Best Critics Quotes

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing and be nothing.

Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

America is a nation of believers, dreamers and strivers that is being led by a group of censors, critics, and cynics.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Be an encourager. The world has plenty of critics already.

The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.

The more we refuse to buy into our inner critics – and our external ones too – the easier it will get to have confidence in our choices, and to feel comfortable with who we are.

I have found it advisable not to give too much heed to what people say when I am trying to accomplish something of consequence. Invariably they proclaim it can’t be done. I deem that the very best time to make the effort.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

The final proof of greatness lies in being able to endure contumely without resentment.

I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior FBI-men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep-hole and missing laundry list school. … Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering.

Most of all, however, critics of black conservatives say we’ve forgotten where we came from. I may forget a federal budget number or, God forbid, to set the alarm clock for my weekly 6 a.m. flight to Washington, but I know exactly where I came from.

Well, all’s fair in love, war and fooling the critics.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

The critics and the reviewers are more frightening than anything else!

Why do critics make such an outcry against tragicomedies? is not life one?

I grow in worth, and wit, and sense, Unboding critic-pen, Or that eternal want of pence, Which vexes public men.

The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren’t aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.

A louse in the locks of literature.

If critics and fanboys weren’t suckers for simplistic nihilism and high-pressure marketing, Afterlife would be universally acclaimed as a visionary feat, superior to Inception and Avatar on every level.

To be a fashion critic is easy because you just say, ‘I love it, I hate it,’ but life is more than love and hate.

The critics. When they’re right, they’re right for the wrong reasons. And they’re usually wrong.

As the great naturalist Charles Darwin saw clearly, individual and collective interests often coincide, as in the invisible hand narrative. But he also saw that in many other cases, interests at the two levels are squarely in conflict, and that in those cases, individual interests generally trump. That simple observation suggests that market failure is often the result not of insufficient competition (the traditional charge from social critics on the Left), but of the very logic of competition itself.

The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.

A literary critic is someone who can’t write, but who loves to show he would have been a wonderful writer if only he could!

The critics don’t interest me because they’re concerned with what’s past and done, while I’m concerned with what comes next.

The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

Advice to a new writer: There are no rules in this profession. Do what is good for you. Read books and watch films that stimulate your writing. In your writing, go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is; go where the excitement is. Believe in your own original approach, voice, characters, story. Ignore critics. Have nerve. Be stubborn.

The writer works on the inside and the critic works on the outside. I don’t know what it looks like on the outside, sometimes. It’s not that I’m not interested-it’s not where I live. I live inside the story.

No man ever got very high by pulling other people down. The intelligent merchant does not knock his competitors. The sensible worker does not work those who work with him. Don’t knock your friends. Don’t knock your enemies. Don’t knock yourself.

If the press really thinks Obama is Lincoln, they ought to treat him like they treated Bush, ’cause that’s how they treated Lincoln. His critics compared Lincoln to an ape; they called him an illiterate baboon.

Did some more sober critics come abroad? If wrong, I smil’d; if right, I kiss’d the rod.