Quotes About Critique

Here we write well when we expose frauds and hypocrites. We are great at counting warts and blemishes and weighting feet of clay. In expressing love, we belong among the underdeveloped countries.

Flannery O'Connor—it's right, but it ain't right enough.

we must learn to distinguish moral discernment from personal condemnation.2 This distinction—the ability to know what is good from what is bad and to be able to discern the difference versus the posture of condemning another person—enables us to see what Jesus prohibits in this passage.

I keep hearing the argument that some things are constitutional while other things are not. The idea is that we should be in favor of all the things that were decided over two hundred years ago by a bunch of slave-owning cross-dressers who pooped in holes.

For every awkward debate on a P2, there was often a private Skype chat where it was resolved. Matt set good examples for praising in public and critiquing in private.

There must be someone challenging ideas in ways their creators don't necessarily like in order for those creators to see the blind spots in their thinking. Breakthroughs await in those blind spots.

You must be true to yourself—however, if you have a dozen editors tell you that something is a cliché, trite, or overdone, it probably is, and you need to step back and take a look at your work.

Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience.

It's hard to be reverent today when directors make films that are not as good. There will be time later, though, when their lesser films are forgotten and just focus on the greatness.

I'm honest about expressing my opinions. At the same time, I'm diplomatic in how I do critique things if I have a negative response.

I don't know if everybody does, but I have a really hard time listening to myself on recordings, unless we've spent weeks and weeks and weeks listening and mixing.

We should be wrong to demand that a critic must stay on the point all the time; it is enough if he remains in orbit around it.

There is no 'perfect' in music. If I ever came off the stage and felt it could not be better, it would then be time to quit.

The argument of those who are being criticized at any time, the civil rights movement forward, the anti-war movement forward, is, it's always outside agitators doing it.

Every time another review comes out I let out a deep breath.

To me [Edgar Allan Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.

There are some few people I respect and admire, but I don't think much of the species.

There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Fenimore Cooper could write English, but they are all dead now.

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.

There are times when I would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

The best cure for Christianity is reading the Bible. –Mark Twain

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.

Warum wimmelt es nicht von Büchern, die Hohn und Spott über diese jämmerliche Welt, das sinnlose All, die gewalttätige, niederträchtige Menschheit ausgießen und die ganzen lumpigen Zustände der Lächerlichkeit preisgeben? Merkwürdig, Millionen von Menschen sterben jedes Jahr mit diesen Gefühlen im Herzen. Weshalb schreibe ich nicht so ein Buch? Weil ich eine Familie zu ernähren habe. Deshalb.

What ought to be done to the man who invented the celebrating of anniversaries? Mere killing would be too light.