Selected criticism quotes

1. Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.

2. Sectarian feelings and criticism of other teachings or other sects is very bad, poisonous, and should be avoided.

3. The monster London laugh at me.

4. Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.

5. Did Stanton say I was a damned fool? Then I dare say I must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he means.

6. If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.

7. The universalists, the idealists, the Utopians all aim too high. They give promises of an unattainable paradise, and by doing so they deceive mankind. Whatever label they wear, whether they call themselves Christians, Communists, humanitarians, whether they are merely sincere but stupid or wire-pullers and cynics, they are all makers of slaves. I myself have always kept my eye fixed on a paradise which, in the nature of things, lies well within our reach. I mean an improvement in the lot of the German people. (21st February 1945)

8. I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.

9. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

10. Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.

11. It is a barren kind of criticism which tells you what a thing is not.

12. Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.

13. This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.

14. Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.

15. You know why Guns n' Roses aren't a good band? Because no black people listen to them.

16. The only thing you find in the middle of the road are dead animals and dumb Americans.

17. When you're dealing with someone who only has a pair of underpants on, if you take his underpants off, he has nothing left - he's naked. You're better off trying to find him a pair of trousers to complement him rather than change him.

18. I think in England you eat too much sugar and meat and not enough vegetables.

19. I don't know a critic who penetrates the center of anything.

20. The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless bickering!

21. It would be easier for me to reject all established values, if I knew what they were.

22. They laughed at Edison and Einstein, but somehow I still feel uncomfortable when they laugh at me.

23. At great expense, we have built a vast system of inter-connecting stupidities.

24. What the hell has Hoover got to do with it? Besides, I had a better year than he did.

25. I lived with people who had varied opinions, some of whom did not accept my Nazi views. I encouraged this. If a man said something that was critical of me or my ideas, I wouldn't consider him an enemy.

26. I'm not denouncing the church, and I'm not interested in people who want me to denounce the church. It's not a church worthy of denouncing.

27. If all you boast of your great art be true; Sure, willing poverty lives most in you.

28. My feeling is that Darwinism is only at best a partial solution, and an extremely dangerous partial solution. I would say, based on the little I know, Darwinism explains microevolution within species quite well. As to its broader consequence and implications, I don't think it explains individual species evolution at all well.

29. But when I talk to people who are Darwinists or evolutionists and say, 'Well, how did life begin' -- they're...they don't have an answer. I mean, they have an answer, but it's a BS answer. It's an answer that wouldn't make sense to a small child.

30. Everybody has a heart. Except some people.

31. The only thing Madonna will ever do like a virgin is give birth in a stable.

32. The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.

33. The Pumpkins love rock-and-roll, we absolutely love it, but we also think it's a flatulent, ego-serving kiddie playground. You can have your cake and eat it too.

34. You know I'm finished with the old chess because it's all just a lot of book and memorization you know.

35. Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi have absolutely destroyed chess by their immoral, unethical, prearranged games. These guys are really the lowest dogs around, and if people knew the truth about them, they would be held in more contempt than Ben Johnson, the runner, and they're going to know the truth when I do this book!

36. I think with anybody who's doing well in the public eye or whatever, there's always gonna be a shift because people don't wanna see somebody happy all the time. And they're gonna try to take shots at people.

37. Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.

38. A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.

39. David Irving is not just a Fascist historian. He is also a great historian of Fascism.

40. As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist.

41. Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.

42. Nobody's wrong but England - and England's always wrong, Too late - or else too early - too soft - or else too strong. And when for once the wide world begins to praise her name Her own sons crowd and hurry to shout her back to shame.

43. And now Staatsprasident Bolz says that Christianity and the Catholic faith are threatened by us. And to that charge I can answer: In the first place it is Christians and not international atheists who now stand at the head of Germany. I do not merely talk of Christianity, no, I also profess that I will never ally myself with the parties which destroy Christianity. If many wish today to take threatened Christianity under their protection, where, I would ask, was Christianity for them in these fourteen years when they went arm in arm with atheism? No, never and at no time was greater internal damage done to Christianity than in these 14 years when a party, theoretically Christian, sat with those who denied God in one and the same Government.

44. I can imagine people being enthusiastic about the paradise of Mahomet, but as for the insipid paradise of the Christians! In your lifetime, you used to hear the music of Richard Wagner. After your death, it will be nothing but hallelujahs, the waving of palms, children of an age for the feeding-bottle, and hoary old men. The man of the isles pays homage to the forces of nature. But Christianity is an invention of sick brains: one could imagine nothing more senseless - A negro with his taboos is crushingly superior to the human being who seriously believes in transubstantiation.

45. Pure Christianity- the Christianity of the catacombs- is concerned with translating the Christian doctrine into facts. It leads quite simply to the annihilation of mankind. It is merely whole-hearted Bolshevism, under a tinsel of metaphysics.

