
“I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.”
Bengt de Törne Sibelius: A Close-Up (London: Faber and Faber25 october
“I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.”
The Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute: Focus on Muslim sources (1993)
"Edward Albee : An Interview", in Edward Albee : Planned Wilderness (1980) edited by Patricia De La Fuente, p. 8
Context: I've noticed that there is not necessarily a great relationship between what the majority of critics have to say and what is actually true. Some of them are so busy trying to mold the public taste according to the limits of their perceptions, and others are so busy reflecting what they consider to be the public taste — that view limited again by their perception. You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid — but most people don't take the trouble.
The O'Reilly Factor, January 2007
“Do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing, and you'll never be criticized.”
John North Willys (as reprinted in Elbert Hubbard's Selected Writings, Part 2 (1998), pp. 331–337, Roycrofters, 1922).
Pamphlets
Source: Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Vol. 3: American Statesmen
“who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you”
Solon, 12.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 1: The Seven Sages
“The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand.”
Impressions and Opinions (1891): "Balzac" http://books.google.com/books?id=QCQ7AAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+lot+of+critics+is+to+be+remembered+by+what+they+failed+to+understand%22&pg=PA2#v=onepage.