...the self-satisfied dogmatism with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of existing modes of knowledge. — Alfred North Whitehead
Highly educated bores are by far the worst; they know so much, in such fiendish detail, to be boring about. — Louis Kronenberger
I know that aiming at perfection has its drawbacks. It makes you go into details that you can avoid but that is the only way you can achieve excellence. So, in that case, being finicky is essential. — J. R. D. Tata
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. — George Bernard Shaw
Pay attention to minute particulars. Take care of the little ones. Generalization and abstraction are the plea of the hypocrite, scoundrel, and knave. — William Blake
Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others — Peter Abelard
ORATORY, n. A conspiracy between speech and action to cheat the understanding. A tyranny tempered by stenography. — Ambrose Bierce
Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a joke. — Ambrose Bierce
All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle. — Nikola Tesla
Nature avenges herself speedily on the hard pedantry that would chain her waves. She is no literalist. Every thing must be taken genially, and we must be at the top of our condition, to understand any thing rightly. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most ingenious men are now agreed, that [universities] are only nurseries of prejudice, corruption, barbarism, and pedantry. — George Berkeley
Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism; the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young. — Henry Seidel Canby
Pedants make a great rout about criticism, as if it were a science of great depth, and required much pains and knowledge--criticism however is only the result of good sense, taste and judgment--three qualities that indeed seldom are found together, and extremely seldom in a pedant, which most critics are. — Horace Walpole
In the history of education, the most striking phenomenon is that schools of learning, which at one epoch are alive with a ferment of genius, in a succeeding generation exhibit merely pedantry and routine. — Ted Sizer
Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books and a total ignorance of men. — Henry Mackenzie
The tone of good conversation is brilliant and natural; it is neither tedious nor frivolous; it is instructive without pedantry, gay without tumultuousness, polished without affectation, gallant without insipidity, waggish without equivocation. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Though pedantry denies,
It's plain the Bible means
That Solomon grew wise
While talking with his queens. — William Butler Yeats
Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities. — Joseph Addison
The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics. — Edgar Allan Poe
Pedantry is the showy display of knowledge which crams our heads with learned lumber and then takes out our brains to make room for it. — Charles Caleb Colton
Learning has always been made much of, but forgetting has always been deprecated; therefore pedantry has pretty well established itself throughout the modern world at the expense of culture. — Albert J. Nock
Perhaps the prevalence of pedantry may be largely accounted for by the common error of thinking that, because useful knowledge should be remembered, any kind of knowledge that is at all worth learning should be remembered too. — Albert J. Nock
No matter how efficient school training may be, it would only produce stagnation, orthodoxy, and rigid pedantry if there were no uncommon men pushing forward beyond the wisdom of their tutors. — Ludwig von Mises
A well-read fool is the most pestilent of blockheads; his learning is a flail which he knows not how to handle, and with which he breaks his neighbor's shins as well as his own. Keep a fellow of this description at arm's length, as you value the integrity of your bones. — Stanisław I Leszczyński
Pedantry and bigotry are millstones, able to sink the best book which carries the least part of their dead weight. The temper of the pedagogue suits not with the age; and the world, however it may be taught, will not be tutored. — Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury
Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion--a form of knowledge without the power of it. — Joseph Addison
Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning. — Charles Caleb Colton
Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting; otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture. — Albert J. Nock
Also, what mountains of dead ashes, wreck and burnt bones, does assiduous pedantry dig up from the past time and name it History. — Thomas Carlyle
Lust," she said. "Lust is a deadly sin." "And spanking." "I think that falls under lust." "I think it should have its own category." said Jace — Cassandra Clare
A pedant holds more to instruct us with what he knows, than of what we are ignorant. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
Sometimes I think that no situation actually fits the technical definition of irony, and that the word just sort of hangs out in the linguistic ether singing a Siren song that's designed to crash the unsuspecting against the jagged rocks of pedantry. — Mike Duncan
Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them. — Charles Caleb Colton
Pedantry is paraded knowledge. — Josh Billings
Robespierre, this pedant of freedom! — Franz Grillparzer
This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put. — Winston Churchill
Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young. — Henry S. Canby
But what help from these fineries or pedantries? What help from thought? Life is not dialectics. We, I think, in these times, have had lessons enough of the futility of criticism. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
contempt for the degradation of specialization and pedantry. Specialization develops only part of a man; a man partially developed is deformed. — Richard M. Weaver
A taxonomy of abilities, like a taxonomy anywhere else in science, is apt to strike a certain type of impatient student as a gratuitous orgy of pedantry. Doubtless, compulsions to intellectual tidiness express themselves prematurely at times, and excessively at others, but a good descriptive taxonomy, as Darwin found in developing his theory, and as Newton found in the work of Kepler, is the mother of laws and theories. — Raymond Cattell
Do you call it doubting to write down on a piece of paper that you doubt? If so, doubt has nothing to do with any serious business. But do not make believe; if pedantry has not eaten all the reality out of you, recognize, as you must, that there is much that you do not doubt, in the least. Now that which you do not at all doubt, you must and do regard as infallible, absolute truth. — Charles Sanders Peirce
In Conclusion
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