Quotes about critic
page 10

“The critic does not pass judgment on the work; rather, art itself passes judgment, either by taking up the work in the medium of criticism or by rejecting it and thereby appraising it as beneath all criticism.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism (1919), p. 161

Art

“You're talking to a modern, nice, affable German person and they're saying to you something like 'You know, vell, it's a critical time now for Germany within Europe, also globally, economically ve are pretty good, ve have been better. But ve are very vibrant in the theater and arts…' and all the time you'll be listening to this, you're thinking Mmm, yeah, mmm… Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler…”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Like, Totally (2006)

Art, Thinking, Time, Personality

“Is not the reason of the confidence of the positive, critical, experimental scientists, and of the reverent attitude of the crowd towards their doctrines, still the same? At first it seems strange how the theory of evolution (which, like the redemption in theology, serves the majority as a popular expression of the whole new creed) can justify people in their injustice, and it seems as if the scientific theory dealt only with facts and did nothing but observe facts. But that only seems so. It seemed just the same in the case of theological doctrine: theology, it seemed, was only occupied with dogmas and had no relation to people's lives, and it seemed the same with regard to philosophy, which appeared to be occupied solely with transcendental reasonings. But that only seemed so. It was just the same with the Hegelian doctrine on a large scale and with the particular case of the Malthusian teaching.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

People, Confidence, Appearance

“What does an instinctively popular poet do in contemporary America, where serious poetry is no longer a popular art? The public whose values and sensibility he celebrates is unaware of his existence. Indeed, even if they were aware of his poetry, they would feel no need to approach it. Cut off from his proper audience, this poet feels little sympathy with the specialized minority readership that now sustains poetry either as a highly sophisticated verbal game or secular religion. His sensibility shows little similarity to theirs except for the common interest in poetry. And so the popular poet usually leads a marginal existence in literary life. His fellow poets look on him as an anomaly or an anachronism. Reviewers find him eminently unnewsworthy. Publishers see little prestige attached to printing his work. Critics, who have been trained to celebrate complexity, consider him an amiable simpleton.”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"The Anonymity of the Regional Poet: Ted Kooser" http://www.danagioia.net/essays/ekooser.htm, from Can Poetry Matter? Essays on Poetry and American Culture (1992) Essays

Life, Religion, Art, Feeling

“So far from vegetarianism springing from the anthropomorphism of predominantly urban dwellers, as has been suggested by its more superficial critics, it and its inevitable successor veganism are increasingly being recognised as a logical, even inescapable, process, essentially relevant, essentially practical, essentially compassionate to all species.”

Jon Wynne-Tyson (1924) British writer

"Dietethics: Its Influence on Future Farming Patterns", in Animal Rights: A Symposium, edited by David Paterson & Richard D. Ryder (1979), p. 141

Spring

“Is it Chomsky’s intellectual competence which deserts him when he criticizes the powerful, or is it the willingness of Chomsky’s critics to perceive that competence which deserts them?”

David Edwards (1962) british journalist, born 1962

Source: Burning All Illusions (1996), p. 6

“Free will is critical in a loving relationship because there cannot be love without the opportunity to oppose that love. There cannot be an appreciation without the opportunity to express it through choice. If we are made in the image of the Divine, then just as God has free will, we must also have it. The difficulty arises in our inability to understand, or accept, that it is not beneficial to try to use our free will separate from God. This is because we are part and parcel of God, a tiny fragment of the whole, but we are not the complete whole. As part of the whole, our function is to serve the whole. The whole is certainly not meant to serve the part. For example, imagine if your stomach tried to eat on its own and told your mouth, "I'm tired of you always taking the food first. I think I should get it first."”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

This would be impossible. A part cannot properly function separately from the whole. This is the natural order of the universe.
Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 4: Fire and Brimstone, Horns and Tail, p. 66-67

Love, God, Food, Imagination

“When he looks back, the critic sees a eunuch's shadow. Who would be a critic if he could be a writer? Who would hammer out the subtlest insight into Dostoevsky if he could weld an inch of the Karamazovs, or argue the poise of Lawrence if he could shape the free gust of life in The Rainbow?”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Humane Literacy" (1963).
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)

Life

“On those rare occasions when a great motion picture reaches multiplexes, the film critic must add another aspect to his or her job description: that of cheerleader. It is incumbent upon those of us who routinely dissect movies to applaud the arrival of something like Minority Report. Writing a review isn't enough — we have to get out there and actively stump for the movie. The underlying reason is sound: if Minority Report makes a lot of money, the studios will be encouraged to fashion more films of this sort. And that is a good thing — not just for science fiction lovers but for fans of intelligent, thought-provoking pictures of all genres.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/m/minority_report.html of Minority Report (2002). Four star reviews

Money, Intelligence, Lovers, Fashion

“A doctrine which, because of its little-circumspect idealism, offends not just faith, but reason itself (KANT): it would be useful to show the dangerous errors, to Religion as much as to Moral, of that French psychologist, who seduced minds (COUSIN), by showing how his bold and audacious philosophy breaks the barrier of the holy Theology, placing his own authority before any other: he profanes the mysteries, declaring them partly devoid of meaning, and partly reducing them to vulgar allusions and pure metaphors; forces, as a learned Critic noted, the revelation to swap places with instinctive thought and assertion without reflection without and places reason outside man, declaring man a fragment of God, introducing a sort of spiritual pandeism, which is absurd to us and insulting to the Supreme Being, which gravely offends freedom itself, etc, etc.”

Luigi Ferrarese (1795–1855) Italian physician

Dottrina, che pel suo idealismo poco circospetto , non solo la fede, ma la stessa ragione offende (il sistema di KANT) : farebbe mestieri far aperto gli errori pericolosi, cosi alla Religione, come alla Morale, di quel psicologo franzese , il quale ha sedotte le menti (COUSIN), con far osservare come la di lui filosofia intraprendente ed audace sforza le barriere della sacra Teologia, ponendo innanzi ad ogn' altra autorità la propria : profana i misteri , dichiarandoli in parte vacui di senso, ed in parte riducendoli a volgari allusioni, ed a prette metafore ; costringe , come faceva osservare un dotto Critico, la rivelazione a cambiare il suo posto con quello del pensiero istintivo e dell' affermazione senza riflessione e colloca la ragione fuori della persona dell'uomo dichiarandolo un frammento di Dio, una spezie di pandeismo spirituale introducendo, assurdo per noi, ed al Supremo Ente ingiurioso, il quale reca onda grave alla libertà del medesimo, ec, ec.
Ferrarese describing pandeism in Memorie Risguardanti la Dottrina Frenologica ("Thoughts Regarding the Doctrine of Phrenology", 1838), p. 16.

