oars in drift.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Critics are like, oh it's a brilliant book but if the writer had tightened up the plot a bit more and used less winding phrases, it would've been much better.

Really? Why the hell didn't you write that book then?”
― Nitya Prakash

“Critics established the right to say whatever they pleased about the dead. It is an absolute power, and the corruption that comes with it, very often, is an atrophy of the moral imagination. They move onto the living because they can no longer feel the difference between the living and the dead. They extend over the living that license to say whatever they please, to ransack their psyche and reinvent them however they please. They stand in front of classes and present this performance as exemplary civilized activity—this utter insensitivity towards other living human beings. Students see the easy power and are enthralled, and begin to outdo their teachers. For a person to be corrupted in that way is to be genuinely corrupted.”
― Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

“Never argue with your critics if they attack you emotionally while working on your dream goal rather stay focused on it without taking their opinion personally because the best revenge is a massive success.”
― Dhiraj Kumar Raj, Attracting A Specific Person: How to Use the Law of Attraction to Manifest a Specific Person, Get Back Your Ex and Manifest a Vibrant Relationship.

“Comedians are the most ruthless critics in the world.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“No one has ever questioned the credentials of a critic who writes a rave notice.”
― Art Buchwald, Leaving Home

“The philosophy of a critic or historian can be described not only in terms of what he perceives, but also in terms of what he fails to see.”
― Bonta

“Whether we regard someone’s opinion as a fact or as an opinion depends on whether they are criticizing or complimenting us.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Occasional criticism is better than the constant admiration.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“Accept both criticism and compliments because a rainbow needs both sun and rain to reveal itself.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“The most spectacular successes arise from those sacred dreams that have been repeatedly bludgeoned by their critics and who’s refusal to fall bludgeons the critics.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The great revenge is to outlive your critics.”
― John Connolly

“Мені пощастило зустріти в житті різних видатних і досвідчених особистостей — світових лідерів, інвесторів, музикантів, астронавтів, спортсменів, професорів, підприємців, артистів та письменників, лікарів-новаторів і дослідників [...]. Ось чого я навчилася у них: всі вони зустрічали скептиків. Декого й досі супроводжує чималий натовп критиків, яких вистачило б, аби заповнити стадіон. І вони за найменшої похибки кричатимуть: "Ми ж казали, ми ж попереджали!". Цей галас ніколи не стихне, проте найуспішніші особистості, яких я знаю, навчилися жити з цим, навчилися спиратися на людей, які в них вірять, і завдяки цьому вони й далі посуваються вперед, до своєї мети.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“But, of course, as everyone knows who has ever heard a piece of gossip, we do not “own” the facts of our lives at all. This ownership passes out of our hands at birth, at the moment we are first observed. The organs of publicity that have proliferated in our time are only an extension and a magnification of society’s fundamental and incorrigible nosiness. Our business is everybody’s business, should anybody wish to make it so. The concept of privacy is a sort of screen to hide the fact that almost none is possible in a social universe. In any struggle between the public’s inviolable right to be diverted and an individual’s wish to be left alone, the public almost always prevails. After we are dead, the pretense that we may somehow be protected against the world’s careless malice is abandoned. The branch of the law that putatively protects our good name against libel and slander withdraws from us indifferently. The dead cannot be libelled or slandered. They are without legal recourse..”
― Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

“yet one animal food critic in particular commented that his dish had a certain ‘je ne sais’, but all that was missing was the ‘quoi’.”
― J.S. Mason, The Ghost Therapist...And Other Grand Delights

“The purpose of criticism is to tell you what you do not have or cannot control.”
― Chinmai Swamy

“Many authors never read their works after publishing. The reader in them might be disappointed.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“A common-place critic has something to say upon every occasion, and he always tells you either what is not true, or what you knew before, or what is not worth knowing. He is a person who thinks by proxy, and talks by rote. He differs with you, not because he thinks you are in the wrong, but because he thinks somebody else will think so. Nay, it would be well if he stopped here; but he will undertake to misrepresent you by anticipation, lest others should misunderstand you, and will set you right, not only in opinions which you have, but in those which you may be supposed to have.”
― William Hazlitt

“Suppose there is a very hungry and weak dog. And then there is a healthy dog. If you go to feed them, which one is more likely to bite you? The hungry and weak one. Those who bark and bite you are actually in dire need of help. Don't curse them further. They are already cursed.”
― Shunya