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. To call it weird would be a cowardly evasion. It is creepy, eccentric, eerie, flaky, freaky, funky, grotesque, inscrutable, kinky, kooky, magical, oddball, spooky, uncanny, uncouth and unearthly. Especially uncouth. What I did was, I typed the word 'weird' and when that wholly failed to evoke the feelings the film stirred in me, I turned to the thesaurus and it suggested the above substitutes - and none of them do the trick, either.

42. I prefer to evaluate a film on the basis of what it intends to do, not on what I think it should have done.

43. Learning the difference between good movies and skillful ones is an early step in becoming a moviegoer. Certain films demonstrate that a skillful movie need not be a good one. It is also true that a good movie need not be skillful, but it takes a heap of movie-going to figure that one out.

44. Writing daily film criticism is a balancing act between the bottom line and the higher reaches, between the answers to the questions, (1) Is this movie worth my money?, and (2) Does this movie expand or devalue my information about human nature? Critics who write so everybody can understand everything are actually engaging in a kind of ventriloquism - working as their own dummies. They are pretending to know less than they do. But critics who write for other critics are hardly more honest, since they are sending a message to millions that only hundreds will understand. It's a waste of postage.

45. Roger Ebert is a national treasure. He is the most recognizable and well known movie critic. He has been my favorite writer for some time now. I do not always agree with his opinions, which is my right, but he always backs them up. He is not someone who will say that such and such about movie X is bad and leave it at that - he will give the reasons for his thought process.

46. Through his boorish, knee-jerk leftism, Ebert has become merely another Hollywood elitist thumbing his nose at America. Two thumbs down.

47. In nearly a thousand years as an independent nation, no government of these islands has ever set out to cede sovereignty to foreign powers. Today all three established political parties are eager to do just that.

48. However, our task is far from over. Our friends in the other party will never forgive us for our success, and are doing everything in their power to rewrite history. Listening to the liberals, you'd think that the 1980's were the worst period since the Great Depression, filled with suffering and despair. I don't know about you, but I'm getting awfully tired of the whining voices from the White House these days. They're claiming there was a decade of greed and neglect, but you and I know better than that. We were there.

49. Liberals fought poverty and poverty won.

50. You praise the firm restraint with which they write - I'm with you there, of course: They use the snaffle and the curb all right, But where's the bloody horse?

51. He became a Roman Catholic, but an unpleasantly militant one, sharing the hysterically nihilist mood of some of the fascist rebels in Spain:He himself was no fascist, simply a naive who lamented - but without ever bothering to take serious thought - modern technology's erosion of individuality.

52. He's basically Goro in a suit.

53. This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people. You ever Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm - yeah, and get an NEA grant for something like this.

54. Embrace your inner wacko, Senator Kerry.

55. I'm just watching Sen. 'Dick Turban,' ah, Dick Turban is doing his - from Illinois - he of Club G'itmo fame. Ha! I wish Roberts would have shown up in the Club G'itmo T-shirt today. Maybe, maybe a Club G'itmo java coffee cup, just for Dick Turban. Ah, but anyway, Dick Turban.

56. Liberal talk radio is nothing more than a pimple on the rear end of a pig.

57. The Jesse MacBeth story was done early morning on Tuesday, September 25th on our 600-plus radio stations around the country as a Morning Update, we call it. The video podcast of that update went out Monday afternoon to our subscribers at RushLimbaugh.com. The Jesse MacBeth story and all the other stories, Scott whatever his name was from the New Republic, and there are any number of them - had been told on this show for weeks and months prior to this phone call on Wednesday where you lift the term 'phony soldiers' and try to create a smear out of it.

58. Who's off his meds and is exaggerating the effects of his illness? Comedian Rush Limbaugh, that's who!

59. You know, if you played a drinking game where you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being elite, you'd almost be as wasted as Rush Limbaugh.

60. We have no intention of prosecuting Rush Limbaugh because lying through your teeth and being stupid isn't a crime.

61. Coming in, I was denounced as a fraud by all the extreme men of the opposing party, and as an ingrate and a traitor by the same class of men in my own party. Going out, I have the good will, blessings, and approval of the best people of all parties and sections.