God, Faith, Religion, Error

“Among the spiritual forces secretly working in the camp of Germany's enemies and their allies in this war, as in the last, stands Freemasonry, the danger of whose activities has been repeatedly stressed by the Fuehrer in his speeches. The present brochure, now made available to the German and European peoples in a 3rd edition, is intended to shed light on this enemy working in the shadows. Though an end has been put to the activities of Masonic organizations in most European countries, particular attention must still be paid to Freemasonry, and most particularly to its membership, as the implements of the political will of a supra-governmental power. The events of the summer of 1943 in Italy demonstrate once again the latent danger always represented by individual Freemasons, even after the destruction of their Masonic organizations. Although Freemasonry was prohibited in Italy as early as 1925, it has retained significant political influence in Italy through its membership, and has continued to exert that influence in secrecy. Freemasons thus stood in the first ranks of the Italian traitors who believed themselves capable of dealing Fascism a death blow at a critical juncture, shamelessly betraying the Italian nation. The intended object of the 3rd printing of this brochure is to provide a clearer knowledge of the danger of Masonic corruption, and to keep the will to self-defence alive.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

Foreword in "Freemasonry: Ideology, Organization, and Policy," first published in 1944.

Death, War, People, Knowledge

“Superstition has caused so much confusion, darkness, and deception. Dogma has been used to tyrannize over the lives of the people. So, this is the time for change and of some transformation based on reason, science, critical thinking, and humanity. People are yearning for freedom and emancipation. Humanism is critical in delivering that change and in the realization of social renewal.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

An Interview with Dr. Leo Igwe — Founder, Nigerian Humanist Movement (2017)

People, Thinking, Freedom, Science

“By contrast, Galileo, the other legendary scientific figure of the era, not only published the most compelling critique of Aristotelian scholasticism in his Dialogues on the Two Chief World Systems, but in the process turned the issue of the epistemic authority of theology versus the epistemic authority of empirical science into a hallmark of modern times. Although Newton clearly sympathized with Galileo, he wrote virtually nothing critical of the Aristotelian tradition in philosophy, and the immense effort he devoted to theology was aimed not at challenging its epistemic authority, but largely at putting it on a firmer footing. Newton made no direct contributions to philosophy of a similar magnitude. Indeed, from his extant writings alone Newton has more claim to being a major theologian than a major philosopher.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

Source: The Cambridge Companion to Newton, 2002, p. 1

World, Effort, Science, Time

“A painter who loves his art must be careful not to see too much of critics and men of letters. These gentlemen, however unconsciously, distort everything, thinking that they are explaining it—the artist's thought, sensibility, and intensions. They take away his strength, just as Delilah took away Samson's. They have no gift for nuances, and they have an instinctive aversion for everything that is beyond their reach and baffles them.”

Georges Rouault (1871–1958) French painter

Soliloques. (1944)
Quotes, 1940-1950

Love, Men, Art, Thinking

“Of course there is much criticism of the court by this group or that, depending on the court's decisions in various highly publicized cases. Some of the criticism is profoundly uninformed and unhelpful. And all too often, uncivil second-guessing is not encumbered by the constraints of facts, logic or reasoned analysis.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Decision, Dependency

“His face was tense with pain. But then, who notices when they meet a theatre critic whose face is tense with pain? It is one of the marks of the profession.”

Robertson Davies book Murther and Walking Spirits

Part 1, section 2.
Murther and Walking Spirits (1991)

Pain

“Existential envy which is directed against the other person’s very nature, is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: “I can forgive everything, but not that you are— that you are what you are—that I am not what you are—indeed that I am not you.” This form of envy strips the opponent of his very existence, for this existence as such is felt to be a “pressure,” a “reproach,” and an unbearable humiliation. In the lives of great men there are always critical periods of instability, in which they alternately envy and try to love those whose merits they cannot but esteem. Only gradually, one of these attitudes will predominate. Here lies the meaning of Goethe’s reflection that “against another’s great merits, there is no remedy but love.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 52-53

Love, Men, Forgiveness, Nature

“But with photography as with drawing or painting, once it is done I want to know whether it holds together or not. That is the real critique. I couldn’t care less if the person to whom I show what I do likes it or not — it takes all sorts to make a world and all that. To criticize is to put oneself in someone else’s shoes and try to figure out what they wanted to do. Only the “why” of things is important to me.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, We Always Talk Too Much: Conversation with Pierre Assouline (1994), p. 132

World, Shoe, Drawing, Painting

“The best shot in this film is the first one. Not a good sign… After the screening was over and the lights went up, I observed a couple of my colleagues in deep and earnest conversation, trying to resolve twists in the plot. They were applying more thought to the movie than the makers did. A critic's mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/i-know-what-you-did-last-summer-1997 of I Know What You Did Last Summer (17 October 1997) Reviews, One-star reviews

Light

“It is now known that the truth or falsity of the continuum hypothesis and other related conjectures cannot be determined by set theory as we know it today. This state of affairs regarding a classical and presumably well-posed problem must certainly appear rather unsatisfactory to the average mathematician. One is tempted to look more closely and perhaps more critically at the foundations of mathematics. Although our present "Cantorian" mathematics is highly successful in its treatment of abstractions, one must not overlook the fact that from the very beginning the use of infinite processes was regarded with suspicion by many people.”

Paul Cohen (1934–2007) American mathematician

Set theory and the continuum hypothesis, p. 1. https://books.google.com/books?id=Z4NCAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA1 Courier Corporation, 2008 (Dover reprint). Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis (1966)

People, Truth, Mathematics, Problem

“Plato was accused by some of his twentieth-century critics of racism, totalitarianism, fascism, and other political crimes with a very contemporary flavor. These accusations are too anachronistic to be taken seriously; whatever explains Hitler and Mussolini, it is not the dialogues of Plato. The more plausible complaint is that Plato does not take seriously the inescapability of politics in some form. Plato’s metaphysics is fascinating; so is his conviction that the just man does better than the unjust man, no matter what earthly fate befalls him. His political thinking often amounts to an injunction to abolish the conflicts that politics exists to resolve and fantasies about how it might be done.”

Alan Ryan (1940) British philosopher

On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012), Ch. 2 : Plato and Antipolitics

Fate, Thinking

“Welcome to the early twenty-first century, human.
It’s night in Milton Keynes, sunrise in Hong Kong. Moore’s Law rolls inexorably on, dragging humanity toward the uncertain future. The planets of the solar system have a combined mass of approximately 2 x 1027 kilograms. Around the world, laboring women produce forty-five thousand babies a day, representing 1023 MIPS of processing power. Also around the world, fab lines casually churn out thirty million microprocessors a day, representing 1023 MIPS. In another ten months, most of the MIPS being added to the solar system will be machine-hosted for the first time. About ten years after that, the solar system’s installed processing power will nudge the critical 1 MIPS per gram threshold—one million instructions per second per gram of matter. After that, singularity—a vanishing point beyond which extrapolating progress becomes meaningless. The time remaining before the intelligence spike is down to single-digit years …”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 2 (“Troubadour”), pp. 38-39

Women, World, Law, Intelligence

“In one point, and that too of more importance than is generally attached to it, the puritans of the two epochs bear a critical resemblance, namely, their hostility to rural and athletic sports: to those sports, which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory, into the mind of the clown. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it is, that the sect are incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners. And, sorry I am to tell you, that they meet with but too many abettors, where they ought to meet with resolute foes. Their pretexts are plausible: gentleness and humanity are the cant of the day. Weak men are imposed on, and wise men want the courage to resist. Instead of preserving those assemblages and those sports, in which the nobleman mixed with his peasants, which made the poor man proud of his inferiority, and created in his breast a personal affection for his lord, too many of the rulers of this land are now hunting the common people from every scene of diversion, and driving them to a club or a conventicle, at the former of which they suck in the delicious rudiments of earthly equality, and, at the latter, the no less delicious doctrine, that there is no lawful king but King Jesus.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 February 1802).

Love, Men, Hostility, People

“As a transportation hub, agriculture leader, and home to more than half a million small businesses, Missouri is positioned to be at the cutting edge of growth and innovation in this country. But, we need the right policies to get us there and pro-growth tax cuts and regulatory reform are a critical part of that equation. I couldn’t agree more with the president’s call to get this done, and I look forward to working with him and my colleagues in Congress to provide much-needed tax relief for Missouri families and small businesses.”

Roy Blunt (1950) American politician

Families and small business need tax relief http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article170867657.html (September 3, 2017)

Family, Home, Business, Parting

“Humbly, I seek the blessing of the Lord. I am overwhelmed with a sense of inadaquacy. I feel shaken. I'd like to express appreciation to my father, who lies critically ill. No son ever had a better father. I'd like to express appreciation to my mother. I say these things, because I'd like to make the point that all of us in our various situations are the result, largely, of the lives that touch ours. And today, I feel profoundly grateful for all who have touched mine.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

General Conference, October, 1958

Feeling, Sense

“Technical criticism in particular is the despair of the artist. No one but an idiot would offer a poet his comments in terms of spondees and trochees; why must the painter daily suffer the indignity? Any picture which makes one conscious first of its technical qualities, good or bad, is not a good picture, whatever else it may be.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

The Artist Speaks (1951)

Suffering, Despair

“For those who accused me of turncoatism, please allow introspection. Who is the real opposition? Those who do nothing but criticize and accuse fellow oppositionist thereby dividing the bloc? Or those who choose to keep their silence first and who carefully choose their words in their desire to keep the group together.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Philippine Star http://www.philstar.com/headlines/7336/opposition-war-erupts-ping-calls-colleagues-%E2%80%98political-mongrels%E2%80%99 2007

Silence

“The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly know what is new.”

Pauline Kael book Going Steady

Going Steady (1969), Trash, Art and the Movies (February 1969)

People

“If government, or those in positions of power and authority, can silence criticism by the argument that such criticism might be misunderstood somewhere, there is an end to all criticism, and perhaps an end to our kind of political system. For men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

"The Problem of Dissent" in Saturday Review, Volume 48 (December 1965), p. 81; also read into the US Congressional Record (26 June 1969)

Men, Thinking, Silence

“Not only does reality resist those who still criticize it, but it also abandons those who defend it. Maybe it is a way for reality to get its revenge from those who claim to believe in it for the sole purpose of eventually transforming it: sending back its supporters to their own desires.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

1990s, Radical Thought (1994)

Way, Support, Revenge, Reality

“Intensive research in recent years into the sources of economic growth among both developing and developed nations generally point to a number of important factors: the state of knowledge and skill of a population; the degree of control over indigenous natural resources; the quality of a country's legal system, particularly a strong commitment to a rule of law and protection of property rights; and yes, the extent of a country's openness to trade with the rest of the world. For the United States, arguably the most important factor is the type of rule of law under which economic activity takes place. When asked abroad why the United States has become the most prosperous large economy in the world, I respond, with only mild exaggeration, that our forefathers wrote a constitution and set in motion a system of laws that protects individual rights, especially the right to own property. Nonetheless, the degree of state protection is sometimes in dispute. But by and large, secure property rights are almost universally accepted by Americans as a critical pillar of our economy. While the right of property in the abstract is generally uncontested in all societies embracing democratic market capitalism, different degrees of property protection do apparently foster different economic incentives and outcomes.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Alan Greenspan (2004) The critical role of education in the nation's economy.
2000s

World, Law, Nature, Knowledge

“This criticism is ridiculous. The twenty-five hundreth anniversary celebration cost me less than the inauguration of each new president of the United States.”

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) Shah of Iran

As quoted in Gérard de Villiers (1975), The Imperial Shah: An Informal Biography, page 284
The twenty-five hundreth anniversary celebrations of Persian monarchy, taking place on October 12–16, 1971, were estimated to cost 100 million dollars.
Attributed

“Critic, relent!
Your hope for repentance
Will meet with disappointment.
For this is the life,
Not desert tents,
Not camel's milk!”

Abu Nuwas (762–814) Arabic poet

Diwan, 11–12.

