Polemics Quotes

• Well, I am not 100 percent sure of the definition of polemic, but it wasn't meant to convince anybody of anything.

  Art Spiegelman

  Definitions, Wells, Convince

  "Art Spiegelman: The Sky Is Falling". Interview with Steven Heller, www.aiga.org. October 01, 2004.

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• An important work of architecture will create polemics.

  Richard Meier

  Important, Architecture, Important Work

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• It is better to discuss things, to argue and engage in polemics than make perfidious plans of mutual destruction.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Engagement, Arguing, Destruction

  Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, Green Cross International (2011). “Mikhail Gorbachev: Prophet of Change : from the Cold War to a Sustainable World”, p.263, CLAIRVIEW BOOKS

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• When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Reason, Shock, Electrical

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• Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

  Walter Benjamin

  Girl, Baby, Book

  Walter Benjamin (2016). “One-Way Street”, p.50, Harvard University Press

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• Even a polemic has some justification if one considers that my own first poetic experiments began during a dictatorship and mark the origin of the Hermetic movement.

  Salvatore Quasimodo

  Movement, Firsts, Poetic

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• Any work of architecture that has with it some discussion, some polemic, I think is good. It shows that people are interested, people are involved.

  Richard Meier

  Thinking, People, Architecture

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• Innovation, being avant garde, is always polemic.

  Ferran Adria

  Innovation, Avant Garde

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• The camera can photograph thought. It's better than a paragraph of sweet polemic.

  Dirk Bogarde

  Photography, Sweet, Art

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• But I still read Shaw on a regular basis. What I love is the nakedness of the polemic and the irresistible good humour. For me, 'Major Barbara' is the greatest of all the plays in that it starts from the rational and proceeds to the ecstatic in a spectacular way, and leaves you very confused if you cling to Euclidean logic.

  Tony Kushner

  Confused, Love Is, Play

  "Tony Kushner: 'At first I was horrified'". Interview with Michael Billington, www.theguardian.com. August 15, 2011.

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• 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

  Running, Strong, Hate

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• In the critic's vocabulary, the word "precursor" is indispensable, but it should be cleansed of all connotations of polemic or rivalry. The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future." -- Essay: "Kafka and his Precursors

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Past, Vocabulary, Facts

  "Kafka and His Precursors" (1951) (translation by James E. Irby)

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• 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

  Running, War, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Past, Precursor

  "Kafka and His Precursors" (1951) (translation by James E. Irby)

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

  Learned Hand

  Support, Doubt, Devil

  Learned Hand (1959). “The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses”

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• Literary criticism now is all pranks and polemics.

  Mason Cooley

  Criticism, Pranks, Literary Criticism

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• The camera can photograph thought.

  Dirk Bogarde

  Photography, Cameras, Photograph

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• History is but the polemics of the victor.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  History

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• I think the problem with polemics is that it's general and it's lazy. When you say, "This is bad," that's a general thing. We're more interested in asking the question.

  Tony Goldwyn

  Thinking, Lazy, Asking

  Source: collider.com

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• 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

  People, Levels, Easy

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

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Vocabulary, Rivalry, Connotation

  "Kafka and His Precursors" (1951) (translation by James E. Irby)

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• 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

  Fashion, Believe, Writing

  "Starting into the void with Hari Kunzru" by Rollo Roming, www.newyorker.com. March 13, 2012.

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• Passionate and forcefully argued, Tar Sands is a wake-up call not just to Canadians but to the wider world to take a serious look at what is happening in northern Alberta. To call this book a polemic is a compliment.

  Margaret MacMillan

  Book, Looks, Wake Up

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• 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

  Jesus, Art, Philosophy

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• There's always a polemic in my clothes.

  Vivienne Westwood

  Clothes

  "Westwood Unveils 'I'm Not a Terrorist' T-Shirt". www.foxnews.com. September 28, 2005.

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