Quotes About Critique

Woman was God's second mistake.

Man of Tomorrow," my ass. Try "Man of the nineteen-fifties!

The most fertile idea of the Stoics, in my view, is their analysis of emotions as containing evaluative thoughts about what is most important for one's well-being. That view I find basically correct, though in need of a lot of further work. Their normative analysis of the emotions seems wrong to me, namely that we should get rid of them all, but they are pretty on target in their critique of anger.

In Naked Lunch, the emperors not only have no clothes, they prance through the pages as simians and purple-assed baboons.

The multi-faceted defense of a certain notion of benign mimesis both in Critical Theory and the work of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe has also attracted attention, as have certain affinities with Lacan's critique of ego psychology.

To Erasmus] I give you hearty praise and commendation on this further account-that you alone, in contrast with all others, have attacked the real thing, that is, the essential issue. You have not wearied me with those extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences and such like -trifles, rather than issues... you, and you alone have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot.

There is nothing more insufferable and poisonous on earth than a barefoot monk.

If you find holes in my book that you could drive a car through, do not be too sure they were not left there for that express purpose.

No one has ever framed a better critique of Roman imperial power than the words put into the mouths of rebels against Rome by Roman writers themselves.

London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books or the Times Literary Supplement

Writers of novels and romance in general bring a double loss to their readers; robbing them of their time and money; representing men, manners, and things, that never have been, or are likely to be.

Others beside Jane Austen have made their Eltons, though none quite so cooly as she.

In Jane Austen it was the critical faculty that would not be quieted; and that faculty in her, played on men and women.

Le Figaro's Albert Wolff,

To a small subset of the population the very fact that you are willing to stand up and speak out makes you a target for unfair critique.

In his book, Cohen referenced an old joke: What do pro wrestling and the U.S. Senate have in common? Both are dominated by overweight white guys pretending to hurt each other. He said, "The intellectual level of cable news is one step above pro wrestling." Cohen wrote that over a decade ago. Today the news is at the level of pro wrestling. This is one reason we have a WWE performer in the White House.

This is the life of the mind in the twilight of the meritocracy: cliquish, careerist, and militantly committed to the mere appearance of objectivity.

Parfümierte, wortreiche, handlungsarme Ideenromane, die deshalb von den Deutschen geliebt werden, weil dieser Mann [Thomas Mann] genauso ein Heuchler war wie sie selbst.

H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L. Mencken. There is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.

Twitter," said Manny, waving his hand. "You know what that is? Termites with microphones.

A government which is not liked by the artists is certainly a bad government, because artist sees very well what is behind the masks!

Power is not to resist the criticisms; power is to seek for something useful to use amongst the criticisms!

It's shit punk.[..] That doesn't mean I think punk is shit [...] it means that when someone plays unk ina shit-like manner, it's excruciating. So either find yourself yourself a good punk band or move on, Tom. Because it kills me to say this, but you're actually a tiny bit gifted.

Someone, maybe it was Pauline Kael, once wrote that "we all love good movies but a true cinephile is someone who totally digs talking about the worst movies they've seen.