52 Critics' Quotes

In a world overflowing with opinions and reviews, discerning which critiques to trust can be quite the task. Whether you're seeking validation for a favorite film, uncovering hidden gems in literature, or simply looking to enrich your cultural palate, critics' quotes offer a window into expert perspectives. In this curated collection, we've gathered the top 52 quotes from renowned critics, each providing unique insights and thoughtful reflections. So, prepare to delve into a treasure trove of discerning voices that capture the essence of exceptional art and entertainment.

1. “How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.” - Benjamin Disraeli

2. “Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.” - Jeffrey Robinson

3. “As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.” - Kurt Vonnegut

4. “A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, and in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man's distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: 'This tower is most interesting.' But they also said (after pushing it over): 'What a muddle it is in!' And even the man's own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: 'He is such an odd fellow! Imagine using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? he had no sense of proportion.' But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

5. “Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs."[Time Magazine, October 31, 1977]” - John Osborne

6. “In criticism, I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.” - Edgar Allan Poe

7. “Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you’ve got a pretty neck” - Eli Wallach

8. “Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art” - David Toop

9. “Authors are far closer to the truths enfolded in mystery than ordinary people, because of that very audacity of imagination which irritates their plodding critics. As only those who dare to make mistakes succeed greatly, only those who shake free the wings of their imagination brush, once in a way, the secrets of the great pale world. If such writers go wrong, it is not for the mere brains to tell them so” - Gertrude Atherton

10. “Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none.” - Robert A. Heinlein

11. “Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.” - P.G. Wodehouse

12. “Some people have been unkind. If I say I want to grow as an actress, they look at my figure. If I say I want to develop, to learn my craft, they laugh. Somehow they don't expect me to be serious about my work.” - Marilyn Monroe

13. “Whatever is produced in haste goes hastily to waste.” - saadi

14. “Actions lie louder than words.” - Carolyn Wells

15. “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 Cortazar

16. “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 Cortazar

17. “The uncreative will always waste their energies on the impossible. Be unable to recognize the boundaries, how much of the spiritual the objects can bear and assume.” - Carl Einstein

18. “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

19. “That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.” - Jonathan Swift

20. “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

21. “This is what is known as perspective, and it is a swindle.” - Kurt Schwitters

22. “Not a moment passes these days without fresh rushes of academic lemmings off the cliffs they proclaim the political responsibilities of the critic, but eventually all this moralizing will subside.” - Harold Bloom

23. “It is a thing of no great difficulty to raise objections against another man's oration, it is a very easy matter; but to produce a better in it's place is a work extremely troublesome.” - Plutarch

24. “Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody.” - Abraham Lincoln

25. “Critics are our friends, they show us our faults.” - Benjamin Franklin

26. “Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.” - Brenda Ueland

27. “Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.” - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

28. “I have spent a good many years since―too many, I think―being ashamed about what I write. I think I was forty before I realized that almost every writer of fiction or poetry who has ever published a line has been accused by someone of wasting his or her God-given talent. If you write (or paint or dance or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all.” - Stephen King

29. “Sharks are workers like the critics remoras.” - Miguel Ángel Sáez Gutiérrez «Marino»

30. “I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.” - Leonard Bernstein

31. “There is, perhaps, no more dangerous man in the world than the man with the sensibilities of an artist but without creative talent. With luck such men make wonderful theatrical impresarios and interior decorators, or else they become mass murderers or critics.” - Dame Edna Everage

32. “[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

33. “The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.” - Oscar Wilde

34. “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

35. “The devil's happy when the critics run you off.” - Criss Jami

36. “Hate the critics? I have nothing but compassion for them. How can one hate the crippled, the mentally deficient, and the dead?” - Ronald Harwood

37. “Before cruelly vilifying them from a great height, the mudslingers at newspapers and journals should bear in mind that all artistic endeavors were by and large a mixture of effort and imagination, the embodiment of a solitary endeavor, of a sometimes long-nurtured dream, when they were not a desperate bid to give life meaning.” - Félix J. Palma

38. “Hell, I suppose if you stick around long enough they have to say something nice about you.” - Ava Gardner

39. “Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.” - Edward Abbey

40. “Often people that criticise your life are usually the same people that don't know the price you paid to get where you are today. True friends see the full picture of your soul.” - Shannon Alder

41. “Ultimately one has to pity these poor souls who know every secret about writing, directing, designing, producing, and acting but are stuck in those miserable day jobs writing reviews. Will somebody help them, please?” - David Ives

42. “The man is in his work,read it if you want to know about him.” - R.M. Engelhardt

43. “Critasism is just a way of saying i'm jelous of your talents” - Rayvon L. Browne

44. “Genius feels like an over extended Helium balloon about to burst, and everyone criticizes you for not having a conventional way of coping with it.” - Solange nicole

45. “Anaemia is an illness primarily affecting characters in novels.” - Marchel Reich-Ranicki

46. “[A] writer’s most powerful weapon, his true strength, was his intuition, and regardless of whether he had any talent, if the critics combined to discredit an author’s nose for things, he would be reduced to a fearful creature who took a mistakenly guarded, absurdly cautious approach to his work, which would end up stifling his latent genius.” - Félix J. Palma

47. “The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener— a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.” - Dale Carnegie

48. “If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone?” - E.A. Bucchianeri

49. “Picture this scene. A critic arrives at the gates of heaven. 'And what did you do?' asks Saint Peter. 'Well', says the dead soul. 'I criticised things'. 'I beg your pardon?' 'You know, other people wrote things, performed things, painted things and I said stuff like, "thin and unconvincing", "turgid and uninspired", "competent and serviceable,"...you know'.” - Stephen Fry

50. “The imagination of the genius vastly surpasses his intellect; the intellect of the academic vastly surpasses his imagination” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

51. “I want to say to the literature teacher who remains wilfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major element of contemporary fiction: you are incompetent to teach or judge your subject. Readers and students who do know the field, meanwhile, have every right to challenge your ignorant prejudice. Rise, undergraduates of the English departments! You have nothing to lose but your A on the midterm!” - Ursula K. Le Guin

52. “Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley