criticism

"What do the perpetrators of the massacres at Sandy Hook, at Aurora, at Orlando, and at Sutherland Springs have in common? They were all men under 30 and they all used versions of the same kind of firearm, the AR-15, the semi-automatic version of the military's M-16 and the bestselling gun in America. It might be difficult to make this connection because as I write this, the section on the use of AR-15s in mass killings has been deleted from Wikipedia..."

"But on Wikipedia, as in the real world, the users with the deepest technical knowledge of firearms are also the most fervent gun owners and the most hostile to gun control. For critics, that’s led to a persistent pro-gun bias on the web’s leading source of neutral information at a time when the gun control debate is more heated than ever."

"The Wikimedia Foundation has defended itself and Wikipedia from allegations of being host to these kinds of influence campaigns, arguing that the encyclopaedia is constantly being updated and improved."

"But if a reader had started on the page for either of Breivik’s guns, the Ruger or the Glock, they would not know this. That reader would find a great deal of technical information about the weapons in question – their weights, lengths, cartridges, rates of fire, magazine capacities, muzzle velocities – and detailed descriptions of their designs, all illustrated with abundant photographs and diagrams."

"The bias in the articles was not explicit, but structural. The project did not insert false information into the articles, but instead purged information that showed the weapons in a bad light - dismissing it as "off topic"."

"We should be: kind, thoughtful, passionate about getting it right, open, tolerant of different viewpoints, open to criticism, bold about changing our policies and also cautious about changing our policies."

"A group of pro-gun Wikipedia editors tried to hide the true number of mass shootings associated with the AR-15 rifle in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida."

"Have you ever wondered why the Wikimedia Foundation wants so much money? It certainly isn’t needed to operate Wikipedia. You can literally fit a copy of the entire text on your phone! So, what’s the money for? Inquiring minds want to know…"

"According to The Verge report and an independent follow-up by Haaretz, the top editors of the Colt page are pro-gun enthusiasts who skewed the information presented on it and are also involved in editing other articles on Wikipedia – for example, the much more general article, titled AR 15 – to push their worldview...Through countless exhausting debates, this small group of pro-gun Wikipedia editors – linked together through Wikipedia’s Firearms project (or “WikiProject: Firearms,” mentioned below) – has managed to control almost completely the discourse around the rifle, predominantly by making sure any potentially negative details about it be excluded from the original Colt AR-15 article."

"In schools, for example, there are courses in the criticism of literature, art criticism, and so forth. The arts are supposed to be 'not real.' It is quite safe, therefore, to criticize them in that regard -- to see how a story or a painting is constructed, or more importantly, to critically analyze the structure of ideas, themes, or beliefs that appear, say, in the poem or work of fiction. When children are taught science, there is no criticism allowed. They are told, 'This is how things are.' Science's reasons are given as the only true statements about reality, with which no student is expected to quarrel. Any strong intellectual explorations or counter versions of reality have appeared in science fiction, for example. Here scientists, many being science-fiction buffs, can channel their own intellectual questioning into a safe form. 'This is, after all, merely imaginative and not to be taken seriously.'"

"About ten degrees upslope of Fiction, I could see our nearest neighbor: Artistic Criticism. It was an exceptionally beautiful island, yet deeply troubled, confused and suffused with a blanketing layer of almost impenetrable bullshit."

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations, the new needs friends... Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

"The most useful criticism in any art [form] is new work done with the same tools [as previous art]."

"One cannot, however, avoid saying a few words about individuals who lay down the law to art in the name of art history. Art criticism today is beset by art historians turned inside out to function as prophets of so-called inevitable trends. A determinism similar to that projected into the evolution of past styles is clamped upon art in the making. In this parody of art history, value judgments are deduced from a presumed logic of development, and an ultimatum is issued to artists either to accommodate themselves to these values or be banned from the art of the future."

"Évidemment, les critiques n'ont été créés que le septième jour. S'ils avaient été créés le premier, qu'auraient-ils eu à faire?"

"It didn’t pay very much, but it enabled me to get other jobs doing art criticism, which I didn’t want to do very much, but as so often when you exhibit reluctance to do something, people think you must be very good at it. If I had set out to be an art critic, I might never have succeeded."

"When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head—the other man's head, I mean—then that proved that his—the first fellow's—girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head—not his own, you know, but the other fellow's—the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who—well, if he broke his head, then his girl—not the other fellow's, but the fellow who was the—Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism."

"In 1968 the American critic Jack Burnham published Beyond Modern Sculpture, the first of a series of books and articles on contemporary sculpture produced over the following five years that attempted to establish a post-formalist discourse. The culmination of this project was the exhibition Software staged at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1970 and Burnham’s theoretical treatise The Structure of Art, which was perhaps the first sustained attempt to provide a model of structuralist art criticism and theory. At the root of Burnham’s project were two inter-related concerns; the first, a quasi-determinist notion that the historical development of sculptural practice during the 20th century was the consequence of scientific and technological innovations and, second, a notion that traditional art historical terminology was inadequate to its critical analysis."

