How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), speech, January 24, 1860

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.

Christopher Hampton

Any fool can criticize, condemn¹, and complain - and most fools do.

Dale Carnegie

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.

Donald H. Rumsfeld (1932 - ), Secretary of Defense²

After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937)

To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)

Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962)

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

Franklin P. Jones

Criticism is prejudice made plausible³.

H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

Harold Rosenberg

Now, in reality, the world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them to be men of much greater profundity⁴ than they really are.

Henry Fielding (1707 - 1754)

Pay no attention to what the critics say... Remember, a statue has never been set up in honor of a critic!

Jean Sibelius (1865 - 1957), quoted in Bengt de Torne "Sibelius: A Close-Up" 1937

Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing⁵ for a novel is preposterous⁶. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins.

Native American Proverb

I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, "I wanna grow up and be a critic."

Richard Pryor (1940 - 2005), Guardian⁷ Unlimited⁸ (UK) August 9, 2004

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

W. H. Auden (1907 - 1973)

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.

W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), "Of Human Bondage⁹", 1915

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship¹⁰.

Zeuxis (~400 BC), from Pliny the Elder, Natural History