Social Criticism Quotes

#1. Writing mysteries lets me get away with murder. I think 'the mystery' may be the greatest form for social criticism, simply because it is pedestrian.

Gregory McDonald

#2. If you're going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can't be politically correct when you do that.

John Cusack

#3. When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings

Octavio Paz

#4. Think small ... If you can't think small, try philosophy or social criticism.

Richard Hugo

#5. In all ages there arise protests from tender men against the bitterness of criticism, especially social criticism. They are the same men who, when they come down with malaria, patronize a doctor who prescribes, not quinine, but marshmallows.

H.L. Mencken

#6. RoboCop the first movie was fantastic. But even if there was no movie, the concept of RoboCop is brilliant, first because it lends itself to a lot of social criticism, but also because it poses a question, 'When do you lose your humanity?'

Jose Padilha

#7. In a sense the whole American comic tradition had been that of social criticism.

Constance Rourke

#8. It was an example of a common phenomenon in American journalism (perhaps in social criticism in general), the shallow focusing on agents or on individuals, thus concealing what a deeper analysis would reveal - the failure of the government itself, indeed, of the political system.

Howard Zinn

#9. I like Nora Ephron. She wasn't a critic in the strictest sense of the word, but she did a lot of social criticism. She was so funny and so in the right place at the right time.

Wesley Morris

#10. A pun, though despicable in itself, can be the noblest vehicle of an artistic intention by serving as the abbreviation of a wittyview. It can be a social criticism in the form of an epigram.

Karl Kraus

#11. I intended to make it sound guileless and rather sweet but you will see in it the little blades of social criticism without which no book is worth a fart in hell.

John Steinbeck

#12. Much of what is today called "social criticism" consists of members of the upper classes denouncing the tastes of the lower classes (bawdy entertainment, fast food, plentiful consumer goods) while considering themselves egalitarians.

Steven Pinker

#13. The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.

Rod Serling

#14. In the West, of course, God has been dead for some time. What remains is religion as social belief, which is at best a moral code and at worst social etiquette.

John Ralston Saul

#15. Minds altogether horrible in their power, and in their ignorance - which their power protected.

Fritz Leiber

#16. When I write provocative social and cultural criticism that causes readers to stretch their minds, to think beyond set paradigms, I think of that work as love in action. While it may challenge, disturb and at times even frighten or enrage readers, love is always the place where I begin and end.

Bell Hooks

#17. My inner goddess confirms that staring at a beautiful/rich/powerful face is the basis of True Love.

Jess C. Scott

#18. I'm never a fan of the sociopathic kind of reviewing, people who are sort of self-immolating and have social problems or whatever, and let it out in literary-criticism form. I just feel like book reviewing should be respectful and calm and not filled with bile.

Dave Eggers

#19. A social critic is someone whose work revolves around where and how our successes are failing us.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#20. By deciding what is, and is not, allowed to be discussed in a review,
by removing discussion of social context, and saying that only the
words on the page count, Goodreads is ignoring fifty years of development
of literary criticism, and is engaging in censorship.

G.R. Reader

#21. Indeed, bribery, favoritism, and corruption in a great variety of forms were rampant not only in politics, but in all levels of society.

David McCullough

#22. The net has provided a level playing field for criticism and comment - anyone and everyone is entitled to their opinion - and that is one of its greatest strengths.

Sara Sheridan

#23. Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind of people who only ask one to pretend!

Edith Wharton

#24. How many people would like to get up in a social prayer-meeting to say a few words for Christ, but there is such a cold spirit of criticism in the church that they dare not do it.

Dwight L. Moody

#25. If cynicism and criticism is the way to worry about the country..
The country better start worrying about itself & it's social police...
Change is about Vision & Mission and not about social NEGATIVITY..

Abha Maryada Banerjee

#26. Minds festooned with error, barnacled with bias, swollen with delusions of godhead.

Fritz Leiber

#27. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

Walter Benjamin

#28. Since separation precludes financial support or special privilege from government, the churches are free to engage in prophetic criticism of the government and to work for social justice.

John M Swomley

#29. I just wanted to do something important.

Norman Rockwell

#30. What is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?

Bertrand Russell

#31. 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

#32. We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease.

H.L. Mencken

#33. A society needs famous people; the question is whom it chooses for that role. Any criticism of its choice is by implication a criticism of that society.

Max Frisch

#34. Don't judge yourself by your past; you no longer live there.

Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

#35. Almost everything we call "higher culture" is based on the spiritualization of cruelty.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#36. Old contradictions never die; they just get new outfits.

Susan J. Douglas

#37. Norman Rockwell saved my life.

Jane Allen Petrick

#38. I've written 18 books, mostly dealing with issues of social justice, ending racism, feminism, and cultural criticism.

Bell Hooks

#39. To think of criticism as a conversation is to think of it as a social act, something that puts you in touch with other people who may think the way you do.

Arlene Croce