c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings.' It is to turn the world into this world. ('This world'! As if there were any other.)The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have. 
— Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays
We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.
— Jonathan Swift
Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you’ve got a pretty neck
— Eli Wallach
A snowflake is probably quite unconscious of forming a crystal, but what it does may be worth study even if we are willing to leave its inner mental processes alone.
— Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
Now that I think about it, it seems to me that’s what Idiocy is: the ability to be enthusiastic all the time about anything you like, so that a drawing on the wall does not have to be diminished by the memory of the frescoes of Giotto in Padua.
— Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
Making judgments on films is in many ways so peculiarly vaporous an occupation that the only question is why, beyond the obvious opportunities for a few lectures fees and a little careerism at a dispiritingly self-limiting level, anyone does it in the first place.
— Joan Didion, The White Album
A lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena. A gorilla does not budge from a banana thrown at it by a monkey. A nightingale does not stop singing its beautiful song at the intrusion of an annoying woodpecker.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
As soon seek roses in December, ice in June,Hope constancy in wind, or corn in chaffBelieve a woman or an epitaphOr any other thing that’s falseBefore you trust in critics.
— George Gordon Byron
These questions of taste, of feeling, of inheritance, need no settlement. Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.
— Henry Adams
If we wear our worst reviews like a backpack, they travel with us.
— Jennifer Love Hewitt, The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt and I'm a Love-aholic
The highest level than can be reached by a mediocre but experienced mind is a talent for uncovering the weaknesses of those greater than itself.
— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
People quickly grow accustomed to being the slaves of mystery.
— Guillaume Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters
I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures; or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.
— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
If you say something and reject any criticism, then your words truly meant to advise yourself.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Herr Kafka, essen Sie keine Eier." (As one and only piece of dialog K recalls from his meeting with Rudolf Steiner - "Mr. Kafka don't eat eggs.
— Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910 1923
Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art
— David Toop
Anyone who finds himself incapable of grasping the complexities of a work hides his withdrawal behind the most superficial pretext because he has not gotten past the surface.
— Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
[If] you are ready enough to pull my knitting to pieces, but provide none of your own, the only sock is a sock in the jaw!
— J.R. Ackerley
You don’t create a diamond by rubbing it with fluffy bunny slippers. You need to apply pressure and heat. There are enough air-headed cheerleaders out there. We need more drill sergeants.
— Julie Ann Dawson
Criticism is an act of love. We can never learn those people we love, but we can learn about them in such ways as to perceive more clearly that unfathomable, mysterious core that is the source of their beauty.
— Richard L. McGuire, Passionate Attention: An Introduction to Literary Study
No-one ever built a statue of a critic.
— David Nicholls, One Day
I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me.
— Meryl Streep
No weakness of the human mind has more frequently incurred animadversion, than the negligence with which men overlook their own faults, however flagrant, and the easiness with which they pardon them, however frequently repeated.
— Samuel Johnson, The Rambler
His forward voice now is to speak well of his friend. His backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Don't think for a minute that bad publicity and endless criticism don't leave their claw marks on everyone concerned. Your friends try to cheer you up by saying lightly, "I suppose you get used to it, and ignore it." You try. You try damned hard. But you never get used to it. It always wounds and hurts.
— Ava Gardner, Ava: My Story
Now, if there were an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating then this administration would take the gold, world-records for violations of national and international law. They want another four year term to continue to alienate our allies, spend our children's inheritance and hollow out the economy. We cannot afford another Republican administration.
— Dennis Kucinich
If you love my work, you are a good critic. If you do not love my work, you are a 'not good' critic.
— Roman Payne
One does not have the right to criticize until he can do the same work without being criticized
— Amit Abraham
...it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.
— Karl Marx
The public talk -- and injuriously! -- Well! are you ignorant of the little importance of such talk? -- The public speak! -- It is not the world, it is only the despicable part of it -- only the ill-natured, who upon the smallest evidence pass rash judgements, and anticipate events, the wise wait for them and are silent.
— Joseph Boruwlaski, Memoirs of the Celebrated Dwarf, Joseph Boruwlaski, A Polish Gentleman; Containing a faithful and curious Account of his Birth, Education, Marriage, Travels, and Voyages
The truth is not that we need the critics in order to enjoy the authors, but that we need the authors in order to enjoy the critics.
