82 Criticism Quotes To Inspire

In the realm of personal growth and creativity, criticism often plays a pivotal role. It’s a force that can either propel us forward or stifle our progress, depending on how we perceive and utilize it. This collection of the top 82 criticism quotes has been carefully curated to offer a diverse range of perspectives from renowned thinkers, artists, and leaders. Whether you're seeking motivation, reassurance, or a new way of looking at feedback, these quotes are designed to inspire and guide you on your journey. Dive in and discover the wisdom that can transform criticism from a stumbling block into a powerful tool for growth.

1. “The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.” - Joseph Heller

2. “People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.” - W. Somerset Maugham

3. “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

4. “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body; it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things. If it is heeded in time, danger may be averted; if it is suppressed, a fatal distemper may develop."[New Statesman interview, 7 January 1939]” - Winston Churchill

5. “The words with which a child’s heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

6. “When someone offers you lines like that, he must be Mephistopheles and you must be Faust. You know you shouldn't succumb to such language, but you succumb.” - William Logan

7. “To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” - Elbert Hubbard

8. “Long books, when read, are usually overpraised, because the reader wishes to convince others and himself that he has not wasted his time.” - E.M. Forster

9. “Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.” - Edith Sitwell

10. “We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. "I'm this way because my father made me this way. I'm this way because my husband made me this way." Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.” - Camille Paglia

11. “من الناس من يتخذ من المناصب الحكومية طبقات في العلم يوشك من ارتقاها مرة ألا يصعد إلية صوت ناقد” - مصطفى صبري

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

13. “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

14. “The necessity of reform mustn’t be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: “Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a reform.” That’s ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, “this, then, is what needs to be done.” It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn’t have to lay down the law for the law. It isn’t a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is.” - Michel Foucault

15. “I criticize by creation, not by finding fault.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero

16. “It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive.” - Chuck Klosterman

17. “[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

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. “If we wear our worst reviews like a backpack, they travel with us.” - Jennifer Love Hewitt

20. “Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society” - W.E.B. Du Bois

21. “If Patti Lupone was born to play Evita then Madonna was born to play Patti Lupone playing Evita.” - Buck Bannister

22. “Writers shouldn't fear criticism. Instead, they should fear silence. Criticism is healthy. It gets people thinking about your work and, even better, it gets them talking and arguing. But as for silence -- it is the greatest killer of writers. So if you hate a book and want to hurt it -- don't talk about it. And if you hate my books -- please, for God's sake, shout it from the hills! ” - Robert Fanney

23. “The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.” - Jean de La Bruyère

24. “Your function as a critic is to show that it is really you yourself who should have written the book, if you had had the time, and since you hadn't you are glad that someone else had, although obviously it might have been done better.” - Stephen Potter

25. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” - Winston S. Churchill

26. “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

27. “Ivanov had been a party member since 1902. Back then he had tried to write stories in the manner of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, or rather he had tried to plagiarize them without much success, which led him, after long reflection (a whole summer night), to the astute decision that he should write in the manner of Odoevsky and Lazhechnikov. Fifty percent Odoevsky and fifty percent Lazhecknikov. This went over well, in part because readers, their memories mostly faulty, had forgotten poor Odoevsky (1803-1869) and poor Lazhechnikov (1792-1869), who died the same year, and in part because literary criticism, as keen as ever, neither extrapolated nor made the connection nor noticed a thing.” - Roberto Bolaño

28. “Don’t criticize them; they are just what we would be under similar circumstances.” - Abraham Lincoln

29. “Yes, I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery....I hate it because of all the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that it snuffs out every year. It is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive.” - Brenda Ueland

30. “Don’t criticize what you don’t understand, son. You never walked in that man’s shoes.” - Elvis Presley

31. “In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.” - John Steinbeck

32. “Nobody kicks a dead dog” - Dale Carnegie

33. “The true reader reads every work seriously in the sense that he reads it whole-heartedly, makes himself as receptive as he can. But for that very reason he cannot possibly read every work solemly or gravely. For he will read 'in the same spirit that the author writ.'... He will never commit the error of trying to munch whipped cream as if it were venison.” - C.S. Lewis