46. It is a great pity that this tendency towards religious thought can find no better outlet than the Jewish pettifoggery of the Old Testament, for a religious Folk who, in the solitude of winter, continually seek ultimate light on their religious problems with the assistance of the Bible, must eventually become spiritually deformed. The wretched Folk strive to extract truths from these Jewish chicaneries, where in fact no truths exist. As a result they become embedded in some rut of thought and, unless they possess an exceptionally commonsense mind, degenerate into religious maniacs.

47. What is this God Who takes pleasure only in seeing men grovel before Him? Try to picture to yourselves the meaning of the following, quite simple story: God creates the conditions for sin. Later on He succeeds, with the help of the Devil, in causing man to sin. Then He employs a virgin to bring into the world a Son who, by His death, will redeem humanity!

48. The priests of antiquity were closer to nature, and they sought modestly for the meaning of things. Instead of that, Christianity promulgates its inconsistent dogmas and imposes them by force.

49. If a meaningless person says something is meaningless, that's probably proof that it isn't meaningless; and if a boring person says something is boring, that's probably proof that it's interesting.

50. It's as I feared: a bunch of people who don't know very much complaining about the fact the world is the way it is.

51. By what right, moreover, could a Christian or a Marxist accuse me, for example, of pessimism? I was not the one to invent the misery of the human being or the terrifying formulas of divine malediction.

52. The fecundity and the importance of a literary form are often measured by the trash it contains.

53. 'The merging of different motif areas in her drawings and the transformation of spacial relationships into flat correspondences gathers towards a distortion of depicted reality and the dissolution of its phenomenal form.' I didn't try to reach the sense of this. I understood the point of it was to transpose the locus of authority from the works to the discussion of the works. The writer had assumed the role of validating authority for the images he discussed. In order to do this he had been required to transform what he saw with his eyes into ideologies that he could 'see' with his intellect.

54. Si hubiera estado presente en la Creacion, habria dado algunas indicaciones utiles.

55. Once at the croak of a Raven who crost it, A barbarous people, Blind to the magic, And deaf to the melody, Snarl'd at and cursed me. A demon vext me, The light retreated, The landskip darken'd, The melody deaden'd, The Master whisper'd 'Follow The Gleam.'

56. Well, Gosse, would you like to know what I think of Churton Collins? I think he's a Louse on the Locks of Literature.

57. O, I see thee old and formal, fitted to thy petty part, With a little hoard of maxims preaching down a daughter's heart.

58. I am tired of museums - these cemeteries of art.

59. Look at this. A picket line! Can you believe this? I've never even heard of Cooks Against Wasted Leftovers! ... CAWLO? That's a silly name! They seem to be under the impression that I haven't made enough shows focusing on the utilization of recipe remains or some such thing as that. To make matters worse, my crew is refusing to cross the picket line. Some have actually joined it! [shakes fist] Oh, you faithless cur!

60. Ooh, Chef got hold of a bad avocado there, and that happens. And he's not liking that one either. Do not wave your knife at me, I did not buy the produce, Chef!

61. Cat Cora's got a fascinating way of getting creme fraiche out of the container. Instead of simply removing the lid by lifting it up away from its interlocking device, she just simply whacks off the whole top of the thing. The woman is positively medieval!

62. As a rule, when there arises a thinker as great in theology as Kepler in science, the whole mass of his conclusions ripens into a dogma. His disciples labour not to test it, but to establish it; and while, in the Catholic Church, it becomes a dogma to be believed or disbelieved under the penalty of damnation, it becomes in the Protestant Church the basis for one more sect.

63. The skepticism of the art establishment seems to be based on, as much as anything, a kind of big-city prejudice against work so free from urban angst. ~ Lynn Macritchie in Art in America (April 1995)

64. What argument have they to persuade the young men to fight except merely in another squalid attempt to defend themselves against a redistribution of the international swag?

65. Now our forces are killing lots of al-Qaida jihadists, preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and giving democracy in Iraq a chance -- and Democrats say we are 'losing' this war. I think that's a direct quote from their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, but it may have been the Osama bin Laden tape released this week. I always get those two confused.

66. Point one and point two by the end of the week had become official government policy. As for converting them to Christianity, I think it might be a good idea to get them on some sort of hobby other than slaughtering infidels. I mean perhaps that's the Peace Corps, perhaps it's working for Planned Parenthood, but I've never seen the transforming effect of anything like that Christianity.

67. Bumper sticker idea for liberals: News magazines don't kill people, Muslims do.

68. One [cartoon] showed Muhammad turning away suicide bombers from the gates of heaven, saying 'Stop, stop - we ran out of virgins!' - which I believe was a commentary on Muslims' predilection for violence. Another was a cartoon of Muhammad with horns, which I believe was a commentary on Muslims' predilection for violence. The third showed Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb, which I believe was an expression of post-industrial ennui in a secular - oops, no, wait: It was more of a commentary on Muslims' predilection for violence ... Muslims are the only people who make feminists seem laid-back.

