Top 66 Bad Criticism Quotes
#1. It's a healthy thing to get some bad criticism. I'm still here and I'm fine, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't get to you reading the negative stuff.
Keeley Hawes
#2. Bad criticism has followed things like comic books or TV, and they put down a medium. A medium cannot be inherently good or bad.
Corey Stoll
#3. A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.
Rebecca West
#4. I really fell into drama school - I had a lot of lot of luck. I didn't take criticism very well while I was there; in fact, I took it personally. With every note I got, I felt like they were telling me I was a bad person.
Charlie Cox
#5. You try to shut the criticism out, but it's pretty hard to do. You see people on the street, friends, people that you know are in your corner, and they come and tell you how bad they feel, and that's not the kind of conversation you want. I don't want anyone to feel bad for me.
Don Shula
#6. Pay no attention to toxic words. What people say is often a reflection of themselves, not you.
Christian Baloga
#7. The ones that landed near the bathroom are Bad Tolkien imitations or transcripts of a D&D adventure; bad Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov are below the television; and these on the bed are the ones whose authors I want to hunt down personally and slap.
Sharyn McCrumb
#8. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#9. Be kind and considerate with your criticism ... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.
Malcolm Cowley
#10. I was very vulnerable to criticism for many years. I could read a bad review and remember it my whole life.
Steve Martin
#11. Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.
Moses Hadas
#12. If the only side effect of the criticism is that you will feel bad about the criticism, then you have to compare that bad feeling with the benefits you'll get from actually doing something worth doing. Being remarkable is exciting, fun, profitable, and great for your career. Feeling bad wears off.
Seth Godin
#13. Dismissing fantasy writing because some of it is bad is exactly like saying I'm not reading Jane Eyre because it is a romance and I know romance is crap.
China Mieville
#14. Criticism, like swearing, is actually nothing more than a bad habit.
Richard Carlson
#15. One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
W. H. Auden
#16. One can be well-bred and write bad poetry
Moliere
#17. You have to remain cool under fire and let criticism roll off you. Good leaders handle conflict easily and bad ones are eaten up by it.
Donald Trump
#18. I divide criticism into two categories - one coming from those who understand music, who are worthy of being critical because they are knowledgeable about what they are saying; and then there is another category of people who would criticise you anyway, whether your work is good or bad.
A.R. Rahman
#19. Despite my height, ignorance, heartbreaks, insecurity, criticism, competition, my skin color, that voice in my head that says 'No way', bad luck, a tight budget, insults, fear, flaws, failure and opposition. I believe in myself.
Manasa Rao
#20. The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may safely be left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.
Christian Nestell Bovee
#21. In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very 'gifted' improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.
Malcolm Gladwell
#22. I'd rather be hissed at for a good verse, than applauded for a bad one.
Victor Hugo
#23. One bad review doesn't ruin my day because I realize what a badge of honor it is to get a bit of criticism at all.
Seth Godin
#24. However, this translation is, in the words of Dr. Giles, "excessively bad." He goes further in this criticism: "It is not merely a question of downright blunders, from which none can hope to be wholly exempt.
Sun Tzu
#25. I know that an author must be brave enough to chop away clinging tentacles of good taste for the sake of a great work. But this is no great work, you see.
Dorothy Parker
#26. 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
#27. A criticism is just a really bad way of making a request ... so just make the request.
Diane Sawyer
#28. Cub fans, by consensus, are the best in baseball. Year after year, in good times and (mostly) bad, they turn out in vociferous numbers, sustaining themselves with a heavenly ichor that combines loyalty, criticism, cheerfulness, durability, rage, beer and hope, in exquisite proportions.
Roger Angell
#29. Beware of the man who denounces woman writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell.
Erica Jong
#30. An artist who lacks the power of self-criticism accomplishes but little. It is good if your work stands higher than your own opinion of it; bad if it is on the same level. But it is a great disaster if your work stands lower than your judgment of it.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#31. I believe in myself, and that's why I take criticism. You need to be very strong to survive in Bollywood. If someone calls me a bad actress, I won't live with it but will work towards improving myself.
Esha Gupta
#32. When I'm a teacher, I won't be using red pens to grade papers. Red pens will forever be associated with criticism and bad grades in my mind. I don't want this person to get their short story back with harsh red pen marks all over it. Purple is much friendlier.