"One wonders how the literary revisionists and canon cleansers can bear to take the money. Imagine a school of sixteenth century art criticism that spent its time contently jeering at the past for not knowing about perspective."

"La critique est aisée, et l'art est difficile."

"We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donné: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it."

"Critics should never socialize with artists; it’s difficult enough to like their work in the first place."

"Parodies and caricatures are the most penetrating of criticisms."

"He was in Logic, a great critic, Profoundly skill'd in Analytic; He could distinguish, and divide A hair 'twixt south and south-west side."

"People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise."

"Eminem: I tried to show you art, but you just pick it apart."

"It is not necessary to judge and ridicule when, thank God, you have not passed the path that I have. To them, as always, I wish everyone good and every honor..."

"Whoever criticizes others must have something to replace them. Criticism without suggestion is like trying to stop flood with flood and put out fire with fire. It will surely be without worth."

"Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss."

"The generous Critic fann'd the Poet's fire, And taught the world with reason to admire."

"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."

"The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons."

"Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower."

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one... just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

"In all of history, we have found just one cure for error—a partial antidote against making and repeating grand, foolish mistakes, a remedy against self-deception. That antidote is criticism."

"Whatever else he may do, a critic reveals and criticises himself."

"Indessen ist das gerade wieder der Vorzug der neuen Richtung, daß wir nicht dogmatisch die Welt antizipieren, sondern erst aus der Kritik der alten Welt die neue finden wollen. ... Ist die Konstruktion der Zukunft und das Fertigwerden für alle Zeiten nicht unsere Sache, so ist desto gewisser, was wir gegenwärtig zu vollbringen haben, ich meine die rücksichtslose Kritik alles Bestehenden, rücksichtslos sowohl in dem Sinne, daß die Kritik sich nicht vor ihren Resultaten fürchtet und ebensowenig vor dem Konflikte mit den vorhandenen Mächten."

"The modern proliferation of theoretical means and critical methods barely conceals the fact that we still allow ourselves to write about these works only within the narrowest disciplinary boundaries. We move from rigorous scholarship (the phrase is already too obvious) to ideological commitments that often seem, even when they are put forward in the name of History, to have forgotten the perils of devotion to an idea; to some straitened notion of pleasure; to the fantasy that some new science of rhetorical displacements will finally release us from the cold regime of the final signified. We have plenty of psychoanalytic criticism, formalist criticism, ideological criticism, etc., but where is our fear criticism? our despair criticism? our disgust criticism? our criticism of resentment? of petty ambition? of treachery, deceit, jealousy, hysterical rage? Nowhere in sight; and yet it would hardly require much effort to discover them all just beneath the thin civility of the strictest critical decorum. Then what if we were able to pursue critical fear, to identify critics with their fear, to prove that service to the text is driven by jealous desires, horrified resentment, abject loathing."

"Those who are esteemed umpires of taste are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual."

"For 'tis a physic That's bitter to sweet end."

"Better a little chiding than a great deal of heartbreak."

"Many critics are like woodpeckers, who, instead of enjoying the fruit and shadow of a tree, hop incessantly around the trunk, pecking holes in the bark to discover some little worm or other."

"For I am nothing, if not critical."

"One who rejects a rebuke goes astray."

"Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but those who hate to be rebuked are stupid."

"Let dull critics feed upon the carcases of plays; give me the taste and the dressing."

"Unbridled criticism affects your life. Forever. It becomes a part of the pattern that designs the fabric of your suffering. The torturer and the tortured, married in painful redefinition, marking indelibly the way you live and die, the way you perform your art."

"In the proudest nations of the Old World works were published which faithfully portrayed the vices and absurdities of contemporaries; La Bruyère lived in Louis XIV’s palace while he wrote his chapter on the great, and Molière criticized the court in plays acted before the courtiers. But the power which dominates in the United States does not understand being mocked like that. The least reproach offends it, and the slightest sting of truth turns it fierce; and one must praise everything, from the turn of its phrases to its most robust virtues. No writer, no matter how famous, can escape from this obligation to sprinkle incense over his fellow citizens. Hence the majority lives in a state of perpetual self-adoration; only strangers or experience may be able to bring certain truths to the Americans’ attention."

"How is he made? Oftentimes bitter, sometimes sweet, seldom even wide-awake, architectural criticism of "the modern" wholly lacks inspiration or any qualification because it lacks the appreciation that is love: the flame essential to profound understanding. Only as criticism is the fruit of such experience will it ever be able to truly appraise anything. Else the spirit of true criticism is lacking. The spirit is love and love alone can understand. So art criticism is sour and superficial today because it would seem to know all about everything but understand nothing."

"In such a time as this it is not meet That every nice offence should bear his comment."