Criticism Quotes

“Good criticism is very rare and always precious.”

“Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low calibre & men of straw. They will have sweet tongues & silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power & India will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air & water would be taxed in India.”

“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

“The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defined by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.”

“Report of fashions in proud Italy Whose manners still our tardy-apish nation Limps after in base imitation”

“Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.”

“I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which lead to a dark gulf.”

“And to the English court assemble now, From every region, apes of idleness!”

“Criticism polishes my mirror.”

“Any idiot can see something wrong. But can you see what is right?”

“Mr. Attlee is a very modest man. Indeed he has a lot to be modest about.”

“It is very easy to say that your opponents have been guilty of a breach of faith, but it is a great mistake to splash the paint about so freely that your words cease to have any real meaning and cease to carry any sense of affront even to those to whom they are applied and cease to bear any connection with any genuine feeling of indignation on the part of those on whose behalf they are spoken.”

“Baldwin often times stumbles over the truth, but he always picks himself up and hurries on as if nothing had happened.”

“I have benefited greatly from criticism, and at no time have I suffered a lack thereof.”

“Do not criticize your government when out of the country. Never cease to do so when at home”

“A non-doer is very often a critic-that is, someone who sits back and watches doers, and then waxes philosophically about how the doers are doing. It's easy to be a critic, but being a doer requires effort, risk, and change.”

“Critics hang around and wait for others to make mistakes. But the real doers of the world have not time for criticizing others. They are too busy doing, making mistakes, improving, making progress.”

“Happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.”

“The world today is ruled by harassed politicians absorbed in getting into office or turning out the other man so that not much room is left for debating the great issues on their merits”

“Some civil servants are neither servants nor civil.”

“He spoke with more eloquence than wisdom.”

“I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder’. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”

“He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”

“If you wanted nothing done at all, Balfour was the man for the job.”

“I do not resent criticism, even when for the sake of emphasis; it parts for the time with reality.”