Works of art are of an infinite solitariness, and nothing is less likely to bring us near to them than criticism. Only love can apprehend and hold them, and can be just towards them. Rainer Maria Rilke, Briefe an Einen Jungen Dichter, German Poet
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art. Harry S Truman
Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work? Edgar Degas, Degas by Himself
Don’t be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation. Paul Cezanne
Brian Sewell is a fool. For some years he seemed to have it in for me and Hockney and Kitaj. Even if he wasn’t writing about us he'd always find a way of bringing us in. He'd say, ‘So and so was a bad artist but not as bad as Hockney, Kitaj or Blake.’ Things like that. Peter Blake
Long experience has taught me that to be criticized is not always to be wrong. Anthony Eden
We must know all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty. John F Kennedy, Saturday Review October 1960
Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed – and no republic can survive. John F Kennedy, April 1961
The world have payed too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are. Henry Fielding, Tom Jones
Media criticism does exist in America. But by and large it is not citizen-based criticism designed to make media a better source of information in a democracy. Instead, it is a cynical manipulation of the discourse designed to silence even the mildest dissent from the conservative, militantly pro-corporate dogma that has come to pass for news in an era when ‘reporters’ brag about the size of their American-flag lapel pins. Robert McChesney & John Nichols
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
To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That’s just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them. Michael Parenti
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Theodore Roosevelt 23rd April 1910
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that ... They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard thirty fucking years ago. They don’t want that. Do you know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they’re coming for your social security money. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And do you know something – they’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ’cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club. And you ain’t in it! You and I are not in the big club! By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe ... what to think and what to buy. The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Good honest hard-working people ... continue – and these are people of modest means – who continue to elect these rich cocksuckers who don’t give a fuck about them. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t give a fuck about you. They don’t care about you. At all. At all. At all. George Carlin, Who Really Controls America
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world ... would do this, it would change the earth. William Faulkner
Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. Albert Einstein, letter to Jost Winteler, cited Highfield & Carter, The Private Lives of Albert Einstein
Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are incapable of forming such opinions. Albert Einstein, cited The New Quotable Einstein
The individual must not merely wait and criticise, he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves. Albert Einstein
The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change. Howard Zinn, You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness – embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. Howard Zinn
Criticism is prejudice made plausible. H L Mencken, 1880-1956
To criticize one’s country is to do it a service … Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism – a higher form of patriotism, I believe, than the familiar rituals and national adulation. J William Fulbright
Humanity’s most valuable assets have been the non-conformists. Were it not for the nonconformists, he who refuses to be satisfied to go along with the continuance of things as they are, and insists upon attempting to find new ways of bettering things, the world would have known little progress indeed. Josiah Gitt
There’s no way of criticising the critics. Orson Welles, interview The Parkinson Show 1973
A disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world. Matthew Arnold
Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life. Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism (second series 1888)
Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold. William Shenstone
Cosmopolitan critics – men who are the friends of every country save their own. Benjamin Disraeli, speech 9th November 1877
You know who the critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art. Benjamin Disraeli, Lothain, 1870
If way to a better there be, it extracts a full look at the worst. Thomas Hardy, In Tenebris II
If this sort of thing continues, no more novel-writing for me. A man must be a fool to deliberately stand up and be shot at. Thomas Hardy, on hostile reviews of Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Some laughter was heard in the back rows. Someone must have been telling jokes back there. Robert Benchley
here is less to this than meets the eye. Tallulah Bankhead, re unsuccessful revival of Maeterlinck’s Aglavaine & Selysett
I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me. Max Reger, responding to savage review by Rudolph Louis 1906
I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true. Dorothy Parker
It was written without fear and without research. Dorothy Parker, reviewing book on science