Criticism Quotes

Most popular criticism quotes

Pay no attention to what the critics say; no statue has ever been put up to a critic.

motivational

He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help. - Abraham Lincoln quote.
He has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.
Pay no attention to what a critic says. No statue was ever put up for a critic.

critics

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.
— Chinese proverb

Chinese proverbs proverbs pessimism

A never-failing way to get rid of a fellow is to tell him something for his own good. - Kin Hubbard quote.
A never-failing way to get rid of a fellow is to tell him something for his own good.

funny

Don't mind criticism. If it is untrue, disregard it. If it is unfair, don't get irritated. If it is ignorant, smile. If it is justified, learn from it.
If you stop every time a dog barks, your road will never end.
— Arabian proverb

Arabian proverbs proverbs

We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us. - Virginia Satir quote.
We must not allow other people's limited perceptions to define us.

self-esteem

Do not fear when your enemies criticize you. Beware when they applaud you.

enemies

When you hear A criticize B, you learn more about A.
Never look down on people unless you are helping them up. - Jesse Jackson quote.
Never look down on people unless you are helping them up.
The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing being criticized. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quote.
The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing being criticized.
Remember that nobody will ever get ahead of you as long as he is kicking you in the seat of the pants. - Walter Winchell quote.
Remember that nobody will ever get ahead of you as long as he is kicking you in the seat of the pants.
Criticism is the disapproval of people not for having faults, but for having faults different from our own.

shortcomings

If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself, say: "Obviously he does not know me very well since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned." - Epictetus quote.
If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself, say: "Obviously he does not know me very well since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned."

shortcomings

Clean your fingers before you point at my spots. - Benjamin Franklin quote.
Clean your fingers before you point at my spots.

shortcomings

Be it true or false, what is said about people often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do. - Victor Hugo quote.
Be it true or false, what is said about people often has as much influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as what they do.

influence praise

Loss aversion is an innate flaw. Everyone who experiences emotion is vulnerable to its effects. It's part of a larger psychological phenomenon known as negativity bias, which means that, for the human mind, bad is stronger than good. This is why in marital interactions, it generally takes at least five kind comments to compensate for one critical comment. - Jonah Lehrer quote.
Loss aversion is an innate flaw. Everyone who experiences emotion is vulnerable to its effects. It's part of a larger psychological phenomenon known as negativity bias, which means that, for the human mind, bad is stronger than good. This is why in marital interactions, it generally takes at least five kind comments to compensate for one critical comment.

human nature relationships

Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment. - Dale Carnegie quote.
Criticism is futile because it puts a person on the defensive and usually makes him strive to justify himself. Criticism is dangerous, because it wounds a person's precious pride, hurts his sense of importance, and arouses resentment.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain — and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving. - Dale Carnegie quote.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain — and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.

understanding forgiveness

Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. "To know all is to forgive all." - Dale Carnegie quote.
Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness. "To know all is to forgive all."

understanding

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. - Mark Twain quote.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

judging

If it's painful for you to criticize your friends, you're safe in doing it; if you take the slightest pleasure in it, that's the time to hold your tongue.

friendship

Correction does much, but encouragement does more. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quote.
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

parenting

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.

parenting

Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with constructive praise.
Praise can give criticism a lead around the first turn and still win the race. - Bernard Williams quote.
Praise can give criticism a lead around the first turn and still win the race.

praise

A pat on the back, though only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, is miles ahead in results. - Bennett Cerf quote.
A pat on the back, though only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, is miles ahead in results.

praise

What we all tend to complain about most in other people are those things we don't like about ourselves.

judging

When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that three of his fingers are pointing at himself.

judging

Sandwich every bit of criticism between two layers of praise. - Mary Kay Ash quote.
Sandwich every bit of criticism between two layers of praise.

praise

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct. - Benjamin Disraeli quote.
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. - Elbert Hubbard quote.
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger. - Franklin P. Jones quote.
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger.

critics

Abilities wither under criticism, they blossom under encouragement. - Dale Carnegie quote.
Abilities wither under criticism, they blossom under encouragement.

encouragement ability

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art. - Kenneth Tynan quote.
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

art

They have a right to censure, that have a heart to help. - William Penn quote.
They have a right to censure, that have a heart to help.

helping others

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism. - Henri-Frédéric Amiel quote.
Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.
I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world. - Matthew Arnold quote.
I am bound by my own definition of criticism: a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.
Criticism should be a casual conversation. - Wystan Auden quote.
Criticism should be a casual conversation.
Sandwich every bit of criticism between two heavy layers of praise. - Mary Kay Ash quote.
Sandwich every bit of criticism between two heavy layers of praise.
I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure. - Djuna Barnes quote.
I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure.
It is from the womb of art that criticism was born. - Charles Baudelaire quote.
It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.
To many people ... dramatic criticism must seem like an attempt to tattoo soap bubbles.
The rule in carving holds good as to criticism—never cut with a knife what you can cut with a spoon.
What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism. - G. K. Chesterton quote.
What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but absence of self-criticism.
A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying: "Of course I do not like green cheese; I am very fond of brown sherry." - G. K. Chesterton quote.
A great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying: "Of course I do not like green cheese; I am very fond of brown sherry."
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to an unhealthy state of things. - Winston Churchill quote.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good. - C. C. Colton quote.
Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.
Fifteen years of unbroken silence...testify sufficiently to my respect for criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters. - Joseph Conard quote.
Fifteen years of unbroken silence...testify sufficiently to my respect for criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the garden of letters.
Criticism and Bolshevism have one thing in common. They both seek to pull down that which they could never build. - Noel Coward quote.
Criticism and Bolshevism have one thing in common. They both seek to pull down that which they could never build.
One of the ancient goals of criticism was called the correction of taste.
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind. - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring, a south wind, not an east wind.
The better a work, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linen. - Gustave Flaubert quote.
The better a work, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linen.
Criticism is, like philosophy and history, a sort of romance designed for those who have sagacious and curious minds, and every romance is, rightly taken, an autobiography. - Anatole France quote.
Criticism is, like philosophy and history, a sort of romance designed for those who have sagacious and curious minds, and every romance is, rightly taken, an autobiography.
The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work. - Margaret Fuller quote.
The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work.
Criticism is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
You don't have to lay an egg to know if it tastes good. - Pauline Kael quote.
You don't have to lay an egg to know if it tastes good.
Coughing in the theater is not a respiratory ailment.  It is a criticism. - Alan Jay Lerner quote.
Coughing in the theater is not a respiratory ailment.  It is a criticism.
Criticism is ... always a kind of compliment.
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly; and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship; for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him. - Michel de Montaigne quote.
We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly; and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship; for to undertake to wound or offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.

friendship

No wonder scoundrels find refuge in patriotism; it offers them immunity from criticism. - Bill Moyers quote.
No wonder scoundrels find refuge in patriotism; it offers them immunity from criticism.
Bill Moyers The Society of Professional Journalists

patriotism

Criticism is the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist's fame. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Criticism is the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist's fame.
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together. - Jean Paul quote.
Criticism often takes from the tree caterpillars and blossoms together.
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved with criticism.

praise

People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism. - Agnes Repplier quote.
People fed on sugared praises cannot be expected to feel an appetite for the black broth of honest criticism.
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
I am sorry to think that you do not get a man's most effective criticism until you provoke him.
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea. - John Updike quote.
Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.
Criticism is the rationalization of intuitive musical experience.
Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver—words like "enthralling" and "luminous." - William Zinsser quote.
Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver—words like "enthralling" and "luminous."

writing advice parts of speech

Criticism is prejudice made plausible. - H. L. Mencken quote.
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
I criticize by creation—not by finding fault. - Cicero quote.
I criticize by creation—not by finding fault.