Critique Quotes

“What people accept as justification shows how they think and live.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

“I may feel that without some recognizability I cannot live. But I may also feel that the terms by which I am recognized make life unlivable. This is the juncture from which critique emerges, where critique is understood as an interrogation of the terms by which life is constrained in order to open up the possibility of different modes of living; in other words, not to celebrate difference as such but to establish more inclusive conditions for sheltering and maintaining life that resists models of assimilation.”
― Judith Butler, Undoing Gender

“There is only one expression for truth: the thought which repudiates injustice. If insistence on the good sides of life is not sublated in the negative whole, it transfigures its own opposite: violence.”
― Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

“It is so much easier for most people to ignore an insult than it is for them to ignore a compliment.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“However one must ask not just, is it amusing, is it exciting, but is it a work of art?”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Hegel is well aware of the fact - personally experienced in his youth - that a "deviation" (Abweichung) in thought from what is "publicly recognized" can be the expression of a genuine, albeit unhappy, consciousness, one which is justifiably "severed" (entzweit) from actuality. In certain periods criticism is the only possible form of philosophy. Nothing can be said a priori about the time at which a situation arises in which a philosopher can only be true by dissenting. Ontological principles, a universal belief in providence or the conviction that reason is strong enough to be victorious do not answer the question of whether our current factual situation is in agreement with reason. Even if one believes or knows for certain that the universe and history as a whole are rational, one still does not know a priori the degree to which the present situation realizes what history as a whole (if this word means anything) and the entire actuality make actual.”
― Adriaan T. Peperzak, Philosophy and Politics: A Commentary on the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

“Some people create. Some people critique.”
― Liz Newman

“Espèce douée d’intelligence... Tu parles ! Faut voir ce qu’on en fait de notre gros cerveau : on sait aller sur la lune et on a le matériel pour faire sauter la planète en quelques secondes, mais la moitié de la popu- lation crève de faim et on ne peut toujours pas soigner le cancer. L’humain, c’est de la grosse saloperie.”
― Joanne Richoux, Les Collisions

“After you told me the part about Las Vegas, you know how I said it was the stupidest story I had ever heard?”
“You didn’t say that.”
“Well, I was thinkin’ it. But I’ve decided I owe that Las Vegas story an apology because this last thing made that one look like The Grapes of Wrath.”
― David Wong, John Dies at the End / This Book Is Full Of Spiders / What the Hell Did I Just Read

“Embrace the criticism. Take it to mind not to heart.”
― Nate Hamon

“I find that it is when an opinion is least wanted, that it is most needed.”
― Nate Hamon, Terra Dark

“The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.”
― Karl Marx

“I write between the lines but then I write only one line.”
― Amit Abraham

“Accordez-moi, Seigneur, ce vin qui est aussi nécessaire que votre précieux sang. Ce vin, sans quoi, tout ici bas est laid et maussade, ce vin qui rend la vie acceptable, et tolérables les foutus contemporains que vous m'avez données.”
― Léon Bloy

“You cannot critique something unless it’s clearly defined.”
― Psoid Froid, Humans Laid Bare Trilogyc

“It was music first of all that brought us together. Without being professionals or virtuosos, we were all passionate lovers of music; but
Serge dreamed of devoting himself entirely to the art. All the time he was studying law along with us, he took singing lessons with Cotogni,
the famous baritone of the Italian Opera; while for musical theory, which he wanted to master completely so as to rival Moussorgsky and
Tchaikovsky, he went to the very source and studied with Rimsky-Korsakov. However, our musical tastes were not always the same. The
quality our group valued most was what the Germans call Stimmung, and besides this, the power of suggestion and dramatic force. The
Bach of the Passions, Gluck, Schubert, Wagner and the Russian composers – Borodin in ‘Prince Igor’, Rimsky and, above all, Tchaikovsky,
were our gods. Tchaikovsky’s ‘Queen of Spades’ had just been performed for the first time at the Opera of St Petersburg, and we were
ecstatic about its Hoffmannesque element, notably the scene in the old Countess’s bedroom. We liked the composer’s famous Romances much less, finding them insipid and sometimes trivial. These Romances, however, were just what Diaghilev liked. What he valued
most was broad melody, and in particular whatever gave a singer the chance to display the sensuous qualities of his voice. During the years of his apprenticeship he bore our criticisms and jokes with resignation, but as he learned more about music – and about the history of art in general – he gained in self-confidence and found reasons to justify his predilections. There came a time when not only did he dare to withstand our attacks but went on to refute our arguments fiercely.”
― Richard Buckle, Nijinsky: A Life of Genius and Madness

