Quotes / Accentuate the Negative

Film — Animation

Chief Meanie: Right, Max?
Max: Yes, Your Blueness.
Chief Meanie: (enraged) WHAT!?! We Meanies only take "no" for an answer! Is that understood, Max!?
Max: No, Your Blueness!
Chief Meanie: (instantly mollified) Thaaaat's better...

— Yellow Submarine

Film — Live-Action

"Grouches of the world unite
Stand up for your Grouch-ly rights
Don't let the sunshine spoil your rain
Just stand up and complain!

Let this be the Grouches' cause
Point out everybody's flaws!
Something is wrong with everything
Except the way I sing!"

— Oscar the Grouch, "The Grouch Anthem", Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird

"I think I'm going up to change now, and in the meantime, Stanley, I do wish you'd do something about our room. I was cold in the night and there was no hot water. The toilet doesn't flush. That coffee is cold. Oh, and that sun is too hot."

— Evelyn Blunt, Carry On Abroad

Literature

Amanda Honeydew: Gosh, this place looks so tiny! I remember it was huge!
Enid Nightshade: It's quite small, actually.
Jadu Wali: Miniscule.
Ruby Cherrytree: Falling apart, most of it.
Enid Nightshade: There's only parts worth living in. You have to really squash up.
Mr. Hallow: Now girls, we're here to celebrate the castle's anniversary not exaggerate its shortcomings.

— The Worst Witch, "The Millennium Bug" (Season 2, Episode 13)

Live-Action TV

"I need to stand on a rake or fall in a vat of sheep excrement for there to be something to write about each month. Good news, frankly, is dull."

— Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear (UK)

Web Original

"Want a serious biography? The Other Wiki has an entire category dedicated to Barack Obama — this article mostly focuses on the crap people have said about him, including us."

— Rational Wiki

"Writing about shows I like is less funny then writing about shows I hate. So instead of discussing today's Spider-Man episode, let's take an interlude and discuss some of Kids' WB!'s final commercials."

— Peter Paltridge, "Kids WB Yourself!-The Last Day"

"I know we mainly focused on the shitty aspects, but let me tell you, that's the name of the game."

— The Angry Video Game Nerd, "DoubleVision Part 2, ColecoVision"

"I think this is a pretty... good game? Yeah, I hate to say that I don't hate this. It's good? What am I gonna do with that?!"

— The Angry Video Game Nerd on Chex Quest

"Okay, I stand by everything I have said, and I do advocate rational discourse over a hurricane of trolls. But I'm also an Internet critic and... Well, this is part of the show, now, where I act like a guffawing dickhead."

— SF Debris on 'Transformers''

"Witness a movie full of excellent direction, great acting, brillant dialogue, gorgeous music, and iconic moments that will stay with you for a lifetime. Hmmm, let's see what we can nitpick here... sometimes they say Han Solo's name differently. Haha, you suck, perfect movie! [sigh] This is gonna be a tough one, isn't it?"

— Honest Trailers on The Empire Strikes Back

"I do point out every little thing that's bad about a game, but then, I'm a critic, it'd be weird if I didn't. If I put people's balls in my mouth for a living, I'd be a prostitute, or possibly a GameSpot employee..."

— Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Zero Punctuation

Western Animation

Marge: You know, Homer, it's very easy to criticize.
Homer: Fun, too.

— The Simpsons, "Bart Star"

Real Life

"I think these are passages we can skim past. They're awful, of course, but awful in a pedestrian way. I'm more interested in the more instructively awful passages of this book."

— Fred Clarke, on Tribulation Force

"The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in the darkness and blind to the light, always pursuing vermin and never hunting noble game."

— Henry Ward Beecher

"Outrageous news and information spread faster and further than any other form of information, dominating our daily attention. This is both good and bad. On the one hand, we become aware of some of the grossest injustices in our society as soon as they happen. On the other hand, all we hear about are the grossest injustices in our society as soon as they happen."

— Mark Manson, paraphrased by Tyler Cowen

"No one gossips about other people's secret virtues."

— Bertrand Russell

"So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here — not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms."

— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

"The cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

— Oscar Wilde

---