criticism quotes

David Brinkley: 

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her. 

Elbert Hubbard: 

The man who is anybody and who does anything is surely going to be criticized, vilified, and misunderstood. This is part of the penalty for greatness, and evey man understands, too, that it is no proof of greatness.

Elbert Hubbard: 

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

Elias Canetti: 

People love as self-recognition what they hate as an accusation.

Franklin P. Jones: 

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

H. L. Mencken: 

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

Henri Frederic Amiel: 

We are never more discontented with others than when we are discontented with ourselves.

Henry Steele Commager: 

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

James Luther Adams: 

Nothing is complete and thus nothing is exempt from criticism.

John Gardner: 

Pity the leader caught between unloving critics and uncritical lovers.

John Wooden: 

You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.

Mohandas K. Gandhi: 

If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (probably erroneously): 
Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Theodore Roosevelt: 

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
From a speech given in Paris at the Sorbonne in 1910