Peer reviewers go for orthodoxy ... Many of the great 19th-century discoveries were made by men who had independent wealth-Charles Darwin is the prototype. They trusted themselves. — James Black
Professions in which you get your feedback from other members of that profession tend to get corrupted. — Naval Ravikant
If it stands the test of public scrutiny, do it... if it doesn't stand the test of public scrutiny then don't do it. — Ratan Tata
One is rated by others as he rates himself. — Proverbs
Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. — Carl Sagan
Bad reviews I've gotten never diminished the number of people in my audience; good reviews have never added to the number of people in my audience; be your own critic. — Frank Sinatra
Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. — Immanuel Kant
What editors are obliged to appear to say that — Naomi Wolf
Criticism should be a casual conversation. — W. H. Auden
When you see a journalist writing articles to impress other journalists or a restaurant owner trying to impress other foodies and restaurant owners, it’s usually not practical or high-quality. — Naval Ravikant
In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it. — G. K. Chesterton
If journalism is good, it is controversial, by its nature. — Julian Assange
Review Quotes
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. — Jackson Pollock
To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. — Thomas Jefferson
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. — Kurt Vonnegut
A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia. — Iris Murdoch
The notion that Congress can change the meaning given a constitutional provision by the Court is subversive of the function of judicial review; and it is not the less so because the Court promises to allow it only when the Constitution is moved to the left. — Robert Bork
I was reminded as I was reviewing my life, that I have been in too many conflicts, too many wars, political battles, military battles, civil strifes in government. And always one lesson stands out and that is, those whom you fight most passionately often turn out to be your best friends. — Ferdinand Marcos
Always focus on the front windshield and not the review mirror.
I did some film reviews for small papers in Finland and things like that to be able to keep living here. — Renny Harlin
Later, I went down to the Washington field office and an onsite polygraph was administered. After reviewing the polygraph charts in private, the polygraph examiner told me that I had passed and that he believed I had nothing to do with the anthrax letters. — Steven Hatfill
The news today that Bush has vowed to veto any legislation that reviews the security implications of the Dubai Port World's potential management of our ports is ludicrous and the entire Democratic Party is calling him to task for it. — John Conyers
It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. — John Marshall
Bad Reviews Quotes
I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews. — Werner Herzog
A bad review is like baking a cake with all the best ingredients and having someone sit on it. — Danielle Steel
A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch. — Kingsley Amis
If you get a bad review, you take that in your stride. — Anish Kapoor
It's hard enough doing something bold without jumping into your bad reviews. — Kenny Loggins
In the past, I’ve had my share of good reviews, but it’s always the crazy, scary, weirdo guy. I don’t even know how it happened. Look at me. I mean, when I’m naked, I look like a bald chicken. How did I get to be a scary bad guy? — Gary Oldman
One cannot review a bad book without showing off. — W. H. Auden
Nothing ruins your day more than getting a bad review. — Taylor Swift
I wish I could be like Shaw who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said: 'I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.' — Barbra Streisand
Life is stranger than fiction. It's nice to have stuff that people don't know about. And it helps when you read a bad review. You can go, "This guy doesn't have me figured out." There's more mystery to you than they understand. — Dolph Lundgren
Book Review Quotes
Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe. We cannot imagine a Second Coming that would not be cut down to size by the televised evening news, or a Last Judgment not subject to pages of holier-than-thou second-guessing in The New York Review of Books. — John Updike
It may sound a bit like an army barracks, but the truth of the matter is: there must be some time laid aside for arranging, time for working on either a book or an article - I've written two articles in the last four months for the New York Times book review section. — Mel Torme
If I begin my book with a review of the coup, it is only to show that my abiding interests for Australia did not end with it. They shall end only with a long and fortunate life. — Gough Whitlam
Literature should not be exclusive, it should be inclusive. My general view is that you can't, based on your own experience, project what a book will do for someone else. That's why I don't review books. — Richard Ford
I’m interested in so many different things and I’d like to cover a lot of territory. I’m trying to see my show as the Sunday Times. You have the Arts & Leisure section, you have the Op-Ed page, you have the Book Review...even the Style section has those wonderful essays about relationships. — Joy Behar