34. “You'd challenge me and lose. You know it, I know it, but you'd still do it. Sometimes your sense of honor confuses the hell out of me.” - Seanan McGuire

35. “Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, orperhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn't know. But I amsure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.” - Aaron Copland

36. “If you say something and reject any criticism, then your words truly meant to advise yourself.” - Toba Beta

37. “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

38. “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

39. “But the greatest cause of verbicide is the fact that most people are obviously far more anxious to express their approval and disapproval of things than to describe them. Hence the tendency of words to become less descriptive and more evaluative; then become evaluative, while still retaining some hint of the sort of goodness or badness implied; and to end up by being purely evaluative -- useless synonyms for good or for bad.” - C.S. Lewis

40. “If you are ever called upon to chasten a person, never chasten beyond the balm you have within you to bind up.” - Brigham Young

41. “If we judge ourselves only by our aspirations and everyone else only their conduct we shall soon reach a very false conclusion.” - Calvin Coolidge

42. “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

43. “...and - holy shit was this song bad. It was like the singer was stabbing my ear with a dagger made of dried turds.” - David Wong

44. “Introspection precedes constructive criticism.Introspeksi mendahului kritik yang membangun.” - Toba Beta

45. “Goya’s savage verve, his harsh, brutal genius, captivated Des Esseintes. On the other hand, the universal admiration his works had won rather put him off, and for years he had refrained from framing them, for fear that if he hung them up, the first idiot who saw them would might feel obliged to dishonour them with a few inanities and go into stereotyped ecstasies over them.” - Joris-Karl Huysmans

46. “A lot of people who find out about the things I do immediately figure I'm just a pathetic "druggie" with nothing to say that is worth hearing. They talk endless bull shit of "recovery!" They make it sound like some amazing discovery...don't they know I'm far too busy trying to recover me?” - Ashly Lorenzana

47. “The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.” - Criss Jami

48. “لله درّ من قال:وليس بناج من مقالة طاعنولو كنت في غار على جبل وعر ومن ذا الذي ينجو من الناس سالماًولو غاب عنهم بين خافيتي نسر Nor could I ever escape from abuse, Even were I in a cave in a rugged mountain; For who can escape from the people unharmed, Even if he hides behind the eagle's wings?” - Muhammad Naasir-ud-Deen al-Albaani

49. “نحن لا يمكن أن نجبر فناناً على أن يعمل بخلاف ما تمليه عليه طبيعته وإلا كنا نجبره على التصنع والتكلف، وهذا شر لا يمكن أن يؤذي الأدب والفن، والمسألة في غاية البساطة مع ذلك، فإذا كنا نتيح للفنان حريته كاملة، فنحن أيضاً أحرار في تقييمنا للأعمال الفنية، فلا نمنح تقديرنا إلا لمن يقدم لنا العمل الفني الكامل، وهو العمل الفني الرفيع فنياً النافع إنسانياً واجتماعياً” - توفيق الحكيم

50. “In the past few years, more and more passionate debates about the nature of SFF and YA have bubbled to the surface. Conversations about race, imperialism, gender, sexuality, romance, bias, originality, feminism and cultural appropriation are getting louder and louder and, consequently, harder to ignore. Similarly, this current tension about negative reviews is just another fissure in the same bedrock: the consequence of built-up pressure beneath. Literary authors feud with each other, and famously; yet genre authors do not, because we fear being cast as turncoats. For decades, literary writers have also worked publicly as literary reviewers; yet SFF and YA authors fear to do the same, lest it be seen as backstabbing when they dislike a book. (Small wonder, then, that so few SFF and YA titles are reviewed by mainstream journals.) Just as a culture of sexual repression leads to feelings of guilt and outbursts of sexual moralising by those most afflicted, so have we, by denying and decrying all criticism that doesn’t suit our purposes, turned those selfsame critical impulses towards censorship.Blog post: Criticism in SFF and YA” - Foz Meadows