— C.S. Lewis
A novel is a tricky thing to map.
— Reif Larsen, The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet
Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.
— A.E. Housman
Introspection precedes constructive criticism.Introspeksi mendahului kritik yang membangun.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
If Patti Lupone was born to play Evita then Madonna was born to play Patti Lupone playing Evita.
— Buck Bannister
To engage with criticism, is on some level, a validation of that which otherwise would go unnoticed.
— Jordan Carl Curtis
When sonneteering Wordsworth re-creates the landing of Mary Queen of Scots at the mouth of the Derwent -Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed,The Queen drew back the wimple that she wore- he unveils nothing less than a canvas by Rubens, baroque master of baroque masters; this is the landing of a TRAGIC Marie de Medicis.Yet so receptive was the English ear to sheep-Wordsworth's perverse 'Enough of Art' that it is not any of these works of supreme art, these master-sonnets of English literature, that are sold as picture postcards, with the text in lieu of the view, in the Lake District! it is those eternally, infernally sprightly Daffodils.
— Brigid Brophy, Fifty Works of English Literature We Could Do Without
If Makar Denisych was just a clerk or a junior manager, then no one would have dared talk to him in such a condescending, casual tone, but he is a 'writer', and a talentless medio
— Anton Chekhov, The Exclamation Mark
If you find yourself criticizing other people, you're probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. if they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.
— Stephen Pressfield
It is not my methodology to engage too much with critics for many reasons:- I honestly believe that my ego is not worthy of my having to defend it. There are far more important things in the ummah than me having to respond to critics.- By and large, criticism is a part of human life and nature and we have ourselves to accomplish more than just responding to what people say about us.- The best way to silence the speech of the critics it through the deafening noise of your own actions.- Criticising is the job that requires zero qualifications.
— Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi
If only it were as easy to do the work of othersas it is to criticize their performance.
— Dan Poynter
To listen to critics, pro or con, and take their words to heart is to subcontract your self-esteem to strangers. (from Workbook)
— Steven Heighton
Bosch is great because what he imagines in color can be translated into justice.
— Edward Dahlberg
If you find yourself criticizing other people, your probably doing it out of Resistance. When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. if they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.
— Stephen Pressfield
Ah, but sir,' said Lascelles, 'it is precisely by passing judgments upon other people's work and pointing out their errors that readers can be made to understand your own opinions better. It is the easiest thing in the world to turn a review to one's own ends. One only need mention the book once or twice and for the rest of the article one may develop one's theme just as one chuses. It is, I assure you, what every body else does.
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
At that shameful stage in the development of our criticism, literary abuse would overstep all limits of decorum; literature itself was a totally extraneous matter in critical articles: they were pure invective, a vulgar battle of vulgar jokes, double-entendres, the most vicious calumnies and offensive constructions. It goes without saying, that in this inglorious battle, the only winners were those who had nothing to lose as far as their good name was concerned. My friends and I were totally deluded. We imagined ourselves engaged in the subtle philosophical disputes of the portico or the academy, or at least the drawing room. In actual fact we were slumming it.
— Vladimir Odoyevsky
...like the emperor striding confidently along without clothes, convinced by them and their inward monitions that their criticism is effecting changes in society.
— Samuel F. Pickering Jr.
If, in the Judaic perception, the language of the Adamic was that of love, the grammars of fallen man are those of the legal code.
— George Steiner
Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.
— Joyce Carol Oates
Critical voices have to care about history. We have to care about the way in which things get controlled in the past because that's when the damage gets done and if we don't keep that historical memory, we will allow them to do it again next time.
— Martin Baker
Domination and critique have always formed an apparatus covertly against a common hostis: the conspirator, who works under cover, who used everything THEY give him and everything THEY attribute to him as a mask. The conspirator is everywhere hated, although THEY will never hate him as much as he enjoys playing his game. No doubt a certain amount of what one usually calls “perversion” accounts for the pleasure, since what he enjoys, among other things, is his opacity. But that isn’t the reason THEY continue to push the conspirator to make himself a critic, to subjectivate himself as critic, nor the reason for the hate THEY so commonly express. The reason is quite simply the danger he represents. The danger, for Empire, is war machines: that one person, that people transform themselves into war machines, ORGANICALLY JOIN THEIR TASTE FOR LIFE AND THEIR TASTE FOR DESTRUCTION.
