Quotes About Criticism

Despite being the target of so much public obloquy, Rockefeller seemed fearless.

He had prevailed in almost every major program he had sponsored—whether the bank, assumption, funding the public debt, the tax system, the Customs Service, or the Coast Guard—despite years of complaints and bitter smears.

Washington frowned upon these Puritan descendants as greedy, sanctimonious hypocrites, telling Joseph Reed that "there is no nation under the sun (that I ever came across) pay greater adoration to money than they do.

If Senior tried to shut out his critics, Junior was hypersensitive to insinuations about his father.

By remaining silent in the face of criticism, he thought he would seem confident and secure in his integrity—in fact, he seemed guilty and arrogantly evasive.

Los escritores solemos pensar que nuestros libros son lo mejor que nosotros somos y, si eso lo desprecian, ¿cómo no van a despreciarte a ti, que eres mucho peor que tus obras?

The heart of their [Walsingham Witnesses] religion seemed to lie in disproving the religion of others.

Having a negative self-image or a negative body image is like always having a gate-crashing critic watching the events of your life as they unfold.

In an epoch of criticism ideals are lowered; other feelings take the place of veneration, respect, adoration, and wonder. Our own age thrusts these feelings further and further into the background, so that they can only be conveyed to man through his every-day life in a very small degree.

He who rebukes the World is rebuked by the World

what's the point in beating yourself up when other people will do it for you?

You're a hidjus old pollywobble!

I never liked to just absorb something somebody else created. I'm too self-conscious, and too critical, I guess, and it always felt like I was wasting time. But after you went away... well, it started to feel like time was wasting me. Every tick of the second hand was like a needle in my skin. Tick, tick, tick...

She was an ordinary person. But by 'ordinary' I just mean that she didn't have any need to dramatize herself. It's not a criticism. I don't think of the urge to perform as something that adds to a person's character. If anything, it's a defect, especially when it's coupled with a need to compete.

That the strength of Europe and of its culture, in contrast to other cultures, lies in its bent for criticism, above all, for self-criticism—in its art of analysis and inquiry, in its endless seeking, in its restlessness.

The slaves of paltriness, the frogs in life's swamp, will naturally cry out, "Such a love is foolishness. The rich brewer's widow is a match fully as good and respectable." Let them croak.

Dean Bloch introduces the article he writes against me in No. 94 of this newspaper by referring to another article written against me earlier in the same paper by an anonymous author, whose article Dean Bloch (an obsequious Basil) recognizes appreciatively in the strongest and most deferential terms as what might be called a leading article. And there is something in that, for it leads astray

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. [ Defend the right to be offended ( openDemocracy , 7 February 2005)]

When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name. (Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)

The moment you say an idea system is sacred, whether it's a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted, or in which they have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted, is absurd... The moment you say that an idea system is sacred, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

negative feedback is good medicine for a company even when it is unfounded.