Pedantic quotes:

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Nothing is as peevish and pedantic as men's judgments of one another. -- Desiderius Erasmus
A good designer must rely on experience, on precise, logic thinking; and on pedantic exactness. No magic will do. -- Niklaus Wirth
A lot of political music to me can be rather pedantic and corny, and when it's done right - like Bruce Springsteen or Jackson Browne or great satire from Randy Newman, there's nothing better. -- Bonnie Raitt
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
"Science" is pedantic, arrogant, esoteric and often insane. -- Herbert M. Shelton
I think topical songwriting is a real gift, and it's hard not to be pedantic and show up with the sledgehammer message. -- Mary Chapin Carpenter
Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman. -- William Congreve
Television turned out to be exactly as bad as the most irritating and pedantic intellectuals of the '50s said it was going to be. -- Fran Lebowitz
You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
He had fought back with every weapon in his arsenal, being alternatively obtuse, evasive and pedantic, for it was wonderful how you could obscure an emotional issue by appearing to seek precision. -- J. K. Rowling
The perpetual charm of Arabia is that the traveler finds his level there simply as a human being; the people's directness, deadly to the sentimental or pedantic, likes the less complicated virtues ... -- Freya Stark
Why is it that the less one has to say the more one says it in the most pompous and pedantic way possible?... Is it to fool the world or just to fool themselves? -- Carlos Ruiz Zafon
It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. -- Edmund Burke
To write a genuine familiar or truly English style is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation, who had a thorough command and choice of words, or who could discourse with ease, force, and perspicuity, setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes. -- William Hazlitt
People sometimes think that defining a term is pedantic and useless, but terms need to be defined if they're going to be discussed, even if the terms are only defined for a single conversation. Those involved in the conversation need to know how the terms are being used. -- Pattiann Rogers
We do not need French post-structuralism, whose pedantic jargon, clumsy convolutions, and prissy abstractions have spread throughout academe and the arts and are now blighting the most promising minds of the next generation. This is a major crisis if there ever was one, and every sensible person must help bring it to an end. -- Camille Paglia
Without rules you can't have anything, but you don't want to just be pedantic or obsessive. The painting is finished when it's working. The overall balance is right. Balance shouldn't be confused with design. There has to be restless jostle and aggression and a bit of dynamism, not just pat-ness or settled-ness or immediate pleasing-ness. -- Matthew Collings
Busy old fool, unruly sun, Why dost thou thus, Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? Must to thy motions lovers'seasons run? Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide Late schoolboys, and sour prentices, Go tell court-huntsmen that the King will ride, Call countryants to harvest offices; Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time. -- John Donne
I was a pedantic child. I'd get really annoyed at the logic of small things that don't bother anyone else. -- Peter Baynham
'Tis well enough for a servant to be bred at an University. But the education is a little too pedantic for a gentleman. -- William Congreve
Great wealth could make an enormous difference over the next decade if they sensibly support the scientific elite. Just the elite. Because the elite makes most of the progress. You should worry about people who produce really novel inventions, not pedantic hacks. -- James D. Watson
It is a remarkably easy thing to do, pointing out the faults of others and suggesting remedies or courses of action in an argumentative and pedantic sort of way, and I am still amazed that there are many people in the American media who are paid very big money to do this. -- J. Maarten Troost
Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions. -- A. A. Gill
There are surely worse things than being wrong, and being dull and pedantic are surely among them. -- Mark Kac
To substitute judgments of fact for judgments of value is a sign of pedantic and borrowed criticism. -- George Santayana
Portraits are to daily faces As an evening west To a fine, pedantic sunshine In a satin vest. -- Emily Dickinson
Slothful, feeble, pretentious, pedantic, elitist - these are some of the epithets that eventually become associated with the absent minded scholar, the poor sighted reader, the book worm, the nerd. -- Alberto Manguel

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