Critical Quotes - Page 8

• Writers who get written about become self-conscious. They develop a regrettable habit of looking at themselves through the eyes of other people. They are no longer alone, they have an investment in critical praise, and they think they must protect it. This leads to a diffusion of effort. The writer watches himself as he works. He grows more subtle and he pays for it by loss of organic dash.

  Raymond Chandler

  Eye, Writing, Loss

  Raymond Chandler (1987). “Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler”, Delta

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• It is not the self -critical who reveals his humility ( for does not everyone have some how to put up with himself? ). Rather, it is the man who continues to love the person who has criticized him.

  John Climacus

  Humility, Men, Self

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• You can't teach talent. You can't teach inspiration. You can teach people critical facilities. You can give them techniques. You can teach discipline. And you can teach them about the business.

  Anna Deavere Smith

  Teaching, Inspiration, Discipline

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• How you feed your mind is every bit as critical to your happiness as how you feed your body.

  Jeff Olson

  Mind, Body, Bits

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• I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Hands, America

  "A Disturbing 1995 Prediction by Carl Sagan Accurately Describes America of Today" by PAUL RATNER, bigthink.com.

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• We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard.

  Jonathan Gottschall

  Intellectual, Stories, Skeptical

  Jonathan Gottschall (2012). “The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I’m a Muslim, we come from a Muslim community and we are very critical of western or American foreign policy. So if I’ve got the right and if other Muslims have got the right to criticize… likewise everyone else has also got the right to criticize everything else.

  Maajid Nawaz

  Community, Foreign Policy, Criticize

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• Millions upon millions of people came here full of hope and aspiration to this extraordinary land of liberty and opportunity, and helped build the United States. So the Atlantic Ocean was absolutely critical to the story of America.

  Simon Winchester

  Ocean, Opportunity, Land

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• In general the languages of most unpolished people have a great force and energy of expression; and this is but natural. Uncultivated people are but ordinary observers of things, and not critical in distinguishing them; but, for that reason, they admire more, and are more affected with what they see, and therefore express themselves in a warmer and more passionate manner.

  Edmund Burke

  Expression, People, Energy

  Edmund Burke (1824). “A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful”, p.188

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• Agency is the power to think, choose, and act for ourselves. It comes with endless opportunities, accompanied by responsibility and consequences. It is a blessing and a burden. Using this gift of agency wisely is critical today because never in the world's history have God's children been so blessed or so blatantly confronted with so many choices.

  Sharon G. Larsen

  Children, Blessed, Responsibility

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• There are going to be a lot of questions, not just in my country, but across the Middle East. Is Israel going to continue to be "Fortress Israel"? Or, as we all hope, become accepted into the neighborhood, which I believe is the only way we can move forward in harmony. And no matter what's happening in the Middle East - the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment - the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

  Abdallah II

  Country, Spring, Moving Forward

  Interview with Steve Inskeep, www.npr.org. September 22, 2011.

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• There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision.

  John Ruskin

  Hands, Lines, Firsts

  John Ruskin (1869). “The Queen of the Air: Being a Study of the Greek Myths of Cloud and Storm”, p.169

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• Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the mellowness of full achievement. One can even tell the nature of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side than of that.

  John Galsworthy

  Men, Emotional, Hands

  Preface to "Villa Rubein and Other Stories". Book by John Galsworthy, 1923.

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• We live in a culture in which intelligence is denied relevance altogether, in a search for radical innocence, or is defended as an instrument of authority and repression. In my view, the only intelligence worth defending is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying.

  Susan Sontag

  Views, Intelligence, Culture

  Salmagundi, No. 31-32, (p. 29), 1975.

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• Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or bicycle.

  Alain de Botton

  Reality, Optimism, Lines

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2008.

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• I am convinced that the moment is coming when, with its message of eternal, universal values, it will come to the aid of our society. For in these words: "Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," lie those very moral principles that will enable us to survive even the most critical situations.

  Boris Yeltsin

  Lying, Principles, Our Society

  "Against the Grain : An Autobiography" by Boris Yeltsin, (p. 251), 1990.

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• The only way to escape misrepresentation is never to commit oneself to any critical judgement that makes an impact - that is, never to say anything. I still, however think that the best way to promote profitable discussion is to be as clear as possible with oneself about what one sees and judges, to try and establish the essential discriminations in the given field of interest, and to state them as clearly as one can (for disagreement, if necessary).

  F. R. Leavis

  Thinking, Impact, Judging

  1948 The Great Tradition, ch.1. Leavis, Q(ueenie) D(orothy) 1906-81 British literary critic.

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• Critical (i.e., separating) methods apply only to the world-as-nature. It would be easier to break up a theme of Beethoven with dissecting knife or acid than to break up the soul by methods of abstract thought . Nature-knowledge and man-knowledge have neither ways nor aims in common.

  Oswald Spengler

  Men, Knives, Soul

  Oswald Spengler, Charles Francis Atkinson (1932). “The Decline of the West”

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• Hitler had the willpower of a demon and he needed it. If he didn't have such a strong willpower he couldn't have achieved anything. Don't forget, if Hitler had not lost the war, if he did not have to fight against the combination of big powers like England, America, and Russia - each one he could have conquered individually - these defendants and these generals would now be saying, 'Heil Hitler,' and would not be so damn critical.

  Hermann Goring

  Strong, War, Fighting

  Remark on May 24, 1946. "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• If connoisseurship is the art of appreciation, criticism is the art of disclosure... Connoisseurs simply need to appreciate what they encounter. Critics, however, must render these qualities vivid by the artful use of critical disclosure.

  Elliot W. Eisner

  Appreciation, Art, Appreciate

  Elliot W. Eisner (2005). “Reimagining Schools: The Selected Works of Elliot W. Eisner”, p.41, Routledge

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• After the initial critical learning period of youth is over, the areas of the brain that need to be 'turned on' to allow enhanced, long lasting learning can only be activated when something important, surprising, or novel occurs, or if we make the effort to pay close attention.

  Norman Doidge

  Knowledge, Long, Effort

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• To the media, I have become a symbolic figure, critical of China. According to the government, I am a dangerous threat.

  Ai Weiwei

  Media, Government, Figures

  "Ai Weiwei: China excluded its people from the Olympics. London is different". www.theguardian.com. July 25, 2012.

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• Teaching needs an ecosystem that supports evidence-based practice. It will need better systems to disseminate the results of research more widely, but also a better understanding of research, so that teachers can be critical consumers of evidence.

  Ben Goldacre

  Teacher, Teaching, Practice

  "Teachers need to drive the research agenda" by Ben Goldacre, www.theguardian.com. March 18, 2013.

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• Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie , concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.

  Erich Fromm

  Men, Optimism, Survival

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.725, Open Road Media

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• I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Men, Forever, Important

  Sinclair Lewis (2017). “It Can't Happen Here”, p.359, PublishDrive

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