“One could certainly call Diaghilev a creative genius, although it is not easy to analyse the nature of his creative gift. He practised neither
painting not sculpture, nor was he a professional writer; for his few critical essays, remarkable as they were as proofs of his taste and judgement, did not amount to much – and anyway Serge hated the business of writing. He even lost faith before long in any vocation he
may have felt for music, which was his real speciality. In no branch of art did he become an executant or a creator: and yet one cannot deny
that his whole activity was creative.”
― Richard Buckle, Nijinsky: A Life of Genius and Madness

“If one realizes variance and contrast with or between the critique and contempt, it reaches a route of ethical knowledge, which leads the life on the right track.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Opinions, opinions, opinions abound - I do believe that this, here, opinion is sound.”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“Si des critiques avaient survécu, sans doute auraient-ils reproché à l'auteur quelque chose comme un pessimisme trop caricatural et un manque de foi dans les capacités de l'humanité à se régénérer après le malheur, mais, par chance pour la réception de la pièce, les journalistes et les juges littéraires avaient, comme toute le monde ou presque, été réduits en mottes charbonneuses (Black Village, page 74)”
― Antoine Volodine

“The critique,
To ignore that, it shows the ignorance
To bear that, it pictures the stamina
To learn from that, it is a wisdom
To accept that, it is discovering oneself.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“To bear critique shows one's courage; however, accepting it mirrors the way of knowledge and wisdom.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“What you critique will continue to leak”
― Janna Cachola, Lead by choice, not by checks

“Every intellectual project of a political kind should follow a number of basic principles1) Be deeply suspicious of anything that masks itself in universal regalia. Bring into question that which is not being questioned in the normal state of affairs. (2) Move beyond any self-righteous and self-absolving assessments of the operations of power. Look to deal with power at the level of its effects and the ways in which it positively manipulates subjects to wilfully abandon their own political freedoms. (3) Foreground the affirmative qualities of subjectivities. Not only is this integral in the fight against fascism in all its forms. It opens a challenge to the narcissism of those who would have us surrender to the mercies of the world. (4) Speak with confidence about the ability to transform the world, not for the better, but for the sake of it. Without an open commitment to the people to come, the struggle is already lost. (5) Use provocation as a political tool. Not to evidence extremist views. But to illustrate how normalizing power truly fears anything that appears remotely exceptional. The poetic most certainly included. (6) Trust in the irreducible qualities of human existence. The feelings we have, the atmospheres we breathe, the aesthetics we enfold, the fables we scribe, the playful personas we construct, they are all integral to the formation of a new image of thought. (7) Have faith in people. Just as they will resist what they find oppressive and intolerable, so they will also find their own dignified solutions to problems in spite of our best efforts. (8) Do not shy away from conflict. Without conflict there is no resistance to power. And without resistance to power there is no creation of alternative existences. (9) Reveal fully your political orientations. Do not abstract them from the work. Such a deception is of the order for those embarrassed by the mediocrity of their power. (10) Speak with the courage to truth that narrates a tale to affect a number of meaningful registers. No book should be read if it doesn't intellectually challenge and emotionally move us.”
― Brad Evans, Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously

“Critique don't criticize.”
― Adrienne Posey

“The defining elements of criticism, the theory, the philosophy, and ideas behind it, are the same no matter what type of critique you're writing.”
― Leticia Supple, Music Journalism 101: The definitive resource for new and established writers

“Critique should educate authentic knowledge that enlightens the thoughts and execute such insight that beautifies the writing journey, not jealousy, egoism, or personal attacks.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“We are hardest on the people who mirror the shadowy parts of ourselves. The parts we don’t want to see.”
― Jenny Zhang, March Sisters: On Life, Death, and Little Women

“Practically anyone who’s ever written anything will read someone else’s prose back and tell themselves they’d have at least done a thing or two differently, flipped this phrase, massaged that line.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Can we advance the hypothesis that, beyond the critical stage, the heroic stage (which is still that of metaphysics), there is an ironic stage of technology, an ironic stage of history, an ironic stage of value, etc.?
This would free us from the Heideggerian view of technology as the effectuation, and the last stage, of metaphysics; it would free us from all retrospective nostalgia for being, giving us, rather, a gigantic objective irony, a superior intuition of the illusoriness of all this process - which would not be far from the radical post-historical snobbery Alexandre Kojeve spoke of.
At the heart of this artificial reality, this Virtual Reality, this irony is perhaps all we have left of the original illusion, which at least preserves us from any temptation one day to possess the truth.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact