Kenneth Tynan Quotes

People realize this man knows what the hell's going on and nobody else does.

You find that all men are successes or failures. Success is the stamp of truth. I will say all men who fail to place their feet on the dome of facts do so by not sieving all truth and throwing the faulty to one side.

Men are not to be judged by what they do not know, but by what they know, and by the manner in which they know it.

The wisest of the wise may err.

The clouds may drop down titles and estates, and wealth may seek us, but wisdom must be sought.

Sympathy is the first condition of criticism.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation.

If you would judge, understand.

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

The strength of criticism lies in the weakness of the thing criticized.

As between mileage and experience choose experience.

Send a wise man and don't advise him. He should know what to do.

Do not seek advice from the ignorant.

It is high time we found out about this man Cummings. Let us give him every opportunity to show us at once whether he is a genius, a charlatan, or a congenital defective - and get him off our minds.

Age is irrelevant. Experience is relevant.

Even my enemies would acknowledge that I'm a great judge of talent, and this statement will be proven true time and time again.

The audience is my hardest and best critic.

Properly speaking, we learn from those books only that we cannot judge. The author of a book that I am competent to criticise would have to learn from me.

Again, if you only know what you know, you don't know if something's good or bad. You don't have perspective.

A critic knows more than the author he criticizes, or just as much, or at least somewhat less.

It is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand.

I'm rarely asked to play the smartest man in the room.

True scholarship consists in knowing not what things exist, but what they mean; it is not memory but judgment.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.