Polemicist Quotes & Sayings

In the summer of 2007, I was sitting in a studio in Dublin, debating with a lay spokesman of the Roman Catholic Church who turned out to be the only believing Christian on a discussion panel of five people. He was a perfectly nice and rather modest logic-chopping polemicist, happy enough to go for a glass of refreshment after the program, and I suddenly felt a piercing stab of pity for him. A generation ago in Ireland, the Church did not have to lower itself in this way. It raised its voice only slightly, and was instantly obeyed by the Parliament, the schools, and the media. It could and did forbid divorce, contraception, the publication of certain books, and the utterance of certain opinions. Now it is discredited and in decline. Its once-absolute doctrines appear ridiculous: — Christopher Hitchens

The difference between a debater and a polemicist is that unlike debaters, who try to seek a common ground, a polemicist intends to establish the truth of a controversial point of view while refuting the opposing point of view - there is no room for compromise. — Henrik O. Lunde

I'm a better polemicist in prose. — Ted Rall

Around this time, the term "Calvinism" was used by its opponents to refer to the Reformed type of Protestantism as a means of emphasizing that it originated from outside Germany. The term appears to have been introduced around 1552 by the Lutheran polemicist Joachim Westphal to refer to the theological, and particularly the sacramental, views of the Swiss reformers in general, and of John Calvin in particular.27 — Alister E. McGrath

I'm not a propagandist, I'm not a polemicist; my primary interest is just looking at and trying to understand how animals work. — David Attenborough