69. The amazing part of the great Danish cartoon caper isn't that Muslims immediately engage in acts of mob violence when things don't go their way. That is de rigueur for the Religion of Peace. Their immediate response to all bad news is mass violence. That's a 'dog bites man' story and belongs on page B-34, next to the grade school hot lunch menu and the birth notices. After an Egyptian ferry capsized recently, killing hundreds of passengers, a whole braying mob of passengers' relatives staged an organized attack on the company, throwing furniture out the window and burning the building to the ground. Witnesses say it was the most violent ocean liner-related incident since Carnival Cruise Lines fired Kathie Lee Gifford. The 'offense to Islam' ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire.

70. Of course I regret it. I should have added 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and the reporters.'

71. [Learning difficulties are a cover for] rich parents with dumb kids...That's why 'Pinch' Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, is alleged to have dyslexia - because he's retarded.

72. Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal.

73. Ozzy Osbourne has his bats, and I have that darn 'convert them to Christianity' quote. Some may not like what I said, but I'm still waiting to hear a better suggestion.

74. People talk about Eric Clapton. What has he ever done except throw his baby off a fuckin' ledge and write a song about it?

75. I simply asked him if he was making any money. Is that a criticism?

76. I don't want to be ungallant, but Audrey's too old and wrinkled for me.

77. The poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age.

78. Now my education, life and consciousness are talked about by those who cannot understand what I wrote, what I think, what is my life. They make me up from their subjective imagination and attack me publicly as well as secretly. Because my novels completely obscure my behaviour and ideas, and result in a lot of misunderstandings, my name is related to nihilism or humanism, although I have written a book of over three hundred pages to explain my ideas (this book is very easy to understand and without a metaphysical term). Those who talk about me never read it. They judged my ideas according to one of my short stories, then deduced a variety of strange conclusions and decided which doctrine I belong to. I have been caught in this predicament all these years and cannot get rid of it...

79. Fabricaronles a muchos su grandeza sus malevolos. Mas fiera es la lisonja que el odio, pues remedia este eficazmente las tachas que aquella disimula.

80. That Shakespeare wanted Art.

81. Shakespeare, in a play, brought in a number of men saying they had suffered shipwreck in Bohemia, where there is no sea by some 100 miles.

82. Some physicians who have called him excessively permissive just didn't understand and gave his understanding approach to child rearing a negative label. He was blamed for the radical behavior of the youth in the '60s. But that didn't emerge from Spock's teachings. It was far more a reflection of the social and political climate. ~ Dr. Marvin Drellich, professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College.

83. Just down the road stood a little town, which I shall call Dullard lest the people recognize themselves and take me to court or come to my house and batter me with baseball bats.

84. Blackpool's illuminations are nothing if not splendid, and they are not splendid.

85. Excuse me, but I have to say this. You are more stupid than a paramecium.

86. People like you always help the far-right, because you like to hurt people, and you like to talk about how bad people are and all their personal failings.

87. The thing that makes it all worth it is when someone comes up and says, 'I had a really hard time in my life and your album really helped me.' As long as that happens, all the idiots in the world and all the stupid press can say what they want to; it just doesn't matter.

88. Epictetus goes much further when he asks: Why do we not lose our temper if someone tells us that we have a headache, while we do lose it if someone says there is anything wrong with our arguments or our choice? (80)

89. (Capablanca) wanted to change the rules already back in the 1920's, saying that chess was getting played out. And he was right. Now it's completely dead, it's a joke. It's all just memorization and prearrangement. It's a very uncreative game now.

90. Look at the history of the (United States). The history of the country is basically what? Get something for nothing, right? Take, kill. They invaded the country, they robbed the land of the American Indians, they killed almost all of them off... That's the history of the United States. A despicable country.

91. I don't play the old chess any more. The old chess is dead, it's been played out.

92. They like to write only bad things about me.

93. One of the objections I have against Campbell's Astounding was that there was too little love in it. It was a very loveless magazine. They never took enough account of the feeling that is always in SF.

94. The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore the plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly slender, despite the rich food and drink they were putting away. Their wives were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink they too were putting away. An earlier and less sophisticated generation would have regarded them as beautiful people, apart from their eyes.

95. What you do if someone doesn't understand your song, is to keep on singing your song.

96. Fanaticism: 'Fanatic is often the name given to people of action by people who are lazy.'

97. All those [management] people are hypocrites and idiots.

98. Fan is short for fanatic - he's crazy about something he really doesn't know about. And it's proven that 99 percent of baseball fans have no idea what they're watching.

99. Tous les grands poetes deviennent naturellement, fatalement, critiques.

100. The imagination eulogized by Baudelaire is in his own case more often than not a synonym for desire or despair. His critical exigencies are, like those of the profoundly sick man that he was, harsh and imperative and illusory in the sense of release temporarily obtained. Yet imagination is also the faculty that gives Baudelaire a royal sense of equality with other creative artists; he uses his status as a poet to boost his activities as a critic, claiming, with total justification in his case, that criticism is a creative affair, a fine rather than applied art.