— Tiqqun
[The critic] serves up his erudition in strong doses; he pours out all the knowledge he got up the day before in some library or other, and treats in heathenish fashion people at whose feet he ought to sit, and the most ignorant of whom could give points to much wiser men than he.Authors bear this sort of thing with a magnanimity and a patience that are really incomprehensible. For, after all, who are those critics, who with their trenchant tone, their dicta, might be supposed sons of the gods? They are simply fellows who were at college with us, and who have turned their studies to less account, since they have not produced anything, and can do no more than soil and spoil the works of others, like true stymphalid vampires.
— Théophile Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin
As Henry Dan Piper, one of Fitzgerald's most perceptive critics, has commented, his fiction heroes "are destroyed because they attempt to fulfill themselves through their social relationships. They cannot distinguish between social values like popularity, charm, and success, and the more lasting moral values." Their creator did make that distinction, however, and so was constantly surrounding his characters with a mist of admiration and then blowing it away.
— Scott Donaldson, Fool for Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald
A tightly woven argument is more impermeable to the frigid winds of criticism.
— Khang Kijarro Nguyen
This book is dedicated to Israel's constructive and nuanced critics, whose rational voices are too often drowned out by the exaggerations, demonizations, and hate-filled lies put forth by Israel's enemies. Criticism is the lifeblood of democracy and a sure sign of admiration for an imperfect democracy seeking to improve itself.
— Alan Dershowitz
A tightly woven argument is impermeable to the frigid winds of criticism.
— Khang Kijarro Nguyen
Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
— Aristotle
People hate to see their vices depicted, but vice is terrible and it should be depicted.
— Aubrey Beardsley
On Critique – Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t do or teach, criticize.
— Marsha Hinds
Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Criticism as a form of knowledge is capable of robbing literature not only of its own implicit and explicit ideology but of its ideas as well; it can dismiss the difficult, arduous work writers do to make an art that becomes and remains part of and significant within a human landscape.
— Toni Morrison
Anti-intellectualism is virtually our civic religion. "Critical thinking" may be a ubiquitous educational slogan—a vaguely defined skill we hope our children pick up on the way to adulthood—but the rewards for not using your intelligence are immediate and abundant.
— A.O. Scott, Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think about Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth
For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.
— Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal
...chuck-full of error, masturbation and Jesus.
— Thorndike Edward L
Most critics, fond of subservient artstill make the whole depend upon a part.They talk of principles, but notions prizeAnd all to one loved folly sacrifice.
— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
And when you are foolish enough to identify yourself as a poet, your interlocutors will often ask: A PUBLISHED Poet? And when you tell them that you are, indeed, a published poet, they seem at least vaguely impressed. Why is that? Its not like they or anybody they know reads poetry journals. And yet there is something deeply right, I think, about this knee-jerk appeal to publicity. It's as if to say: Everybody can write a poem, but has your poetry, the distillation of your innermost being, been found authentic and intelligible by others? Can it circulate among persons, make of its readership, however small, a People in that sense? This accounts for the otherwise bafflingly persistent association of Poetry and fame - baffling since no poets are famous among the general population. To demand proof of fame is to demand proof that your songs made it back intact from the dream in the stable to the social world of the fire, that your song is at once utterly specific to you and exemplary for others.
— Ben Lerner, The Hatred of Poetry
There are braying men in the world as well as braying asses; for what's loud and senseless talking and swearing, any other than braying?
— Sir Roger L'Estrange
She swallowed the ridicule & washed it down with criticism, It was far sweeter than the taste of obscurity.
— C.E. O'Grady
I know whether of not your statement is true, and you know that I know whether or not it is true, because it is about me. But do you know that your statement is true? This is what I mean by passing judgment.
— Daniel Suelo, The Man Who Quit Money
The main aim of some people is to criticize you to stop, and then they can start what you have stopped! Keep moving on in the right direction when you know deep within you where you are heading towards! Don't give up!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Shout praise and whisper criticism.
— Don Meyer
It is easy to be a Critic when you have nothing to lose by your Criticism and hard to be a whistle blower in the auditorium of the majority.
— Chuck Bridges
If you know who you are, it makes you immune to criticism
— Sunday Adelaja
Relentless criticism in childhood can internalize a parental scorn that no amount of success will silence.
— Bruce Watson
Criticism, upon the right one, surpasses and prevails, nothing since it causes a sign of self-discredit.
— Ehsan Sehgal
I only object when any one particular group...gets a stranglehold on American criticism and squeezes out anybody who doesn't conform to its own standards....The ax falls, ecumenically, on the head of anybody...who doesn't share this group's parochial preoccupations.
— Truman Capote
Not only is Donald Trump the most despised candidate ever, but many of the people who have made the most scathingly censorious criticisms of him are members of his own party. This is absolutely unprecedented in our history, and it ought to give pause to all Americans, particularly supporters of Donald Trump.
— Gizmo, The Puzzled Puppy, What Donald Trump Supporters Need to Know: But Are Too Infatuated to Figure Out
Feedback is helpful and constructive
—  criticism is hurtful and damaging.
Only a man of knowledge is capable of giving constructive criticism.
— Eraldo Banovac
Constantly seek criticism. A well thought out critique of whatever you’re doing is as valuable as gold.
— Elon Musk
The purpose of religion is tocontrol yourself, not to criticiseothers.
— Dalai Lama XIV
The most successful critics are always scribbling things in their programs, largely because it gives them an important and industrious air. Also, it is interesting to try to figure out what you've written afterward. Last week, for instance, I made a very helpful note during the second act of a drama called "They Walk Alone." "Lanchstr get face stuck 1 these nights awful if," it seemed to say.
— Wolcott Gibbs, Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs from The New Yorker
Critical feedback shared in good faith is inherently a constructive dialogue. A “critique,” a term that is both a noun and a verb, represents the systematical application of critical thought, a disciplined method of analysis, expressing of opinions, and rendering judgments.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
Turn down the volume of your negative inner voice and create a nurturing inner voice to take it’s place. When you make a mistake, forgive yourself, learn from it, and move on instead of obsessing about it. Equally important, don’t allow anyone else to dwell on your mistakes or shortcomings or to expect perfection from you.
— Beverly Engel, The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused -- And Start Standing Up for Yourself
I take criticism to heart. The words hit me literally and it hurts. It can take me a long time to recover from it.
— Tina J. Richardson, I didnt mean it that way
Not much to say except to warn you not to get too serious about all this, if you want to become a writer of fiction in the future. If you intend to become a critic, that is a Whale of another color…Playing around with symbols, even as a critic, can be a kind of kiddish parlor game. A little of it goes a long way. There are other things of greater value in any novel or story…humanity, character analysis, truth on other levels…Good symbolism should be as natural as breathing…and as unobtrusive.
— Ray Bradbury
You can’t let praise or criticism get to you. It’s a weakness to get caught up in either one.
— John Wooden
To those who suspect that intellect is a subversive force in society, it will not do to reply that intellect is really a safe, bland, and emollient thing. In a certain sense, the suspicious Tories and militant philistines are right: intellect is dangerous. Left free, there is nothing it will not reconsider, analyze, throw into question. "Let us admit the case of the conservative," John Dewey once wrote. "If we once start thinking no one can guarantee what will be the outcome, except that many objects, ends and institutions will be surely doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place." Further, there is no way of guaranteeing that an intellectual class will be discreet and restrained in the use of its influence; the only assurance that can be given to any community is that it will be far worse off if it denies the free uses of the power of intellect than if it permits them. To be sure, intellectuals, contrary to the fantasies of cultural vigilantes, are hardly ever subversive of a society as a whole. But intellect is always on the move against something: some oppression, fraud, illusion, dogma, or interest is constantly falling under the scrutiny of the intellectual class and becoming the object of exposure, indignation, or ridicule.
— Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life
You’re too sensitive’ victims of sexual abuse are told over and over by those whose reality depends on being insensitive. Most adults who have been in the victim role cringe when anyone tells them they are sensitive. In fact, sensitivity is a lovely trait and one to be cherished in any human being.
— Renee Fredrickson, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
Some reviews give pain. This is regrettable, but no author has the right to whine. He was not obliged to be an author. He invited publicity, and he must take the publicity that comes along.
— E.M. Forster
Would it not be wiser, then, to remit this part of reading and to allow the critics, the gowned and furred authorities of the library, to decide the question of the book's absolute value for us? Yet how impossible! We may stress the value of sympathy; we may try to sink our identity as we read. But we know that we cannot sympathise wholly or immerse ourselves wholly; there is always a demon in us who whispers, "I hate, I love", and we cannot silence him. Indeed, it is precisely because we hate and we love that our relation with the poets and novelists is so intimate that we find the presence of another person intolerable. And even if the results are abhorrent and our judgments are wrong, still our taste, the nerve of sensation that sends shocks through us, is our chief illuminant; we learn through feeling; we cannot suppress our own idiosyncrasy without impoverishing it.
— Virginia Woolf, The Second Common Reader
Wise parents do not criticize each other in front of their children or their friends. Nor do they talk negatively about their children when others are present. That is disloyalty.
— Alan Loy McGinnis, Balanced Life
Taste is a mystery.
— Daniel Mendelsohn
Imitation is criticism.
— William Blake
Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise followed by the word "but", which signals that the criticism is about to begin. This may make the listener questions the sincerity of the praise. Use "and" instead, and provide constructive advice rather than criticism. this is possibly the most effective ways to address an issue in written form without seeming false in your praise.
— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Who is responsible for the incredible mess the present-day generation ofAmericans find themselves in? In this book, I hope to show exactly how thishappened. A series of deadly, inexplicable decisions by our elected leadersand corporate executives have paved the way to the crisis we must deal withnow. Corruption has grown entrenched, like an inoperable disease, in nearlyevery organ of the establishment. We must heed the words of one of America’sgreatest statesmen, Thomas Jefferson: “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribedto the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at adistinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change ofministers [administrations], too plainly proves a deliberate systematic planof reducing us to slavery.” The American people have been dealing with justsuch a “series of oppressions” now for well over a century, and there canbe little doubt that it is the result of a “deliberate systematic plan.” The bestword to describe it is conspiracy.
— Donald Jeffries, Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics
Do not criticize others unless you are willing to accept criticism.
— Eraldo Banovac
I don't criticise the free choice of others, and I ask others do the same to me
— Bangambiki Habyarimana
It was always the most striking scene, the best work, the most disturbing emotion and unsettling idea that attracts criticism.
— Rafael Yglesias, The Wisdom of Perversity
I believe more youths stay out of leadership positions because of the fear of indequacy and criticisms.
— Paul Bamikole
What he imagines evokes nothing imaginary, it evokes the reality of the world that experience and reason treat in a confused manner.
— René Magritte
Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace’s objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can “inject” an idea into the machine, and that it will respond to a certain extent and then drop into quiescence, like a piano string struck by a hammer. Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is therea corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be “sub-critical,” i.e. to correspond in this analogy to pilesof sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are supercritical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole “theory” consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals’ minds seem to be very definitely sub-critical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, “Can a machine be made to be super-critical?
— Alan Turing, Computing machinery and intelligence
Let us return for a moment to Lady Lovelace’s objection, which stated that the machine can only do what we tell it to do. One could say that a man can "inject" an idea into the machine, and that it will respond to a certain extent and then drop into quiescence, like a piano string struck by a hammer. Another simile would be an atomic pile of less than critical size: an injected idea is to correspond to a neutron entering the pile from without. Each such neutron will cause a certain disturbance which eventually dies away. If, however, the size of the pile is sufficiently increased, the disturbance caused by such an incoming neutron will very likely go on and on increasing until the whole pile is destroyed. Is there a corresponding phenomenon for minds, and is there one for machines? There does seem to be one for the human mind. The majority of them seem to be "sub critical," i.e. to correspond in this analogy to piles of sub-critical size. An idea presented to such a mind will on average give rise to less than one idea in reply. A smallish proportion are supercritical. An idea presented to such a mind may give rise to a whole "theory" consisting of secondary, tertiary and more remote ideas. Animals’ minds seem to be very definitely sub-critical. Adhering to this analogy we ask, "Can a machine be made to be super-critical?
— Alan Turing, Computing machinery and intelligence
It is a poor critic who says that a lack of effect on them implies all others are insincere in their love.
— Kieron Gillen
A great truth wants to be criticized not idolized
— Friedrich Nietzsche
I repeat here what you will find in my first chapter, that the only thing that signifies to you in a book is what it means to you, and if your opinion is at variance with that of everyone else in the world it is of no consequence. Your opinion is valid for you. In matters of art people, especially, I think, in America, are apt to accept willingly from professors and critics a tyranny which in matters of government they would rebel against. But in these questions there is no right and wrong. The relation between the reader and his book is as free and intimate as that between the mystic and his God. Of all forms of snobbishness the literary is perhaps the most detestable, and there is no excuse for the fool who despises his fellow-man because he does not share his opinion of the value of a certain book. Pretence in literary appreciation is odious, and no one should be ashamed if a book that the best critics think highly of means nothing to him. On the other hand it is better not to speak ill of such books if you have not read them.
— W. Somerset Maugham, Books and You
Can anyone capable of genuinely appreciating Mozart and Mizoguchi possibly say that he is not, in that respect, immeasurably better off than someone whose cultural horizon is limited to bingo and The Black and White Minstrel Show? The assimilation will not necessarily make him a better person (a common, and obviously fallacious, assumption), but it will open to him possibilities that are closed to his less fortunate fellow humans. If that is what is meant by an "élite," then I for one shall not willingly sacrifice my membership of it in the name of some perverse and destructive egalitarianism: to put it succinctly, nothing is ever going to come between me and The Magic Flute. It is not, however, an elite from which I would wish anyone to feel excluded: on the contrary, I would like to share my advantages with as many others as possible. That is why I am a teacher.
— Robin Paul Wood
Nobody will ever tell you who praised you but everybody would want to be the first to tell you who criticized you.
— Amit Abraham
He was very good, it turned out, at outlining the flaws in the government as long as someone else was in charge of the government.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
A book can tell me anything it wants to, but I sure as shit don't have to believe it.
— Tiger Gray
All around the recognized word and the comprehended sentence, the other graphisms take flight, carrying with them the visible plenitude of shape and leaving only the linear, successive unfurling of meaning -- not one drop of rain falling after another, much less a feather or a torn-of leaf.
— Michel Foucault
Apparently Burgess shares the gutter press assumption that those who achieve fame should be made to suffer from it.
— Clive James, Cultural Cohesion: The Essential Essays
Do not seek praise. Seek criticism.
— Paul Arden
Everybody makes excuses for themselves they wouldn't be prepared to make for other people.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
We pass judgements as to merits in areas we have no competence
— Benson IV
The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoilism - a kind of pelting of pretentious literature with dung, lest the writers get above themselves; it is to the novelist what the gown of humiliation was to the Roman politician - a salutary ordeal. Less grandly, bad reviews are fun, so long as you are not the author. There is, it must be admitted, a kind of furtive blood sport pleasure in seeing a novelist suffer. You read on. Whereas most of us stop reading at the first use of the word 'splendid' or 'marvellous' in a review.
— John Sutherland
For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.
— John Sutherland
Will you read this? I think maybe it sucks. Or maybe it's awesome. It's probably awesome. Tell me it's awesome, okay? Unless it sucks." — Nick
— Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl
When I left her office, I felt like she'd gut-punched me, brushed me off, slapped me back and forth, gave me a cool compress to put on my cheeks, cold-cocked me with a stiff uppercut to the jaw, picked me up, brushed me off again, then kicked me in the seat of my pants as she handed me a piece of cake and showed me the door.Being a reporter isn't as easy as it looks.
— Christopher Paul Curtis, The Madman of Piney Woods
I’ve often been criticised, but never critically wounded
— Johnny Rich, The Human Script
Neither the student nor I would mind in the least fair criticism and correction, but no one will permit himself to suffer criticism and correction from another whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is less than the one criticized and corrected; whose knowledge and understanding of the subject is susceptible to doubt as to its true worth and validity.
— Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Comments on the Re-Examination of Al-Raniri's Hujjatu'l-Siddiq: A Refutation
Never talk to waiters like that," Kit said."Can I help it," he said, "if I only went one year to finishing school?""It isn't manners," she said like a sensible schoolteacher quietly disciplining a small boy, "it just isn't smart."I thought of the time I first told him not to say ain't. He took this the same way, a little peeved but making mental notes. I noticed he was never too much of an egotist to take criticism when he knew it would help. It was part of his genius for self-propulsion. I was beginning to see what Kit had for Sammy. Of course she stood for something never within his reach before. But it was more than that. Sammy seemed to know that his career was entering a new cycle where polish paid off. You could almost see him filing off the rough edges against the sharp blade of her mind.
— Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?
One Accuracy about criticism is that you don't ask for it but it's given to you. How you deal with it? Says a lot about you. People may criticize you for many reasons. You can't let it brake you or even elevate you. I always say; Know the limit of it, which one should be accepted and which one to be rejected.
— Maurice E Barnes
One Accuracy about criticism is that you don't ask for it but it's given to you. How you deal with it? Says a lot about you. People may criticize you for many reasons. You can let it brake you or even make it elevate you. I always say; Know the limit of it, which one should be accepted and which one to be rejected.
— Maurice E Barnes
Whenever a journalist wrote an article about him that was critical in nature... he would invite them to a meal and at first they assumed they were in trouble for being critical of him. But they soon learned after arrival at his house for a meal that he merely wanted to engage with them to get an understanding of they criticism... Madiba didn't attempt to change their minds. He would have an informed opinion after having engaged with them, and even though he occasionally changed an opinion by offering correct information, they never parted feeling hostile.
— Zelda la Grange
Relax and breathe. The trouble with imaginative people is that we're good at picturing the worst that could happen to us. Fear is often just the imagination taking a wrong turn. Bad criticism is not the end of the world. As far as I know, no one has ever died from a bad review. Take a deep breath and accept whatever comes.
— Austin Kleon, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered
Negative people will always be there to stain your pure image with their dirty tongues and brushes, but you'll always remain as white as snow, no matter how high the quality of paint they use.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
Kerouac lacks discipline, intelligence, honesty and a sense of the novel. His rhythms are erratic, his sense of character is nil, and he is as pretentious as a rich whore, sentimental as a lollypop.
— Norman Mailer
If you want to criticize someone, do not compare him with an imaginary creature but yourself.
— Alireza Salehi Nejad
Where people are not present, talking about them is either lie or ridiculous.
— Alireza Salehi Nejad
There is a kind of counter-criticism that seeks to expand the work of art, by connecting it, opening up its meanings, inviting in the possibilities. A great work of criticism can liberate a work of art, to be seen fully, to remain alive, to engage in a conversation that will not ever end but will instead keep feeding the imagination. Not against interpretation, but against confinement, against the killing of the spirit. Such criticism is itself a great art.This is a kind of criticism that does not pit the critic against the text, does not seek authority. It seeks instead to travel with the work and its ideas, to invite it to blossom and invite others into a conversation that might have previously seemed impenetrable, to draw out relationships that might have been unseen and open doors that might have been locked. This is a kind of criticism that respects the essential mystery of a work of art, which is in part its beauty and its pleasure, both of which are irreducible and subjective. The worst criticism seeks to have the last word and leave the rest of us in silence; the best opens up an exchange that need never end.
— Rebecca Solnit
People who use snark attacks confuse cleverness with cruelty.
— Debra Crown LPC-S LCDC
The point of criticism is to build you as a leader and a dimension to reflect.
— Unarine Ramaru
When you are criticised don't ignore it, but don't get overpowered by it, and certainly there is no need to be defensive about it. Rather, wait for a while and then weigh up its merits and demerits, balance it out and chart out your approaches and actions to improve. That is the right way to handle criticism, as it demonstrate your emotional maturity and will enhance your self confidence.
— Vishwas Chavan
They lost Olivia at Newport Beach. The panic made Alice hyperventilate. You were meant to be watching her, Nick kept saying. As if that were the point. That Alice had made a mistake. Not that Olivia was missing, but that it was Alice's fault.
— Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot
Don't criticise the person who talks to himself
—  maybe he's the best company available.
But to demand that a work be “relatable” expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book or movie or play: she expects the work to be done for her. If the concept of identification suggested that an individual experiences a work as a mirror in which he might recognize himself, the notion of relatability implies that the work in question serves like a selfie: a flattering confirmation of an individual’s solipsism.
