Welcome Criticism Quotes & Sayings

I welcome opposing viewpoints, but I should warn you that you'll be facing off against the 2nd-place finisher at the 1981 Charleston County High-School Debate Tournament. And whatever became of that county champ who argued in favor of tractor safety modifications? Last time I checked, she didn't have her own show. — Stephen Colbert

It is remarkable, but on the whole, perhaps, not to be lamented, that the world is so unkind to a new book. Any distinguished traveler who comes to our shores is likely to get more dinners and speeches of welcome than he can well dispose of, but the best books, if noticed at all, meet with coldness and suspicion, or, what is worse, gratuitous, off-hand criticism. — Henry David Thoreau

Fascist movements kill off their critics, literally or metaphorically, while democratic movements value, invite and even welcome criticism. — Parker Palmer

When I first prepared this particular talk ... I realized that my usual approach is usually critical. That is, a lot of the things that I do, that most people do, are because they hate something somebody else has done, or they hate that something hasn't been done. And I realized that informed criticism has completely been done in by the web. Because the web has produced so much uninformed criticism. It's kind of a Gresham's Law-bad money drives the good money out of circulation. Bad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can't criticize anything. — Alan Kay

I would have assumed you understood, despite our vague suggestions otherwise, we do not welcome constructive criticism. — David Thorne

Criticism is not construction, it is observation. — George William Curtis

In politics, they have ran with the hare and hunted with the hound. In criticism, they have, knowingly and unblushingly, given false characters, both for good and for evil; sticking at no art of misrepresentation, to clear out of the field of literature all who stood in the way of the interests of their own clique. They have never allowed their own profound ignorance of anything (Greek for instance) to throw even an air of hesitation into their oracular decision on the matter. They set an example of profligate contempt for truth, of which the success was in proportion to the effrontery; and when their prosperity had filled the market with competitors, they cried out against their own reflected sin, as if they had never committed it, or were entitled to a monopoly of it. The latter, I rather think, was what they wanted. Mr. — Thomas Love Peacock

Newspapers are a bad habit, the reading equivalent of junk food. What happens to me is that I seize upon an issue in the news - the issue is the moral/philosophical, political/intellectual equivalent of a cheeseburger with everything on it; but for the duration of my interest in it, all my other interests are consumed by it, and whatever appetites and capacities I may have had for detachment and reflection are suddenly subordinate to this cheeseburger in my life! I offer this as self-criticism; but what it means to be "political" is that you welcome these obsessions with cheeseburgers - at great cost to the rest of your life. — John Irving

I welcome reviews from all readers. I take criticism well; but please ... no comments on my author face! — C.C. Alma

Must have been a book - way down there in the slush pile of manuscripts - that somehow slipped out of the final draft of the Bible. That would have been the chapter that dealt with how we're supposed to recover from the criticism session in the Garden, and discover a sense that we're still welcome on the planet. There are moments in Scripture when we hear that God delights in people, and I am incredulous. But they are few and far between. Perhaps cooler heads determined that too much welcome would make sissies out of us all, and chose instead accounts of the ever popular slaughter, exile, and shame. — Anne Lamott

Of course, like all over-simple classifications of this type, the dichotomy becomes, if pressed, artificial, scholastic and ultimately absurd. But if it is not an aid to serious criticism, neither should it be rejected as being merely superficial or frivolous: like all distinctions which embody any degree of truth, it offers a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting-point for genuine investigation. — Isaiah Berlin

In a democracy, allegations will never improve situations. So, I'm against allegations, but I always welcome criticism. — Narendra Modi

Of course, I'd welcome protest. Good criticism is hard to find. — Aleksandra Mir

Every opinion based on scientific criticism I welcome. — Karl Marx

Being a good leader requires remembering that you're there for a reason, and the reason certainly isn't to have your way. High-integrity leaders not only welcome questioning and criticism - they insist on it. — Travis Bradberry

Criticism of a policy is welcome. But in the garb of criticizing a policy, if you allege that the policy was made for corrupt purposes, I reject it. — P. Chidambaram

The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: "Don't criticize, since you're not capable of carrying out a reform." That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, "this, then, is what needs to be done." It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn't have to lay down the law for the law. It isn't a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is. — Michel Foucault

You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something. — H.L. Mencken

Like musicians who can read and write complicated scores in a world without sounds, for us mathematics is a source of delight, excitement, and even controversy which are hard to share with non mathematicians. In our small micro-cosmos we should ever seek the right balance between competition and solidarity, criticism and empathy, exclusion and inclusion. — Gil Kalai

The Stetson passage is an allusion to Frazer theory in The Golden Bough that religion originated as agricultural engineering. Through a grotesque process of literalization, all of the dying gods and heroes in The Golden Bough, along with Christ and the Fisher King, are transferred from mythic to modern consciousness ( Frazer himself was an unabashed positivist) to be made explicable in scientific terms as fertilizer. — Jewel Spears Brooker

There is an odd assumption that compassion and care are finite or that critics can be everything to everyone - commenting on everything simply because they can. That's not what cultural criticism is. — Roxane Gay