Polemics Quotes

History is but the polemics of the victor. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

I wasn't trying to write a corrective novel - that would just end up tasting like medicine, and I tried to stay away from polemics as best I could. I think that, if anything, Fobbit is my way of showing readers there's another side to war - the backstage of combat, if you will. If you play a word association game with Americans and say "war," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Soldiers running across a battlefield through a hail of bullets, right? Rambo, smoke, explosions. In Fobbit, I hope readers will see something a little different ~ Dave Abrams

I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Duke of Disobedience, Leader of the Freeloaders, Kaiser of Apostasy, Archbishop of Anarchy, the Big Cheese. Horrible titles any way you want to look at it. All code words for Outlaw. ~ Bob Dylan

In early church polemics, Jews are deemed no longer worthy of their own Scriptures because they have failed to accept Christ as the Messiah. ~ Jack Schwartz

Innovation, being avant garde, is always polemic. ~ Ferran Adria

No doubt one may quote history to support any cause, as the devil quotes scripture. ~ Learned Hand

Leading the Jewish people is not easy
we are a divided, obstinate, highly individualistic people who have cultivated faith, sharp wittedness and polemics to a very high level. ~ Shimon Peres

There's always a polemic in my clothes. ~ Vivienne Westwood

Thinking is the subtlest form of self-polemics, the art of a certain finesse in psychological self-vivisection and self-crucifixion (Hegel of course called the path of self-disillusion the via dolorosa or "highway of despair," in Baillie's fine and florid rendering, like Jesus' route to Golgotha). ~ Kenny Smith

But the fact is, again and again in my lifetime, the vicious vituperations, the polemics, the dialectics, the sophistries of politics have become vapour and mist, while what remains is the literature and the art, which at the time might have been merely tolerated by the politicos. ~ Doris Lessing

Again and again the old groupings of left and right no longer seem helpful. Sloganeering and dogmatizing settle nothing, nor do emotional tirades and protests really help us sort things through in a thoughtful, biblical fashion. ~ Arthur F. Holmes

Literary criticism now is all pranks and polemics. ~ Mason Cooley

In the critics' vocabulary, the work 'precursor' is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemics or rivalry. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Monster is a compassionate picture without any obvious agenda. And it's effective precisely because it's not a polemic. ~ Stephanie Zacharek

Poetry is an intimate act. It's about bringing forth something that's inside you
whether it is a memory, a philosophical idea, a deep love for another person or for the world, or an apprehension of the spiritual. It's about making something, in language, which can be transmitted to others
not as information, or polemic, but as irreducible art. ~ Dorianne Laux

[...] one may ask why so much stupidity and bad faith are to be found in religious polemics, even among men who are otherwise free from such failings...No blame can be attached to a person for attacking a foreign religion in the name of his own belief, if it is done purely and simply through ignorance; when, however, this is not the case, the person will be guilty of blasphemy, since, by outraging the Divine Truth in an alien form, he is merely profiting by an opportunity to offend God without having to trouble his own conscience. This is the real explanation of the gross and impure zeal displayed by those who, in the name of their religious convictions, devote their lives to making sacred things appear odious, a task they can only accomplish by contemptible methods. ~ Frithjof Schuon

Why croak with dishonesty when your target subject discovers, listens, and witnesses beyond the veil of your duplicity?

Your proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, gossips, polemics, planted intrigues, lies, calumny, misjudgement, and all other forms of smear campaign, may deceive gullible hearts but you cannot destroy the unparalleled truth which is in the hands of your target victim. ~ Angelica Hopes, K.H. Trilogy ~ Angelica Hopes

It is a horrible thing to have to enter into the details
of inter-party polemics; it is like diving into a cesspool. ~ George Orwell

The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud. ~ H.L. Mencken

Read with care, George Orwell's diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics. ~ Christopher Hitchens

There is hardly any political question in the United States that sooner or later does not turn into a judicial question. From that, the obligation that the parties find in their daily polemics to borrow ideas and language from the judicial system. Since most public men are or have formerly been jurists, they make the habits and the turn of ideas that belong to jurists pass into the handling of public affairs. The jury ends up by familiarizing all classes with them. Thus, judicial language becomes, in a way, the common language; so the spirit of the jurist, born inside the schools and courtrooms, spreads little by little beyond their confines; it infiltrates all of society, so to speak; it descends to the lowest ranks, and the entire people finishes by acquiring a part of the habits and tastes of the magistrate. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Good writing must stay open to the questions and not fall prey to the pull of a polemic, otherwise, words simply become predictable, sentimental, and stale. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

The fact is that every author creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

(The terms douloi, banausoi and aristoi) are in a way more precise, but what is more vital and valuable, they are more comprehensive: they project a concept of psychic order that embraces entire fields that we have no other way of seeing all together as the working of a single principle. If we think of the human domain as the collaboration and the conflict of these three diverse character-types, we can understand the weave and the stress and polemics of their very different basal teleologies or ultimate governing purposes of life. ~ Kenny Smith

When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Aggressiveness, complaints, pressures, drama and polemics can wipe out a favor or a promise and stain a generous deed. ~ Angelica Hopes

An important work of architecture will create polemics. ~ Richard Meier

In good novelistic fashion, the discovery I've made is that it's complicated. I think that's one of good things about exploring these questions in a non-polemic, fictional way: you get to feel out territory rather than take positions. Through writing this, I can understand the impulse to faith, how people make meaning, how people make community, without having to say, do this, don't do that, or I believe, I don't believe. ~ Hari Kunzru

When I say that George Eliot has long been my hero, I mean to include those aspects of her thought and temperament that have been disparaged or dismissed or ignored. She was, after all, a novelist who did not eschew politics or polemics - sometimes silently though defiantly, as in her relationship with George Henry Lewes. ~ Cynthia Ozick