Robert Mondavi Quotes

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.

Personally, I read reviews because I'm interested by them, but they don't have utility for me.

Certainly, critics are not all created equal.

I guess you'd have to say that sometimes the audience is smarter than the critics.

Unmixed praise is not due to any one. It leaves behind a sense of unreality. We can only do justice to a great man by a discriminating criticism. Hero-worship, which paints a faultless monster, whom the world never saw, is like those modern pictures which are a blaze of light without any shadow.

The idea that we should be open to all ideas is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid.

Literary criticism has about it neither rigour nor proof. Where it is honest, it is passionate, private experience seeking to persuade.

You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.

A critic at best is a waiter at the great table of literature.

Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?

There's an enormous difference between being a critic and a reviewer. The reviewer reacts to the experience of that book.

To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you're going to write, you have to find out what's bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what's good for you.

Professors of theory merely hold post-mortems.

We should be wrong to demand that a critic must stay on the point all the time; it is enough if he remains in orbit around it.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.

Never accept an expert's opinion if it violates your own because the experts can change their minds.

You should never assume anything coming from a critical standpoint. You should go into everything assuming you're going to get crushed.

Morals and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment.

I think we are used to being critical and evaluating ideas.

Criticism per se does not worry me. I've always solicited it as part of the design process.

The real world out there isn't nearly as nice as some people prefer it to be, so don't swallow everything your high-born teachers tell you without takinga long hard look at it yourselves.

Learn how to ignore the examples from others when they are wrong, because few skills are more worth having.

If we are ever to construct a feminist movement that is not based on the premise that men and women are always at war with one another, then we must be willing to acknowledge the appropriateness of complex critical responses to writing by men even if it is sexist. Clearly women can learn from writers whose work is sexist, even be inspired by it, because sexism may be simply one dimension of that work. Concurrently fiercely critiquing the sexism does not mean that one does not value the work.