62. For some time I have thought of writing, but I have hesitated until now, for truly, I feared to expose myself to the criticism of men, because I have not studied like others, who have assimilated both Law and the Holy Scriptures equally and have never changed their idiom since their infancy, but instead were always learning it increasingly, to perfection, while my idiom and language have been translated into a foreign tongue. So it is easy to prove from a sample of my writing, my ability in rhetoric and the extent of my preparation and knowledge, for as it is said, 'wisdom shall be recognized in speech, and in understanding, and in knowledge and in the learning of truth.'

63. In the pretext of the academic being detestable, the worst in the class was made a hero! He opens the door to the ethics of shit! Newness at whatever cost and art becomes just a latrine!

64. 'The Problem with Atheism' (2007)[7]

65. Judaism is as intrinsically divisive, as ridiculous in its literalism, and as at odds with the civilizing insights of modernity as any other religion.[2]

66. In your zeal to end the harms caused by religion, don't be driven by blind faith down a course of intolerance. Sam, in the name of reason, please turn back.

67. Cold approbation gave the ling'ring bays, For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.

68. The greater, far the greater number of those who rave and rail, and inquire and accuse, neither suspect nor fear, nor care for the publick; but hope to force their way to riches, by virulence and invective, and are vehement and clamorous, only that they may be sooner hired to be silent.

69. Shakspeare never has six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven: but this does not refute my general assertion.

70. I [Boswell] was somewhat disappointed in finding that the edition of The English Poets, for which he was to write Prefaces and Lives, was not an undertaking directed by him: but that he was to furnish a Preface and Life to any poet the booksellers pleased. I asked him if he would do this to any dunce's works, if they should ask him. JOHNSON: 'Yes, Sir, and say he was a dunce.'

71. Mrs. Digby told me that when she lived in London with her sister, Mrs. Brooke, they were every now and then honoured by the visits of Dr. Johnson. He called on them one day soon after the publication of his immortal dictionary. The two ladies paid him due compliments on the occasion. Amongst other topics of praise they very much commended the omission of all naughty words. 'What! my dears! then you have been looking for them?' said the moralist. The ladies, confused at being thus caught, dropped the subject of the dictionary.

72. Dr. Johnson was observed by a musical friend of his to be extremely inattentive at a concert, whilst a celebrated solo player was running up and down the divisions and subdivisions of notes upon his violin. His friend, to induce him to take greater notice of what was going on, told him how extremely difficult it was. 'Difficult, do you call it, Sir?' replied the Doctor; 'I wish it were impossible.'

73. Every now and then they were awarded prizes - Self-Help by Smiles, and other books suitable for perusal by persons suffering from almost complete obliteration of the mental faculties.

74. It's a brutal book; it ought to be burnt by the common hangman. Smiles was the arch-Philistine, and his book the apotheosis of respectability, gigmanity, and selfish grab.

75. There is no method in his talk: he wanders like a man sailing among many currents, whithersoever his lazy mind directs him; and, what is more unpleasant, he preaches, or rather soliloquises:I reckon him a man of great and useless genius: a strange, not at all a great man.

76. Here was the world's worst wound. And here with pride 'Their name liveth for evermore' the Gateway claims. Was ever an immolation so belied As these intolerably nameless names? Well might the Dead who struggled in the slime Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

77. Doctor Freud not only used cocaine himself, but he also prescribed it to his patients. And then he drew his generalizations. Cocaine is a strong sexual arouser. That's why everything Freud invented - all those oedipuses, sphinxes and sphincters - is relevant only to a mental dimension of a patient, whose brain is turned to fried-eggs by cocaine. In such a state, one really has only one problem left - what to do first, to screw his mother or to do away with his father. Of course, until his cocaine runs out. And in those times, there were no problems with supplies. But so long as your daily dose is less than three grams, you don't have to fear either the Oedipus complex, nor other things discovered by Freud.

78. You just threw cheese at Sam & Mark. Don't you think they've suffered enough?!

79. Simon Amstell: So Penny, you used to do a fashion column for the Daily Mail, didn't you? Penny Smith: Yes I've done many strange things in my time. Simon Amstell: So what does one wear to a lynching?

80. Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the Idea's of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum, is a Chimera, and there is no such thing as his Felicity.

81. He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself.

82. Oh, the snivelling grovelling bastard.

83. A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

84. Take a good look at this world, how riddled it is with huge, gaping holes, how full of Nothingness, the Nothingness that fills the bottomless void between the stars, how everything about us has become lined with it, how it darkly lurks behind each shred of matter. This is your work, envious one! And I hardly think the future generations will bless you for it...

85. I have fundamental reservations to this adaptation. First of all I would have liked to see the planet Solaris which the director unfortunately denied me as the film was to be a cinematically subdued work. And secondly - as I told Tarkovsky during one of our quarrels - he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment. What we get in the film is only how this abominable Kelvin has driven poor Harey to suicide and then he has pangs of conscience which are amplified by her appearance; a strange and incomprehensible appearance. [...]

86. Then you write, 'Oh, they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.' First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.

87. Gould occupies a rather curious position, particularly on this side of the Atlantic. Because of the excellence of his essays, he has come to be seen by non-biologists as the preeminent evolutionary theorist. In contrast, the evolutionary biologists with whom I have discussed his work tend to see him as a man whose ideas are so confused as to be hardly worth bothering with, but as one who should not be publicly criticized because he is at least on our side against the creationists. All this would not matter, were it not that he is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory.

88. Now it is not very hard to find out, if you spend a little while reading in evolution, that Gould is the John Kenneth Galbraith of his subject. That is, he is a wonderful writer who is beloved by literary intellectuals and lionized by the media because he does not use algebra or difficult jargon. Unfortunately, it appears that he avoids these sins not because he has transcended his colleagues but because he does not seem to understand what they have to say; and his own descriptions of what the field is about-not just the answers, but even the questions-are consistently misleading.

89. S. J. Gould's Mismeasure of Man is a paleontologist's distorted view of what psychologists think, untutored in even the most elementary facts of the science. Gould is one of a number of politically motivated scientists who have consistently misled the public about what psychologists are doing in the field of intelligence, what they have discovered and what conclusions they have come to. Gould simply refuses to mention unquestionable facts that do not fit into his politically correct version; he shamelessly attacks the reputations of eminent scientists of whom he disapproves, on completely nonfactual grounds, and he misrepresents the views of scientists.

90. No actual tyrant known to history has ever been guilty of one-hundredth of the crimes, massacres, and other atrocities attributed to the Deity in the Bible.

91. I also like to ride Segways. How much fun that is! Anybody think that's fun? I hope so... There's an awful lot of people in the world that sneer at Segways because other people are having fun. There must be something bad about it. But I always tell people, that hey, these Segways are so environmentally conscious. I carry four of them in the trunk of my Hummer.

92. Hughes began (The Hawk in the Rain, 1957; Lupercal, 1960) as an elemental poet of power; he was inchoate, but fruitfully aware both of the brute force of creation and of the natural world. Then:he began to assume a mantic role; he has now turned into (Crow, 1970) a pretentious, coffee-table poet, a mindless celebrant of instinct.

93. To study Buddhism and then use it as a weapon in order to criticize others' theories or ideologies is wrong. The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life with the knowledge of the Buddhist teachings.

94. Asked if he had ever conducted any Stockhausen, he said, 'No, but I once trod in some.'

95. No composer has written as much as 100 bars of worthwhile music since 1925.

96. The Public is an old woman. Let her maunder and mumble.

97. 'My good and kind agent for the propagation of the Gospel; i.e. the Devil's gospel'.

98. 'Huxley gave the death-blow not only to Owen's theory of the skull but also to Owen's hitherto unchallenged prestige'

99. 'Pope Huxley' title of an article by R.H. Hutton who complains that whilst THH advocates agnosticism for everyone else, he's apt to be a mite too certain himself!

100. 'If he [THH] has a fault it is... that like Caesar, he is ambitious... [it might be said that] cutting up apes is his forte, cutting up men is his foible'