I've sold too many books to get good reviews anymore. There's a lot of jealousy, because [reviewers] think they can write a good novel or a best-seller and get frustrated when they can't. I've learned to despise them. — John Grisham
Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever. — George Orwell
A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular. — Christopher Hitchens
The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best and only literature of our times. — Robert Anton Wilson
The plot is so tired that even this reviewer, who in infancy was let drop by a nurse with the result that she has ever since been mystified by amateur coin tricks, was able to guess the identity of the murderer from the middle of the book. — Dorothy Parker
Good Review Quotes
it's a good idea to review past mistakes before committing new ones. — Warren Buffett
The game has a cleanness. If you do a good job, the numbers say so. You don't have to ask anyone or play politics. You don't have to wait for the reviews. — Sandy Koufax
You get a good review, and it’s like crack. You need another hit. And another. And another. I know authors are like Tinkerbell and generally need applause to survive, but it’s a slippery slope. — Alexandra Bracken
Do the thing itself. Don’t pay much mind to critics or what anyone says about it. Just do it, in any form possible, and watch others doing it. Take it in viscerally, get it by osmosis. Don’t ever read your own reviews, certainly not the good ones. — Holland Taylor
I remember one review of The Office Christmas Special that compared it unfavourably to Dickens. What? You're saying I'm not as good as the greatest storyteller ever. Boo! Boo! I think I can live with that. — Ricky Gervais
A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution. — Dustin Hoffman
The only thing worse than a bad review from the Ayatollah Khomeini would be a good review from the Ayatollah Khomeini. — Salman Rushdie
What kind of morons do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat? — Al Yankovic
I try not to read reviews because I know how sensitive I am and how debilitating it is and how it follows me around. If they're bad, you feel terrible, you feel worthless, no matter if you think they're wrong - and if they're good, it feels cheap and sleazy because you went looking for it. — Thao Nguyen
They still talk about the night that Augie Pabst, a fresh-faced heir to the brewing fortune, drove a rented Falcon into the swimming pool of the Mark Thomas Inn in Monterey, California. His reviews were so good that he repeated the act at a Howard Johnson's outside Denver. — Brock Yates
Under true peer-review...a panel of reviewers must accept a study before it can be published in a scientific journal. If the reviewers have objections the author must answer them or change the article to take reviewers' objections into account. Under the IPCC review process, the authors are at liberty to ignore criticisms. — Richard Lindzen
You think the weather is weird now? Just wait. A new MIT study, just published in a peer-reviewed journal, projects that the Earth could see warming of more than 9 degrees F by 2100 - more than twice earlier projections. — Jeff Goodell
...I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! — Phil Jones
An abundance of peer-reviewed science is showing that a whole foods, plant-based diet prevents most heart attacks, strokes, and even many kinds of cancer. It gets you to your ideal weight easily and sustainably, reverses Type 2 diabetes, and even fixes erectile dysfunction (because it greatly improves circulation!). — Kathy Freston
I have been a scientist for more than 40 years, having studied at Cambridge and Harvard. I researched and taught at Cambridge University, was a research fellow of the Royal Society, and have more than 80 publications in peer-reviewed journals. I am strongly pro-science. — Rupert Sheldrake
At the end of the day in business, it's not about peer review and getting into a scientific journal. You either increase sales, or not. — Guy Kawasaki
I love science. I hate supposition, superstition, exaggeration and falsified data. Show me the research, show me the results, show me the conclusions - and then show me some qualified peer reviews of all that. — Bill Vaughan
It is not my job to sit down and read peer-reviewed papers because I simply haven't got the time ... I am an interpreter of interpretations. — James Delingpole
In general, science journalism concerns itself with what has been published in a handful of peer-reviewed journals - Nature, Cell, The New England Journal of Medicine - which set the agenda. — Michael Pollan
In my grandfather's lab, scientists did independent research, and peers reviewed and commented on its merits. Politics, he taught me, had no place in the scientific process. — Tammy Baldwin
In my more than 60 years as a member of the American scientific community, including service as president of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society, I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report. — Frederick Seitz
If people are going to do post-publication peer review, they need to abide by the same rules as they abide by for pre-publication peer review: not being ad hominem, being respectful, giving the author a chance to respond in a reasonable way. — Susan Fiske
I have no trouble publishing in Soviet astrophysical journals, but my work is unacceptable to the American astrophysical journals.
