Criticism Quotes - Page 26

• Leftists would like to pretend that any criticism of their views raises the specter of domestic repression. But in a country with a First Amendment, no suppression from government is likely, and in the citadels of the media and the academy, the far left is actually vastly overrepresented.

  Andrew Sullivan

  Country, Government, Views

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• Obviously, Jews gain certain advantages by promoting the Holocaust idea. It inspires tremendous financial aid for Israel. It makes organized Jewry almost immune from criticism. Whether the Holocaust is real or not, the Jews clearly have a motive for fostering the idea that it occurred. Not only do they have a motive, but they have the means with the media domination they now hold.

  David Duke

  Real, Mean, Israel

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• Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius.

  T. S. Eliot

  Race, Creative, Mind

  T.S. Eliot (2010). “The Waste Land and Other Poems”, p.84, Broadview Press

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• A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.

  E. M. Forster

  Artist, Creative, Critics

  E. M. Forster (2010). “Aspects of the Novel”, p.19, RosettaBooks

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• There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.

  Octavio Paz

  Art, Thinking, Healthy

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• The complaint about modern steel furniture, modern glass houses, modern red bars and modern streamlined trains and cars is that all these objets modernize, while adequate and amusing in themselves, tend to make the people who use them look dated. It is an honest criticism. The human race has done nothing much about changing its own appearance to conform to the form and texture of its appurtenances.

  E. B. White

  Race, Glasses, Car

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• There is no fate more distressing for an artist than to have to show himself off before fools, to see his work exposed to the criticism of the vulgar and ignorant.

  Moliere

  Fate, Artist, Ignorant

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• I hope that no one present will suspect me of offering my personal criticism of the Western system to present socialism as an alternative. Having experienced applied socialism in a country where the alternative has been realized, I certainly will not speak for it. The well-known Soviet mathematician Shafarevich, a member of the Soviet Academy of Science, has written a brilliant book under the title Socialism; it is a profound analysis showing that socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Country, Book, Offering

  A World Split Apart, delivered 8 June 1978, Harvard University

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• Taking to pieces is the trade of those who cannot construct.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Pieces, Trade, Constructs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1843-1871”, p.73, University of Georgia Press

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• We resent all criticism which denies us anything that lies in our line of advance.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Lying, Lines, Deny

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1848). “Essays, Orations and Lectures”

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• Everything is bilateral in the domain of thought. Ideas are binary. Janus is the myth of criticism and the symbol of genius. Only God is triangular!

  Honore de Balzac

  Ideas, Genius, Domain

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• It is essential for the good of criticism that both the critic and the public face the fact that a review is not the voice of God.

  Judith Crist

  Voice, Essentials, Faces

  "Judith Crist: The Lady Has No Respect" by William Rice in The Tuscaloosa News (p. 10), November 23, 1968.

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• You must not pay a person a compliment, and then straightway follow it with a criticism.

  Mark Twain

  Pay, Compliment, Persons

  Mark Twain (1972). “Everyone's Mark Twain”

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• Artists reproduce themselves or each other, with wearisome iteration. But criticism is always moving on, and the critic is always developing.

  Oscar Wilde

  Moving, Artist, Critics

  Oscar Wilde (1969). “The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde”, p.390, University of Chicago Press

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• Imitation is criticism.

  William Blake

  Artistic, Imitation

  William Blake (1966). “Complete Writings: With Variant Readings”, p.453, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.

  Gore Vidal

  Description, Critics, Reports

  Gore Vidal (2002). “The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000”, p.25, Vintage

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• I have one criticism about the Negro troops who fought under my command in the Korean War. They didn't send me enough of them.

  Douglas MacArthur

  War, Troops, Korean

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• It is folly to censure him whom all the world adores.

  Publilius Syrus

  World, Adore, Folly

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• If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Age, Complaining

  Jonathan Swift (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Jonathan Swift (Illustrated)”, p.899, Delphi Classics

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• With an artist no sane man quarrels, any more than with the colour of a child's eyes.

  George Santayana

  Children, Eye, Artist

  George Santayana, Martin A. Coleman (2009). “The Essential Santayana: Selected Writings”, p.312, Indiana University Press

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• Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Art, Loneliness, Littles

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• He who first praises a book becomingly is next in merit to the author.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Book, Next, Firsts

  Walter Savage Landor (1824). “Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and Statesmen”

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• When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.

  Ben Hecht

  Money, Blessing, People

  "A child of the century".

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• Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about this process. I joke about it: My kids have made me a better person, and I only need, like, 34 more of them to be a really good guy.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Kids, People, Creative

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• A good critic is the sorcerer who makes some hidden spring gush forth unexpectedly under our feet.

  Francois Mauriac

  Spring, Feet, Critics

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