Life, Hope, Disappointment

“He is only a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of the Conservative.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Varied Types (1903)

Heart

“In a democratic age, only the behavior of the authorities is subject to public criticism; that of the people themselves, never.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Who Killed Childhood?
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

People, Age, Behavior

“.. isn't it stupid that what you were writing in your article is still understood by so few people. Among others there was somebody - I believe in the [magazine] 'Nieuws van de Dag' -, who thought the 'Old woman in front of the hearth' [painting of Israels]….- how beautifully painted - was as sickening subject. - Furthermore, Alberd. Thijm [Dutch art-critic and very critical of Israel's' often applied 'dejection'] was also raving strongly about my pulling down of the togs of the poor people. Well-roared, lion, I thought - well understood [ironic! ] for what reason I painted it.. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls in Nederlands): ..is het niet gek dat wat gij zegt in uw stuk nog door zo weinig mensen begrepen wordt. Onder anderen was er iemand ik geloof in het 'Nieuws van den Dag', die de 'oude vrouw bij den haard' [in een schilderij van Israels].. ..hoe mooi ook geschilderd walgelijk zegge walgelijk van onderwerp vond. – Voorts is [kunst-criticus, erg kritisch op Israëls' vaak toegepaste 'neerslachtigheid'] ook erg aan 't malen geweest over mijn omhalen van de plunje van de arme lui. Goed gebruld leeuw dacht ik – goed begrepen [ironisch!] waarvoor het geschilderd is..
In a letter, 10 May 1885, to A.S. Kok in The Hague; in R.K.D. The Hague: Archive of A.S. Kok
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

People, Stupidity, Art, Painting

“[Scripture], by which, “as in a glass, we may survey ourselves, and know what manner of persons we are,” (James 1. 23) discovers ourselves to us; pierces into the inmost recesses of the mind; strips off every disguise; lays open the inward part; makes a strict scrutiny into the very soul and spirit; and critically judges of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Heb. iv. 12) It shows us with what exactness and care we are to search and try our spirits, examine ourselves, and watch our ways, and keep our hearts, in order to acquire this important self-science; which it often calls us to do. “Examine yourselves; prove your own selves; know you not yourselves? Let a man examine himself.” (1 Cor. xi. 28) Our Saviour upbraids his disciples with their self-ignorance, in not “knowing what manner of spirits they were of.” (Luke ix. 55) And, saith the apostle, “If a man (through self-ignorance) thinketh himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself, and not another.” (Gal. vi. 3, 4) Here we are commanded, instead of judging others, to judge ourselves; and to avoid the. inexcusable rashness of condemning others for the very crimes we ourselves are guilty of, (Rom. ii. 1, 21, 22) which a self-ignorant man is very apt to do; nay, to be more offended at a small blemish in another's character, than at a greater in his own; which folly, self-ignorance, and hypocrisy, our Saviour, with just severity, animadverts upon. (Mat. vii. 3-5) And what stress was laid upon this under the Old Testament dispensation appears sufficiently from those expressions. "Keep thy heart with all diligence." (Prov. iv. 23) "Commune with your own heart." (Psal. iv. 4) "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts." (Psal. cxxxix. 23) "Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reins and my heart." (Psal. xxvi. 2) "Let us search and try our ways." (Lam. iii. 4) "Recollect, recollect yourselves, O "nation not desired."”

John Mason (1706–1763) English Independent minister and author

Zeph. ii. 1
A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

God, Way, Soul, Search

“They want Americans to be American, and yet they offer little or no spiritual sustenance for their growth and welfare [quote on the critics who push to stop his long European stay and to return]”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

letter to Adelaide Kuntz, June 23, 1928, Archives of American Art; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 81
1921 - 1930

Quotes

“Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side than of that.”

John Galsworthy (1867–1933) English novelist and playwright

Preface to Villa Rubein and Other Stories (1923)

Nature

“What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas? As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech. But incorrect ideas among the people are quite a different matter. Will it do to ban such ideas and deny them any opportunity for expression? Certainly not. It is not only futile but very harmful to use crude methods in dealing with ideological questions among the people, with questions about man's mental world. You may ban the expression of wrong ideas, but the ideas will still be there. On the other hand, if correct ideas are pampered in hothouses and never exposed to the elements and immunized against disease, they will not win out against erroneous ones. Therefore, it is only by employing the method of discussion, criticism and reasoning that we can really foster correct ideas and overcome wrong ones, and that we can really settle issues.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

" VIII. ON "LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOSSOM LET A HUNDRED SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT CONTEND" AND "LONG-TERM COEXISTENCE AND MUTUAL SUPERVISION" "
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 对于非马克思主义的思想，应该采取什么方针呢？对于明显的反革命分子，破坏社会主义事业的分子，事情好办，剥夺他们的言论自由就行了。对于人民内部的错误思想，情形就不相同。禁止这些思想，不允许这些思想有任何发表的机会，行不行呢？当然不行。对待人民内部的思想问题，对待精神世界的问题，用简单的方法去处理，不但不会收效，而且非常有害。不让发表错误意见，结果错误意见还是存在着。而正确的意见如果是在温室里培养出来的，如果没有见过风雨，没有取得免疫力，遇到错误意见就不能打胜仗。因此，只有采取讨论的方法，批评的方法，说理的方法，才能真正发展正确的意见，克服错误的意见，才能真正解决问题。

People, World, Disease, Idea

“I propose to create an heroic, monumental style of composition simple enough to inspire all people, completely free from fads, artificial mannerisms and false sophistications, direct, forceful, sincere, always original but never unnatural. Music must be freed from decadence and stagnation. There has been too much emphasis on small things while the great truths have been overlooked. The superficial must be dispensed with. Music must become virile to express big things. It is not my purpose to supply a few pseudo intellectual musicians and critics with more food for brilliant argumentation, but rather to inspire all mankind with new heroism and spiritual nobility. This may appear to be sentimental and impossible to some, but it must be remembered that Palestrina, Handel, and Beethoven would not consider it either sentimental or impossible. In fact, the worthiest creative art has been motivated consciously or unconsciously by the desire for the regeneration of mankind.”

Alan Hovhaness (1911–2000) Armenian-American composer

Alan Hovhaness, 1940 Guggenheim Application http://www.hovhaness.com/hovhaness-biography.html

People, Truth, Food, Art

“This award is voted for by journalists, who can be your biggest critic and get on your nerves sometimes, but they all know football and I am very respectful of their thoughts, and very proud they have decided to give me this award this year.”