[Referring to the trouble he had with the peer reviewers of Anglo-American astrophysical journals because his ideas often conflicted with the generally accepted or “standard"” theories.] — Hannes Alfven
Even if individual researchers are prone to falling in love with their own theories, the broader process of peer review and institutionalized skepticism are designed to ensure that, eventually, the best ideas prevail. — Chris Mooney
Once again we have misleading climate change pronouncements being based on data errors, data errors detected by non-UN, non-IPCC, non-peer-reviewed external observers. This is exactly what happens when you base your arguments on 'consensus science' and not scientific fact. — Doug Hoffman
97 percent of the scientists who wrote articles in peer-reviewed journals believe that human activity is the fundamental reason we are seeing climate change. — Bernie Sanders
With my tongue in one cheek only, I'd suggest that were our palaeolithic ancestors to discover the peer-review dredger, we would be still sitting in caves. — Zygmunt Bauman
I suspect that the peer-review system carries a good part of blame for the fact that something like sixty percent or more of journal articles are never quoted (which means leaving no trace on our joint scholarly pursuits), and (in my reception at any rate) the "learned journals" (with a few miraculous exceptions that entail, prominently, TCS) ooze monumental boredom. — Zygmunt Bauman
There are, by the most conservative counting, two grave and deeply regrettable collateral victims of the peer-review gruesome stratagem: one is the daring of thought (wished-washed to the lowest common denominator), and the other is the individuality, as well as the responsibility, of editors (those seeking shelter behind the anonymity of "peers", but in fact dissolved in it, in many cases without a trace). — Zygmunt Bauman
If you are doing a peer review of somebody's paper before publication, the editor would not allow you to speculate about the person's motives, about their place in the hierarchy. It's not scientifically relevant. — Susan Fiske
In these unfiltered, un-moderated social media posts people are speculating about others' motivations. And you could no more put that in a peer review for a journal than you could fly. — Susan Fiske
I am not a climatologist, but I don't think any of the other witnesses are either. I do work in the related field of atomic, molecular and optical physics. I have spent my professional life studying the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases - one of the main physical phenomena behind the greenhouse effect. I have published over 200 papers in peer reviewed scientific journals. — William Happer
Wikipedia took the idea of peer review and applied it to volunteers on a global scale, becoming the most important English reference work in less than 10 years. Yet the cumulative time devoted to creating Wikipedia, something like 100 million hours of human thought, is expended by Americans every weekend, just watching ads. — Clay Shirky
Science advances by trial and error. When mistakes are made, the peer-review publication process usually roots them out. Cuccinelli's version of the scientific process would be "make an error and go to trial." Einstein did not arrive at E=mc2 in his first attempt. If he were working in the state of Virginia under Cuccinelli today, he could be jailed for his initial mistakes and perhaps never achieve that landmark equation. — Scott Mandia
They [Japanese whalers] haven't produced a single peer-reviewed international scientific paper in 23 years. — Paul Watson
Significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming. — Antonino Zichichi
The IPCC doesn't do any research itself. We only develop our assessments on the basis of peer-reviewed literature. — Rajendra K. Pachauri
At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be. — Christopher Hitchens
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of peer review quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about peer review to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of peer review quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