— Rebecca Mead
Every author believes, when his first book is published, that those that acclaim it are his personal friends or impersonal peers, while its revilers can only be envious rogues and nonentities.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Look at the Harlequins!
Even if you do nothing, say nothing and be nothing, there will still be many who will criticize you. It is much better to be criticized for success than be condemned for failures because success rids you of the many miseries of life.
— Awdhesh Singh
Let's realise that criticisms are like homing pigeons. They always return home. Let's realise that the person we are going to correct and condemn will probably justify himself o herself, and condemn us in return.
— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Unreasonable self-criticism represents a form of self-hatred and fear.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
A critic can call any poem 'doggerel.' That is no more than a slur. 'Doggerel' or 'maudlin' or 'sappy' or 'sentimental' is in the ear of the listener. By the by, 'sentimental' is okay as it is defined as 'marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism.' It is 'sentimentality' that is to be avoided, like the fiddleback spider, being as it is 'the quality or state of being sentimental to excess or in affectation.' Again we are faced with a judgement call and must keep a sharp eye on our outpourings to insure they are not overly gooey.The intellectual elite probably believe that most of the lyrics songwriters create are 'doggerel' of one kind or another--that is to say 'trivial"......the young songwriter has now been warned about the implacable nature of the enemy. Under a rather large umbrella, preferred twentieth-century taste in art of all kinds has been characterized by a kind of detachment, or sangfroid. It is simply not chic to be carried away in one's emotional reaction to a subject. All serious communication or complaint must be carefully wrapped in a protective coating of irony and/or satire.
— Jimmy Webb, Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting
Criticism is something you can easily avoid — by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.
— Aristotle
At the behest of the criterion of authenticity, much that was once thought to make up the very fabric of culture has come to seem of little account, mere fantasy or ritual, or downright falsification. Conversely, much that culture traditionally condemned and sought to exclude is accorded a considerable moral authority by reason of the authenticity claimed for it, for example, disorder, violence, unreason.
— Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity
For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short.
— Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives
A critic must be knowledgeable in several fields, practices, and mediums. Brushing off art that they personally don't understand, is not a critique.
— Justin K. McFarlane Beau
Art is personal, criticism shouldn't be.
— Alan Dapre
Criticism involves taking a position, Mr. Day. How long has it been since you took a considered position on anything important?
— Allan Dare Pearce, Paris in April
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
There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.
— Aristotle
Every garden looks beautiful in May.' Meaning: Everyone is somewhat attractive when she's young.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Damned
You're afraid of criticism,' she says. 'But criticism is a sign of life! You know who doesn't get criticized? Nonentities! Only the dead escape criticism.
— Erica Jong, Fear of Fifty: A Midlife Memoir
I was instructed long ago by a wise editor, "If you understand something you can explain it so that almost anyone can understand it. If you don't, you won't be able to understand your own explanation." . . . Jargon is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
— Roger Ebert
If God has given you a mission, you must be tough enough to handle what people say and still not be distracted while doing what you were created to do. Are you tough enough? God and the enemy know the truth about you, and remember even great people doing great things for great causes meet negative criticisms. All criticism is not bad, just like all flattery is not good. Many times people don’t criticize you because they are evil; they do it because they have been trained to think anyone who doesn't perceive and see things in the same manner is an enemy. The critic is a prisoner to his own experiences and perspectives, erroneously believing his limited experiences are the sum of all truth. When you acknowledge your critics, you give them your power and validate their words. They are not important until you respond.
— Bishop T.D. Jakes
A depressing number of people seem to process everything literally. They are to wit as a blind man is to a forest, able to find every tree, but each one coming as a surprise.
— Roger Ebert
In the West, of course, God has been dead for some time. What remains is religion as social belief, which is at best a moral code and at worst social etiquette.
— John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
How we lavish our money and worship on Shakespeare without in the least knowing why!
— George Bernard Shaw
And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authorities [who criticize Ibsen], I reply, pointedly, that I do. I affirm that such criticisms are written by men who know as much of political life as I know of navigation. (P. 56)
— George Bernard Shaw, Dramatic opinions and essays
When people give one star ratings, they seem to be trying to make a point. In my opinion, one star ratings don't make a constructive point. They are just unfair put downs to creativity.
— Deborah Johnson