Quotes About Criticism

There is a danger in becoming an overly perfected meat eater only—a person who becomes spiritually fat on the meat and can become critical of a church or believer who is not on the same level of the deeper knowledge he or she is experiencing. This becomes pride.

When a writer tells you his novel has received mixed reviews, it means that after his book was trashed and his heart broken in every newspaper and magazine in America, the weekend critic at the Pekin Daily Times said it was a heart-pounding race to the finish.

It is the nature of humankind to idealize, to indulge in excessive praise as well as unjust condemnation.

the Enlightenment has been held responsible for the evils of the modern age, and much scorn has been directed at its supposed superficial rationalism, foolish optimism, and irresponsible Utopianism.

The Enlightenment may be summoned up in two words: criticism and power.

They found that when ideas could be criticized, the group generated more ideas and they were more creative than when either the person could be criticized or even when there was no evaluation at all.

The Praise of Folly.

There is a moral sturdiness to (hardware store owner) Charley that isn't advertised or boasted about, but is obvious to all who know him and quickly discerned by those who don't. Our country has lately been afflicted with television preachers and pundits who focus on our families while neglecting theirs. How vainglorious these critics seem, how vacuous and shallow they appear when placed alongside a man of Charley's stature.

One cannot judge by book being best seller. We all know that. Many best sellers are terrible trash.

No literary work longer than a haiku is going to be entirely without faults.

É muito difícil ler os clássicos; logo a culpa é dos clássicos. Hoje o estudante faz valer a sua incapacidade como um privilégio. Eu não consigo aprender isto, portanto alguma coisa está errada nisto. E há especialmente alguma coisa errada com o mau professor que quer ensinar tal matéria. Deixou de haver critérios - para só haver opiniões.

they'll say, 'He never recovered from that breakdown and this was the result. It had to be the breakdown--not even he was that dreadful a novelist.

None of the other famous phallocrats of Updike's generation—not Mailer, not Exley or Roth or even Bukowski—excites such violent dislike.

I was getting awfully tired of all the ranting, no matter who it came from.

The medieval scholar, Bernard of Chartres, once complained that his contemporaries were dwarfs standing on the shoulders of (classical) giants. The babbling media bobbleheads of this age are nothing less than mites clinging to the noses of cross-eyed dwarfs.

With many important exceptions, the tone of much American historical writing turned deeply negative during the early twenty-first century. It remained so as these words were written, in 2021.

Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech — the literal sacred institution of society.102

When a man or woman decides to be a champion for God, they set themselves up for a lot of heat and criticism.

A critical person seldom recognizes his own shortcomings, only those of others (Matthew 7:3).

William James, who was a professor at Harvard from 1872 to 1907 as well as a lecturer at numerous universities, is often referred to as "the father of American psychology." Yet in his lifetime, he was ridiculed for forming The American Society for Psychical Research. Unfortunately, we have a long-standing practice of criticizing those who look outside the traditional medical box.

Because what is more transfixing than the sound of people hating you?

My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.

Your trash. You're trash. Your family's trash.

Schopenhauer's saying: All great truth goes through three phases. First it is ridiculed, then violently attacked, and finally accepted as self-evident.