Quotes About Criticism

There's no greater insult in science than to say that an argument is 'not even wrong', that it is invulnerable to disproof.

Contemporary literature, in each and every epoch, is the worst enemy of culture. A reader's limited time is wasted in reading a thousand books that blunt his critical sense and damage his literary sensibility. (I, 258)

Whoever does not understand that two perfectly contrary attitudes can both be perfectly justified ought not to engage in criticism.

In light of the majority of people today, one prefers them to speak hostile of religion

Not intelligence but vanity reproaches "intellectual isolation".

Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire. (A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him.)

Um idiota sempre encontra um idiota ainda maior para admirá-lo.

Ignorance is always ready to admire itself. Procure yourself critical friends.

He [Molière] pleases all the world, but cannot please himself.

He (Molire) pleases all the world, but cannot please himself.

A fool can always find a greater fool to admire him

Human knowledge progresses when people recognize that they may be wrong even on issues that seem certain to them. Wisdom involves openness to those who disagree with us. It is only when our ideas have been subjected to criticism and all objections considered—if necessary seeking these objections out—that we have any right to think of our judgement as better than another's.

Don't bother about what people say, mija," he told me. "Let them talk. They only prove their ignorance." I know my father's right. I also know that words have teeth. Sometimes I get tired of the bite marks.

The devil take those who first invented balls!" was his reflection. "Who derives any real pleasure from them? In this province there exist want and scarcity everywhere: yet folk go in for balls! How absurd, too, were those overdressed women! One of them must have had a thousand roubles on her back, and all acquired at the expense of the overtaxed peasant, or, worse still, at that of the conscience of her neighbour.

Flattery will get you nowhere. (In response to Wally George calling his band vile and evil.)

Criticism and Bolshevism have one thing in common. They both seek to pull down that which they could never build.

LEO MERCURÉ: The Daily Express says (the play)'s disgusting. GILDA: We should be cut to the quick if it said anything else.

The government of Israel doesn't like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

Work hard, do the best you can, don't ever lose faith in yourself and take no notice of what other people say about you.

That woman doesn't have the sense God gave a retarded flea.

In fact a lot of them I think are absolute baloney. Those Charles Olsens and people like that. At first I was interested in seeing what they were up to, what they were doing, why they were doing it. They never moved me in the way that one is moved by true poetry.

The trouble with most of us is that we'd rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.

The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism

A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send checks to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.