51. “Context is everything in both narrative and real life, and while the accusation is never that these creators deliberately set out to discriminate against gay and female characters, the unavoidable implication is that they should have known better than to add to the sum total of those stories which, en masse, do exactly that. And if the listmakers can identify the trend so thoroughly – if, despite all the individual qualifications, protests and contextualisations of the authors, these problems can still be said to exist – then the onus, however disconnected from the work of any one individual, nonetheless falls to those individuals, in their role as cultural creators, to acknowledge the problem; to do better next time; perhaps even to apologise. This last is a particular sticking point. By and large, human beings tend not to volunteer apologies for things they perceive to be the fault of other people, for the simple reason that apology connotes guilt, and how can we feel guilty – or rather, why should we – if we’re not the ones at fault? But while we might argue over who broke a vase, the vase itself is still broken, and will remain so, its shards ground into the carpet, until someone decides to clean it up.Blog Post: Love Team Freezer” - Foz Meadows

52. “To point out nonepistemic motives in another’s view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, as it serves to cast doubt upon a person’s connection to the world as it is.” - Sam Harris

53. “...like the emperor striding confidently along without clothes, convinced by them and their inward monitions that their criticism is effecting changes in society.” - Samuel Pickering

54. “Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” - Neil Gaiman

55. “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

56. “People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need.” - Gary Chapman

57. “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

58. “Insofar as the theorist wins, therefore, by constructing an increasingly closed and terrifying machine, to that very degree he loses, since the critical capacity of his work is thereby paralysed, and the impulses of negation and revolt, not to speak of those of social transformation, are increasingly perceived as vain and trivial in the face of the model itself.” - Fredric Jameson

59. “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

60. “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

61. “I discovered very quickly that criticism is a form of optimism, and that when you are silent about the shortcomings of your society, you're very pessimistic about that society. And it's only when you speak truthfully about it that you show your faith in that society.” - Carlos Fuentes

62. “Often those that criticise others reveal what he himself lacks.” - Shannon L. Alder

63. “When...did it become irrational to dislike religion, any religion, even to dislike it vehemently? When did reason get redescribed as unreason? When were the fairy stories of the superstitious placed above criticism, beyond satire? A religion was not a race. It was an idea, and ideas stood (or fell) because they were strong enough (or too weak) to withstand criticism, not because they were shielded from it. Strong ideas welcomed dissent.” - Salman Rushdie

64. “Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.” - Frank Howard Clark

65. “Bad art is always basically creepy; that is its first and most obvious identifying sign” - John Gardner

66. “Who do you spend time with? Criticizers or encouragers? Surround yourself with those who believe in you. Your life is too important for anything less.” - Steve Goodier

67. “Richard Wright, a Mississippi-born negro, has written a blinding and corrosive study in hate. It is a novel entitled "Native Son".” - David L. Cohn

68. “I have tonight begun reading a stupid, shitty book by Kerouac called Big Sur, and I would give a ball to wake up tomorrow on some empty ridge with a herd of beatniks grazing in the clearing about 200 yards below the house. And then to squat with the big boomer and feel it on my shoulder with the smell of grease and powder and, later, a little blood.” - Hunter S. Thompson

69. “If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good” - Ezra Pound

70. “If yourhands are tied towardsanyone who's in need ofa helping hand, let yourtangue also be tied” - Nathanael Kanyinga

71. “Hem,' he said, and I knew he was a critic now, since, in conversation, they put your name at the beginning of a sentence rather than at the end.” - Ernest Hemingway

72. “I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God’s sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that’s the truth. We were bored. We intellectuals. Because you can't read all day and all night. You can't write all day and all night. Splendid isolation has never been our style...” - Roberto Bolaño

73. “You have to lift a person up before you can really put them in their place.” - Criss Jami

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

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

76. “Though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result” - Anne Brontë

77. “Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.” - Idries Shah

78. “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

79. “Es gibt Menschen, die es zeitlebens einem Bettler nachtragen, daß sie ihm nichts gegeben haben.” - Karl Kraus

80. “I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a spirit of approval than under a spirit of criticism.” - Charles Schwab

81. “I don't want to make people mad. I just... well, how can people get better if you don't tell them what you honestly think?” - Brandon Sanderson

82. “Okay, let's put this another way―if what you're about to say wouldn't look good permanently engraved on your tombstone, bite your tongue.” - Richelle E. Goodrich