Frank Lampard (1978) English association football player

Sincerely yours, Frank (May 22, 2005)

Football

“Scientists are entitled to be proud of their accomplishments, and what accomplishments can they call 'theirs' except the things they have done or thought of first? People who criticize scientists for wanting to enjoy the satisfaction of intellectual ownership are confusing possessiveness with pride of possession. Meanness, secretiveness and, sharp practice are as much despised by scientists as by other decent people in the world of ordinary everyday affairs; nor, in my experience, is generosity less common among them, or less highly esteemed.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Lucky Jim, 1968

People, Secret, World

“One wonders how the literary revisionists and canon cleansers can bear to take the money. Imagine a school of sixteenth century art criticism that spent its time contently jeering at the past for not knowing about perspective.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Political Correctness: Robert Bly and Philip Larkin" (1997)

Money, School, Art, Imagination

“Indeed, even before the 11 September attacks, there was little evidence that the holocaust had ever ceased being used as a bulwark to defend the state interests of Israel and its atrocities against the Palestinians and neighboring Arab countries. This was not a spontaneous development but the result of design. Indeed, it had become a matter of course to expect Palestinian victims of Israeli terror to pay obeisance to the Jewish holocaust before, or even instead of, criticizing Israel.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"Deconstructing Holocaust Consciousness"

Country

“Objective' analysis is a tool, primarily useful for suggesting or confirming putative relationships between different musical styles….'Critical' analysis results not in a statistical measurement of style or proof of relationship but rather, ideally, in a formal model for a relatively independent and artistically controllable style within a culture, and should then be viable for accounting for individual manifestations of that style…”

Harold Powers (1928–2007) American academic

Music

“At home, the public has come to accept torture as a legitimate instrument of government, something that the Founding Fathers would have been aghast at. We have come to accept that the president is not bound by habeas corpus, if he decides he isn't. He can sign laws and say they don't apply to him. We know that an American citizen can be detained for years without charges and tortured and abused — and then critical evidence of his torture will be "lost." We have come to accept our phones being tapped without a warrant and without our even knowing about it. These huge surrenders of liberty have occurred without much public outcry. When the next major terrorist attack comes, the question will simply be how much liberty Americans have left. That is a victory al Qaeda could not have achieved by force of arms. It is something they have achieved with our witting and conscious help.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Re-Thinking The War II," The Daily Dish (8 May 2007)

Law, Home, Question, Victory

“It was the mass sale and distribution of novels and newspapers that was critical to the rise of the imagined nation.”

George Ritzer (1940) American sociologist

Source: Globalization - A Basic Text (2010), Chapter 6, Global Political Structures and Processes, p. 148

Imagination

“I didn't start with rock or jazz musicians. It was just my great dear friend whom I miss very much who is no more, Yehudi Menuhin, Lord Yehudi Menuhin. We got very friendly from the year 1952. And when I came to Europe and started performing, we cut three albums in those days, known as "West Meets East." And then I did many other things later on, of course. My student George Harrison, who is like my son, and a great friend of mine, whom I taught sitar initially but later on he was so interested he composed a lot of songs being influenced by our Indian music and Indian spiritual and religious teachings, things like that. And I've done a lot of experimentations, which I don't like to call fusion or trying to mix Indian music or Western music like a cocktail to make it interesting. Genuinely what I wanted to do is have the base as pure as possible Indian music within the framework of raga and tala, and use non-Indian musicians, non-Indian instruments for a special sound, for the range, for the volume, for the colors and all that. And I think some of them came out nice. Of course I was very much criticized also for it…”

Ravi Shankar (1920–2012) Indian musician and sitar player

Ravi Shankar during his talk with Gross.

Music, Color, Thinking

“The only way to escape misrepresentation is never to commit oneself to any critical judgement that makes an impact – that is, never to say anything. I still, however think that the best way to promote profitable discussion is to be as clear as possible with oneself about what one sees and judges, to try and establish the essential discriminations in the given field of interest, and to state them as clearly as one can”

F. R. Leavis book The Great Tradition

for disagreement, if necessary
The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad (London: Chatto & Windus, 1948) p. 1

Way, Thinking

“But we lay people are not less called to the Christian life, in which the critical question is: "Where does the compass-needle of your mind and will point?" This is tested above all by our reactions when it costs or threatens to cost something to be a Christian. One should be glad if it does, rather than complain! If we will not let it cost anything; if we succumb to the threat of "losing our life", then our religion is indistinguishable from pure worldliness.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life, People, Religion, Question

“What should be the profession of faith of a sound but reasonable Imperialist? He will not be possessed with any secret desire to see the whole of Africa or of Asia painted red on the maps. He will entertain not only a moral dislike, but also a political mistrust of that excessive earth-hunger, which views with jealous eyes the extension of other and neighbouring European nations. He will have no fear of competition. He will believe that, in the treatment of subject races, the methods of government practised by England, though sometimes open to legitimate criticism, are superior, morally and economically, to those of any other foreign nation; and that, strong in the possession and maintenance of those methods, we shall be able to hold our own against all competitors.”

Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer (1841–1917) British diplomat

Political and Literary Essays, 1908-1913

Hunger, Secret, Fear, Faith

“On the other hand, the constructive and often scholarly criticism is almost always helpful in thinking about or rethinking decisions. It is my view that constructive criticism goes with the turf, especially when the stakes are so high and the cases arouse passions and emotions. And, in a free society, the precious freedom of speech and the strength of ideas, we at the court could not possibly claim exemption from such criticism. Moreover, we are not infallible, just final.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Idea, Thinking, Decision, Freedom

“The present volume is intended as a systematic, theoretical treatise in the sociology of knowledge. It is not intended, therefore, to give a historical survey of the development of this discipline, or to engage in exegesis of various figures in this or other developments in sociological theory, or even to show how a synthesis may be achieved between several of these figures and developments. Nor is there any polemic intent here. Critical comments on other theoretical positions have been introduced (not in the text, but in the Notes) only where they may serve to clarify the present argument.”

Peter L. Berger book The Social Construction of Reality

Source: The Social Construction of Reality, 1966, p. 7; Lead paragraph of preface

Knowledge

“I wrote it [Maurice] neither for my friends or the public—but because it was weighing on me; and my previous training made me write it as literature, though for a long time I meant to show it no one at all. […] I am much dependant on criticism and now, backed by you and some others, do feel that I have created something absolutely new, even to the Greeks. Whitman nearly anticipated me but he didn't really know what he was after, or only half knew—shirked, even to himself, the statement.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 144, to Edward Joseph Dent, 6 March 1915
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Feeling, Literature, Time, Dependency

“I set out by challenging conventional wisdom. They said the turntable didn't matter; I said it was critical. They said the speaker was the most important thing; I said it was the last thing to worry about. So I started off in conflict in an industry where few people understood the mechanical things and the recording aspects of the business.”

Ivor Tiefenbrun (1946) Scottish businessman

Interview with David Lander http://www.stereophile.com/interviews/1101ivor. Stereophile, 30 November 2003. 2003

Wisdom, People, Business

“Ironically, Henry James' biography comforts me & I long to make known to him his posthumous reputation — he wrote, in pain, gave all his life (which is more than I could think of doing — I have Ted, will have children — but few friends) & the critics insulted & mocked him, readers didn't read him.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

1958-04-22
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)

Life, Pain, Children, Thinking

“Internal perception also fails as a method for scientific psychology. In the nature of the case, it must be casual and therefore unsystematic. It excludes all deliberate investigation, because as soon as it becomes aware of itself it turns into the self-observation that is open to all the well-known and valid criticisms. It is, indeed, the basis of a psychology of consciousness, in the sense that conscious processes must be perceived to be known, but for a science it is not enough.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: "The history of introspection reconsidered." 1980, p. 245

Nature, Sense, Science

“The significance of feminist movement (when it is not co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it offers a new ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space for criticism, struggle, and transformation.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

(1984)

Sex

“They have called me bizarre, neurotic or silly, and said that what I am doing is pointless. "Animals don't need a human to teach them how to behave." Many of these critics are generally misinformed about my intentions. This is not a one-time experiment. My "science," or my way of researching wolf behavior, is from inside the pack and actually becoming part of their world -- exploring the unknown and untested. I think the madness that some people will see in living alongside a pack of wolves will be justified when people see the results of what we've learned.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

Interview with A Man Among Wolves: Shaun Ellis http://incubator.nationalgeographic.com/inside_ngc/2007/04/interview-with-a-man-among-wolves-shaun-ellis.html, Inside NGS, (2007)

People, World, Way, Behavior

“Thought based on images can be neither abstract nor critical. … again in this case intellectuals have worked out theories to justify the inevitable. For unconsciously, they could not avoid being subjected to the enormous weight of billions of images (just like other people). Yet consciously, they were well aware that maintaining the demands of critical and independent thought involves a complete break with the rest of humankind. This would make it impossible for them to play their role as genuine intellectuals. They must think like everyone else if they expect to be at all believed by the masses. Thus their conscious and unconscious minds agree in taking them down the path of thought that involves images, evidence, and emotivity.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 214
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

People, Thinking

“While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that we have far more critical issues to face in the 1960 election; the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers 90 miles off the coast of Florida — the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power — the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor bills, the families forced to give up their farms — an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space. These are the real issues which should decide this campaign. And they are not religious issues — for war and hunger and ignorance and despair know no religious barriers.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

Hunger, War, Children, People

“The news departments have become corporate profit centers. And their only obligation now is to their shareholders. Which is to create large audiences and viewership so they can sell more ad space. So they're airing stories that appeal to the prurient interests that all of us have in the reptilian core of our brain: for sex and celebrity gossip. And now, for terror. So they give us Kobe Bryant and they give us Michael Jackson. And they give us Laci Peterson and they give us lots and lots of terror alerts. But they're not telling us the really critical stories that impact our way of life.”

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. (1954) American activist

Real Time with Bill Maher (22 October 2004).

Life, Sex, Way

“To explore the countercurrents of consciousness in a given circumstance—uncertain promises of other futures; to trace the struggle between spirit and structure in every domain of social and cultural life; to show how vision becomes embodied in institutions and practices and, in being embodied, is both undermined and corrected, but in any event transformed; to reveal how we forfeit our freedom to imagine and reconstruct, and then regain it, even against our will; to commandeer alien wisdom the better to criticize the established order and present experience; to give voice to what has lost a voice or not yet gained one; to display in every department of our experience, from the micro to the macro and from passion to calculation, the revolt of the infinite within us against the finite around us—all this is the work of the humanities when they recognize us for what we are and might become.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

124
The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007)

Life, Wisdom, Imagination, Freedom

“They [French critics of the Paris Salon of 1824, where his painting 'the Hay Wain' received a gold medal] are very amusing and acute — but very shallow and feeble. Thus one — after saying: "'it is but justice to admire the truth — 'the color' — and 'general vivacity' & richness —" – yet they want the objects more formed and defined &c, and say they are like the rich preludes in musick, and the full harmonious warblings of the Aeolian lyre, which means 'nothing,' and they call them orations — and harangues — and high-flown conversations affecting a careless ease — &c &v &c - Is not some of this 'blame' the highest 'praise' – what is poetry?”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

What is Coleridge's Ancient Mariner (the very best modern poem) but something like this?
Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher, 1824, as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable, (Tate Gallery Publications, London, 1993), p. 205
1820s

Truth, Justice, Color, Painting

“I want a poetry that can learn as much from popular culture as from serious culture. A poetry that seeks the pleasure and emotionality of the popular arts without losing the precision, concentration, and depth that characterize high art. I want a literature that addresses a diverse audience distinguished for its intelligence, curiosity, and imagination rather than its professional credentials. I want a poetry that risks speaking to the fullness of our humanity, to our emotions as well as to our intellect, to our senses as well as our imagination and intuition. Finally I hope for a more sensual and physical art — closer to music, film, and painting than to philosophy or literary theory. Contemporary American literary culture has privileged the mind over the body. The soul has become embarrassed by the senses. Responding to poetry has become an exercise mainly in interpretation and analysis. Although poetry contains some of the most complex and sophisticated perceptions ever written down, it remains an essentially physical art tied to our senses of sound and sight. Yet, contemporary literary criticism consistently ignores the sheer sensuality of poetry and devotes its considerable energy to abstracting it into pure intellectualization. Intelligence is an irreplaceable element of poetry, but it needs to be vividly embodied in the physicality of language. We must — as artists, critics, and teachers — reclaim the essential sensuality of poetry. The art does not belong to apes or angels, but to us. We deserve art that speaks to us as complete human beings. Why settle for anything less?”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