Susane Colasanti
#33. Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good; if meagre, muddy, vapid and sour, both are fit only to engender colic and wind; but if rich, generous and sparkling, they communicate a genial glow to the spirits, improve the taste, and expand the heart.
Charles Caleb Colton
#34. While clearly an impregnable masterpiece, Don Quixote suffers from one fairly serious flaw - that of outright unreadability.
Martin Amis
#35. It is triple ultra forbidden to respond to criticism with violence. There are a very few injunctions in the human art of rationality that have no ifs, ands, buts, or escape clauses. This is one of them. Bad argument gets counterargument. Does not get bullet. Never. Never ever never for ever.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#36. Bad art is always basically creepy; that is its first and most obvious identifying sign
John Gardner
#37. Someone said to me ... 'A criticism is just a really bad way of making a request. So why don't you just make the request? Why don't you just say, Could we work out this thing that makes me feel this way?'
Diane Sawyer
#38. I'm too busy being the bad guy." It was one of those things that get said in a marriage, something that starts out as a genuine compliment but turns into a criticism without either party noticing or caring all that much.
Sarah Dunn
#39. Sectarian feelings and criticism of other teachings or other sects is very bad, poisonous, and should be avoided.
Dalai Lama
#40. In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#41. Lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal and that I'm out of my mind, but that's just too bad
Claude Monet
#42. You just can't believe how quickly things happen in football and the way life turns. I went from being the bad guy, the worst player who gets all the criticism, to being the player who makes the difference and scores the important goals.
Luis Suarez
#43. Criticism is a surreal state, like a good drug gone bad. When it's bad you wish it would stop, and when it's good, you can't get enough.
Gale Harold
#45. What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.
American novels, answered Lord Henry.
Oscar Wilde
#46. Riffing on language will create wonderful effects you never intended. Which leads me to this writing advice: 'Always take credit for good stuff you didn't intend, because you'll be getting plenty of criticism in your career for bad stuff you didn't mean either.'
Roy Peter Clark
#47. People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.
George Bernard Shaw
#48. Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on.
Ann Patchett
#49. 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
#50. I gave up music criticism because of the increasingly obvious conflict of interest. I couldn't say anything bad about the records when I might be meeting that person's manager backstage an hour later.
Stephin Merritt
#51. Those who never sail stormy waters are the quickest and harshest judges of bad seamanship.
Susan Glaspell
#52. I lose my patience, and I own it too,
When works are censur'd, not as bad but new;
While if our Elders break all reason's laws,
These fools demand not pardon but Applause.
Alexander Pope
#53. Most critics write critiques which are by the authors they write critiques about. That would not be so bad, but then most authorswrite works which are by the critics who write critiques about them.
Karl Kraus
#54. The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.
Richard Rohr
#55. If anyone who speaks up to criticise something obviously evil is punished merely for speaking, civilisation will be in a bad way.
Ann Leckie
#56. An author, whether good or bad, or between both, is an animal whom every body is privileged to attack: for though all are not able to write books, all conceive themselves able to judge them.
Matthew Gregory Lewis
#57. Criticism is just a really bad way of making a request.
Denise Brosseau
#58. Critics can be your most important friend. I don't read criticism of my stuff only because when it's bad, it's rough-and when it's good, it's not good enough.
Kevin Bacon
#59. Because I want to have sex with him
and because that's sinful
I'm blushing and flushing furiously under his scrutinizing scrutiny.
Jess C. Scott
#60. Doubtless criticism was originally benignant, pointing out the beauties of a work rather that its defects. The passions of men have made it malignant, as a bad heart of Procreates turned the bed, the symbol of repose, into an instrument of torture.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#61. If you tell me bad things about someone, you're telling bad things about me behind me
Miguel El Portugues
#62. 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
#63. There's good directors and bad directors. Some of the critics are really conscientious and really try to do what they can popularize the work or to explain the work and so on. And then there's the critics who just wants to make a reputation by attacking. Those are the ones I'm not keen on.
Peter Bogdanovich
#64. Excessive self-criticism is a bad habit and extraordinarily self-destructive. Don't be your own worst enemy!
Bryant McGill
#65. Do not start me on The Da Vinci Code ... a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name.
(Discussion at Woodruff Auditorium in Lawrence, KS; October 7, 2005.)
Salman Rushdie
#66. You don't get to mis-define a thing, and then on the basis of that mis-definition, say that that thing is bad ... it's incumbent upon you, if you're going to make a criticism of something, that you actually have at your command a working definition of the thing you're criticizing
Mark Rippetoe
