[CNCB's Becky Quick interviews Warren Buffett (2/25/19), February 25, 2019, CNBC Television, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqc56crs56s] (quote at 48:00 of 2:00:00)
“Criticism and prophecy must be the two categories that meet in the salvation of the past”
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)
Source: Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels [Origin of the German Mourning Play] (1925), p. 53-54 (trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1977)
“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.”
W. Somerset Maugham book Of Human Bondage
Source: Of Human Bondage (1915), Ch. 50
“I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise.”
Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer
Source: Quote in Margaret McManus, "Noël Coward a 'Blithe Spirit' — in Sunny Jamaica", The Des Moines Register (January 8, 1956), Section: Iowa TV Magazine, p. 5
“I don't want 'constructive criticism'. I want praise.”
Auberon Waugh (1939–2001) Author
Cited in Times Literary Supplement, 6 March 2009.
“Too many people’s careers are ruined by praise instead of propelled by criticism.”
Jay Samit (1961) American businessman
Future Proofing You (2021)
Bhumibol Adulyadej (1927–2016) King of Thailand
Source: "King Bhumibol's Reign" in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/21/magazine/king-bhumibol-s-reign.html (21 May 1989)
“The trouble with most of us is that we'd rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.”
Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking
Variant: The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism
Source: The Power of Positive Thinking
“Your honor, your name, your praise will live forever.”
Semper honos nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book I, Line 609 (tr. Fagles); Aeneas to Dido.
“Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers!”
Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator
"Rivers" (1980), trans. Renata Gorczynski and Robert Hass
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)
Context: Under various names, I have praised only you, rivers!
You are milk and honey and love and death and dance.
From a spring in hidden grottoes, seeping from mossy rocks,
Where a goddess pours live water from a pitcher,
At clear streams in the meadow, where rills murmur underground,
Your race and my race begin, and amazement, and quick passage.