"Paradigms Lost," interview with Gloria Brame, ELF: Eclectic Literary Forum (Spring 1995)
Interviews

Pleasure, Hope, Art, Music

“I can't actually play any instrument properly. I can't read music. And here's the New York Times calling me the new George Gershwin. It was so ridiculous, really embarrassing. It was embarrassing to watch these people fall into the trap of their own critical conceits.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Musician (March 1986)

People, Music, Time, Reading

“What puzzles me most is your criticism that he showed 'no sense of engagement'. I haven't met the expression before, and feel bound to comment on its totalitarian tang. Engagement not with the truth as the speaker apprehends it, but with the alleged opinion of the majority of listeners.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 400, to John Morris, 12 January 1953
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Truth, Feeling, Sense

“One thing is clear, … A proximity to the people who are willing to take on responsibility, who are everywhere in our country and not just in politics, will be my main mission. I want to be active in inviting these people to take on responsibility and not just stand around as spectators and critical observers of public life.”

Joachim Gauck (1940) German politician

nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/world/europe/joachim-gaucks-background-seen-as-an-asset-in-germany.html

Life, People, Country

“We shall not correct admitted and grave defects if we hesitate to recognize them. We must be frank with ourselves. We ought to be our own harshest critics. We can afford to be, for in spite of everything we still have a balance of prosperity, of general welfare, of secure freedom, and of righteous purpose, that gives us assurance of leadership among the nations.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Freedom

“On countless occasions during my spell as an assistant in Naples I heard people say about some newspaper or other: è pagato, it’s paid for, it lies for its client, and then on the following day these very same people who had cried pagato were absolutely convinced by some obviously bogus piece of news in the same paper. Because it was printed in such bold type, and because the other people believed it. … I also know that a part of every intellectual’s soul belongs to the people, that all my awareness of being lied to, and my critical attentiveness, are of no avail when it comes to it: at some point the printed lie will get the better of me when it attacks from all sides and is queried by fewer and fewer around me and finally by no one at all.”

Victor Klemperer book LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii

Source: LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich) (1947), pp. 207-208.

People, Lie, Soul, Parting

“We find that the presidency has become too secretive, too powerful, too trammelled, too ceremonial, too impotent or too complicated, depending on the president under discussion or the critic making the analysis. On one thing all are agreed - there is a danger of an 'imperial' or 'monarchical' presidency. An incumbent in Washington knows he is in trouble on the day that cartoonists begin to represent him as a king.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

Secret, Dependency

“Their loss is the loss of every Filipino. In democracy's darkest hour, she joined many others in confronting a repressive dictatorship. Her willingness to accept the daunting challenge of running against Ferdinand Marcos--despite criticism that she was a "mere housewife"--served as a catalyst for an unprecedented bloodless uprising that would lead to the restoration of democracy and the reinstitution of the many freedoms we enjoy and cherish today.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: on the Passing of Former President Corazon C. Aquino

Democracy, Freedom, Loss

“A man who possesses common sense and the use of reason must not expect to learn from treatises or lectures on textual criticism anything that he could not, with leisure and industry, find out for himself. What the lectures and treatises can do for him is to save him time and trouble by presenting to him immediately considerations which would in any case occur to him sooner or later.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", a lecture delivered on August 4, 1921

Sense, Learning, Time

“Chile offered refuge and asylum to Erich Honecker, the tyrant of East Germany who wanted the tanks in the streets. Everyone said, "It is time to bury the past without bitterness." But then Chile clamored for justice for General Augusto Pinochet. On the same day, Spain indicted Chile's Pinochet for crimes against humanity, and welcomed with honors, Fidel Castro, while Castro's critics or any group that annoyed the tyrant, lay dead or rotted in prison, or tried to recover from the deadly work camps to which he sent them.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Justice, Time, Past, Dead

“The more rigorously criticism historicizes a work of art, in the sense of lodging it in the context of the moment of its production, the less likely it becomes for criticism to be able to explain either its own subsequent interest in the work or the possibility of lay—that is, nonacademic—interest in reading it.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), pp. 5-6.

Art, Sense, Reading

“…"all these criticisms fade like morning mist before Howard’s headlong rush of action, his rainbow-tinted prose, the intensity with which he wrote his own feelings into his stories, and, above all, his Hyborian world – that splendid creation – which ranks with Burroughs' Barsoom and Tolkien's Middle Earth as a major fictional achievement."”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

~ L. Sprague de Camp, Dark Valley Destiny, p. 295, 1983, ISBN 0312940742
About

World, Feeling

“At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us. They are saying that everyone is brutal, and the heroes must be as brutal as the villains or they turn into fools. There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counterbalance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films — the freedom to analyze their implications. If we don't use this critical freedom, we are implicitly saying that no brutality is too much for us — that only squares and people who believe in censorship are concerned with brutality. Actually, those who believe in censorship are primarily concerned with sex, and they generally worry about violence only when it's eroticized. This means that practically no one raises the issue of the possible cumulative effects of movie brutality. Yet surely, when night after night atrocities are served up to us as entertainment, it's worth some anxiety. We become clockwork oranges if we accept all this pop culture without asking what's in it. How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?”

Pauline Kael book Deeper into Movies

"Stanley Strangelove" (January 1972) http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0051.html, review of A Clockwork Orange Deeper into Movies (1973)

People, Pleasure, Fools, Sex

“The most destructive criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one divine flower in the garden of God.”

Herrick Johnson (1832–1913) American clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 57.

God, Soul, Flowers, Christ

“As poets we do not ask permission before we begin to practise, for there is no authority to license us. We do not inquire whether it is still possible to pen a drama, for the answer to that question is ours alone to give. It is our drama, spoken or sung, that asserts our right to the title of poet. It is our decision that counts, and not the opinion of some theatre management, or the ponderings of the critic, or even the advice of our friendliest mentors.”

