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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

Critics have said I write without spontaneity, in cold blood. I don’t. I write in hot blood.

It is better to be making the news than taking it, to be an actor rather than a critic.

hat whole phrase, daring greatly, is from the Theodore Roosevelt quote that goes back to your original question of, what about the critics? And when I read his quote it was life-changing. It’s not the critic who counts; it’s not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done the better.

It is quite cruel that a poet cannot wander through his regions of enchantment without having a critic, forever, like the old man of the sea, upon his back.

I can’t be paralyzed anymore by the critics. My new mantra is, if you’re not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, then I’m not interested in your feedback. You don’t get to sit in the cheat seat and criticize my appearance or my work with mean-spiritedness if you’re also not in the arena.

Do you light up when your kids are coming in the room or do you become the instant critic?

Many critics speak about coming-of-age love, about initiation, about young libido, and so forth. I’ve never seen it only this way. We continue to examine things ever so minutely, we interpret obsessively. We may be less bold at 40 than we were at 17, but we’re familiar with the road map; we know the bumps in the road; we recognize the sudden turns, the one-way streets, and the dead ends. And we are hurt just the same as when we were teenagers.

I do not need the musing of the philosophers to tell me what I am doing. It would be more interesting to let me know why I am doing it.

It’s not curators, it’s not critics, it’s not the public, it’s not collectors who find great artists – it’s other artists.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

I don’t have the education of an art historian. I’ve certainly read about art and look at art and have educated myself to some extent. But I’m not a skilled or thorough art historian and I wouldn’t call myself an art critic.

You hear again and again that audiences want to see movies that are different and critics say we [directors] make the same thing again and again in Hollywood, then you go and make something different and you get kicked in the gut for it.

Doing what we do [filming], you have to be your own critic and judge and adjudicate as to what you do and how it turned out.

A critic often has to play the role of coroner, dissecting a work to find out why it died (or never lived).

I never met anybody in my life who says, I want to be a critic. People want to be a fireman, poet, novelist.

I don’t mind what the critics say, so long as I get some reaction. The worst thing is to be ignored.

If I don’t practice for a day, I know it. If I don’t practice for two days, the critics know it. And if I don’t practice for three days, the public knows it.

To me, there’s a huge difference between criticism and reviewing. I really love reading good criticism of television and film. To me, a critic is someone who analyzes a show, describes it, talks about the people in it, puts it in historical context of other shows like it, compares it and stuff, and then talks about the intent of the show and whether it failed or didn’t.