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Quotes about Criticism

To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
- Elbert Hubbard, US author (1856 - 1915)

CP Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.
- Dale Carnegie

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken, US editor (1880 - 1956)

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
- W. Somerset Maugham, English dramatist & novelist (1874 - 1965)

CP Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
- Kurt Vonnegut, US novelist (1922 - 2007)

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
- Edith Wharton, US novelist (1862 - 1937)

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.
- Harold Rosenberg

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.
- Henry Fielding, English dramatist & novelist (1707 - 1754)

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
- W. H. Auden, US (English-born) critic & poet (1907 - 1973)

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832)

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.
- Eleanor Roosevelt, US diplomat & reformer (1884 - 1962)

CP Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!
- Jean Sibelius, Finnish composer & patriot (1865 - 1957)

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.
- Benjamin Disraeli, British politician (1804 - 1881)

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
- Christopher Hampton

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.
- Franklin P. Jones

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.
- Native American Proverb

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.
- Zeuxis, Greek painter (~400 BC)

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."
- Richard Pryor, US movie actor & comedian (1940 - 2005)