James Fenton (1949) poet

Source: An Introduction to English Poetry (2002), Ch. 22: Poetic Drama and Opera (p. 125)

Question, Decision

“Too many critics mistake the deliberations of the Congress for its decisions.”

Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) lawmaker from Bonham, Texas

On the weekly radio broadcast, "Texas Forum of the Air" (November 1, 1942); reported in Congressional Record (November 2, 1942), vol. 88, Appendix, p. A3866.

Decision

“Damien Hirst's Mother and Child Divided (1993) is a work which can at first glance be read as nothing more than two brutally severed carcasses. "A freak show" was how the art critic of the Sunday Telegraph responded to its presentation in the Turner Prize in 1995. For me, the undoubted shock, even disgust provoked by the work is part of its appeal. Art should be transgressive. Life is not all sweet.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

Life, Art, Reading, Parting

“People will be truly critical if they live in the plenitude of the praxis, that is, if their action encompasses a critical reflection which increasingly organizes their thinking and thus leads them to move from a purely naive knowledge of reality to a higher level, one which enables them to perceive the causes of reality.”

Paulo Freire (1921–1997) educator and philosopher

Source: Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970), Chapter 4

People, Knowledge, Thinking, Reality

“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”

Jean de La Bruyère book Les Caractères

La critique souvent n'est pas une science; c'est un métier, où il faut plus de santé que d'esprit, plus de travail que de capacité, plus d'habitude que de génie. Si elle vient d'un homme qui ait moins de discernement que de lecture, et qu'elle s'exerce sur de certains chapitres, elle corrompt et les lecteurs et l'écrivain.
Aphorism 63
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit

Health, Science, Reading

“The global reach of Smith's moral and political reasoning is quite a distinctive feature of his thought, but it is strongly supplemented by his belief that all human beings are born with similar potential and, most importantly for policymaking, that the inequalities in the world reflect socially generated, rather than natural, disparities.
There is a vision here that has a remarkably current ring. The continuing global relevance of Smith's ideas is quite astonishing, and it is a tribute to the power of his mind that this global vision is so forcefully presented by someone who, a quarter of a millennium ago, lived most of his life in considerable seclusion in a tiny coastal Scottish town. Smith's analyses and explorations are of critical importance for any society in the world in which issues of morals, politics and economics receive attention. The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a global manifesto of profound significance to the interdependent world in which we live.”

Amartya Sen (1933) Indian economist

Amartya Sen, " The economist manifesto http://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2010/04/smith-market-essay-sentiments", New Statesman (23 April 2010) 2010s

Life, World, Idea, Nature

“By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but to have it affirmed by others is of utmost importance. Writing is, after all, a form of communication.”

Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer

"The Art of Fiction: An Interview" (The Paris Review, Spring 1955), in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 218.

Communication, Sense

“You and a few other critics are the only people I've heard use the phrase immediate threat. I didn't, the president didn't. And it's become kind of folklore that that's what's happened.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

CBS Face the Nation (14 March 2004) http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2004/tr20040314-secdef0542.html; in response Thomas Friedman quoted his previous statement from a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee (10 September 2002) http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/HearingsPreparedstatements/hasc-091802.htm: :: But no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. 2000s

People

“In Leopardi’s view, the universal claims of Christianity were a licence for universal savagery. Because it is directed to all of humanity, the Christian religion is usually praised, even by its critics, as an advance on Judaism. Leopardi – like Freud a hundred years later – did not share this view. The crimes of medieval Christendom were worse than those of antiquity, he believed, precisely because they could be defended as applying universal principles: the villainy introduced into the world by Christianity was ‘entirely new and more terrible … more horrible and more barbarous than that of antiquity’. Modern rationalism renews the central error of Christianity – the claim to have revealed the good life for all of humankind. Leopardi described the secular creeds that emerged in modern times as expressions of ‘half-philosophy’, a type of thinking with many of the defects of religion. What Leopardi called ‘the barbarism of reason’ – the project of remaking the world on a more rational model – was the militant evangelism of Christianity in a more dangerous form. Events have confirmed Leopardi’s diagnosis. As Christianity has waned, the intolerance it bequeathed to the world has only grown more destructive. From imperialism through communism and incessant wars launched to promote democracy and human rights, the most barbarous forms of violence have been promoted as means to a higher civilization.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

The Faith of Puppets: Leopardi and the Souls of Machines (p.32-3)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

Life, War, World, Religion

“Kantian ethics is fundamentally committed to a radical critique of human social life, especially of social life in its “civilized” form. This critical tendency is not a mere ancillary feature or contingent concomitant of Kantian ethics. It conditions the fundamental conception of Kantian ethical theory.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Life

“I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to James Hessey (October 9, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

Love, Beauty

“The failing of contemporary criticism is double: Hand in hand with the suppression of aesthetic autonomy, one finds also a growing reluctance to recognize the complex and dynamic temporality of literature. By dynamic temporality I mean that immanent sense of time within the literary work, its ability to reach backward, as part of a tradition, and forward, as a vehicle of innovation and anticipation. This sort of temporality is quite different from a single-minded and frequently reductionist focus on historical context.”

Russell Berman (1950) American academic

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), p. 5.

Literature, Sense, Time, Parting

“Criticism is easy, and art is difficult.”

Philippe Néricault Destouches (1680–1754) French playwright

La critique est aisée, et l'art est difficile.
Glorieux, II, 5, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 150.

Art

“Some people criticize philosophy as pointless navel-gazing. But there is a lot more to it than just that. There’s also a lot of beard-stroking: and to my experience, quite a lot of arrogant condescension too.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Philosophistry http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/04/12/philosophistry/ (April 12, 2017)

People

“The abhorrent acts in the prison were a direct consequence of the culture of impunity encouraged, authorized and instituted by Bush and Rumsfeld in their statements that the Geneva Conventions did not apply. The apparent war crimes that took place were the logical, inevitable outcome of policies and statements from the administration.
To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see — and criticize in places like China and Cuba.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

War

“People who cover Apple figured this racket out a long time ago, which is that if you become cozy with Apple and never criticize them, they will give you some access.”

Daniel Lyons (1960) American writer

'Disrupted' by Dan Lyons is the best book about Silicon Valley today. We talk to the author. http://latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-disrupted-lyons-20160429-snap-htmlstory.html in The Los Angeles Times (29 April 2016)

People, Time