Rem Koolhaas Quotes

But what is criticism? Criticism is purely destructive; anyone can destroy, but not everyone can build up.

Worship the spirit of criticism. If reduced to itself it is not an awakener of ideas or a stimulant to great things, but, without it, everything is fallible; it always has the last word.

I find that quite enjoyable, trying to see the downsides of someone.

I'm not a critic, and I never talk about other people's work.

Criticism is fine and conversation is fine, but the person who's criticizing should know what they're saying and whom they're criticizing.

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.

Reciprocal accountability, or criticism [is] the only known antidote to error.

Criticism even should not be without its charms. When quite devoid of all amenities, it is no longer literary.

Criticism is as often a trade as a science, requiring, as it does, more health than wit, more labour than capacity, more practice than genius.

Criticism- a big bite out of someone's back.

A wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic.

No man can be criticised but by a greater than he. Do not, then, read the reviews.

Criticism exists only to recognize the truth, not to act as judge.

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.

Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science.

Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.

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

Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected.

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

To me, there's a huge difference between criticism and reviewing. I really love reading good criticism of television and film. To me, a critic is someone who analyzes a show, describes it, talks about the people in it, puts it in historical context of other shows like it, compares it and stuff, and then talks about the intent of the show and whether it failed or didn't.

In a writer there must always be two people - the writer and the critic.

The only way someone can be of help to you is in challenging your ideas.

In truth it may be laid down as an almost universal rule that good poets are bad critics.

The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff.