Critic Quotes

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 them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

I have never been a critic of science fiction as a whole.

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic isn't.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.

Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.

Any critic is entitled to wrong judgments, of course. But certain lapses of judgment indicate the radical failure of an entire sensibility.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

My son is a harsh critic.

So being a harsh critic I know what I need to work on between now and the Open. It's getting out there, hitting a lot of loose shots, a lot of loose forehands. And if I can do that I'm going to be looking good for the Open.

There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.

He's always been his toughest critic. He'll grade out at 97 percent and he's sitting there worrying about the 3 percent he did wrong. That's what makes great athletes and great people, in general, when you're worried about getting better. You're aiming at perfection.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

The critic I liked best to sit next to was an ill-dressed young man with a large red beard. His name was Shaw - George Bernard Shaw.

Common sense is just as good a critic of the lottery as any statistical breakdown.

I won't quit until I get run over by a truck, a producer or a critic.

I'm my own worst critic. If I had a 20-point game, I felt I could have had 30 or 40. I just did not play at the level that I expected.

I'm my own worst critic.

I'm not trying to convert you. You're going there almost like a critic. ... If you happen to get converted, that's off the clock.