Pedantry Quotes - Page 2

• Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Ignorance, Pedants, Disgusting

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.35

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• 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

  Thinking, Errors, May

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• 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

  Culture, World, Pedants

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• I believe that science fiction is as profound as you want it to be or it can be very simple entertainment, and I'm all for very simple entertainment. Every now and then we all need to come home, veg-out, watch something and not think too deeply about it. It's what you want it to be. We tend to steer clear of being pedantic; it's entertainment first, otherwise we'd be on a lecture circuit.

  Joe Flanigan

  Believe, Home, Thinking

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• 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

  Nature, Taken, Knowledge

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1588, Delphi Classics

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• 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

  Gay, Tone, Brilliant

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• Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Pride, Gay

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2360, Delphi Classics

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• 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

  Struggle, Past, Human Stupidity

  Nikola Tesla (2013). “The Wireless Tesla”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

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• A pedant holds more to instruct us with what he knows, than of what we are ignorant.

  Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

  Ignorant, Pedants, Knows

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• 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

  Silly, Opportunity, Men

  Joseph Addison (2010). “Addison's Essays”, p.133, Wildside Press LLC

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• Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence - by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So 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

  Selfish, Struggle, Heart

  "The Transmission Of Electrical Energy Without Wires As A Means For Furthering Peace". "Electrical World and Engineer", (pp. 21-24), January 7, 1905.

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• Self-pity does not appreciate pedantry.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Self, Appreciate, Doe

  Alexander McCall Smith (2011). “Bertie Plays The Blues: 7”, p.9, Hachette UK

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• Of course, we can distinguish between males and females; we can also, if we choose, distinguish between different age categories; but any more advanced distinction comes close to pedantry, probably a result of boredom. A creature that is bored elaborates distinctions and hierarchies. According to Hutchinson and Rawlins, the development of systems of hierarchical dominance within animal societies does not correspond to any practical necessity, nor to any selective advantage; it simply constitutes a means of combating the crushing boredom of life in the heart of nature.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Crush, Heart, Mean

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• The most ingenious men are now agreed, that [universities] are only nurseries of prejudice, corruption, barbarism, and pedantry.

  George Berkeley

  Men, Prejudice, Corruption

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• Pedantry is paraded knowledge.

  Josh Billings

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• 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

  School, Routine, Generations

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• There are persons who are never easy unless they are putting your books and papers in order--that is, according to their notions of the matter--and hide things lest they should be lost, where neither the owner nor anybody else can find them. This is a sort of magpie faculty. If anything is left where you want it, it is called litter. There is a pedantry in housewifery, as well as in the gravest concerns. Abraham Tucker complained that whenever his maid servant had been in his library, he could not see comfortably to work again for several days.

  William Hazlitt

  Book, Order, Library

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• History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn’t quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak.

  Jill Lepore

  Art, Writing, Past

  Jill Lepore (2012). “The Story of America: Essays on Origins”, p.15, Princeton University Press

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• The man of culture is one of the poorest mortals alive. For simple pedantry and want of good sense no man is his equal. No assumption is too unreal, no end is too unpractical for him.

  Frederic Harrison

  Cute, Simple, Men

  Frederic Harrison (1975). “Order and Progress”, p.150, Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press

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• 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

  School, Men, Training

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution: The Economist”, p.187, VM eBooks

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• 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

  Simple, Poetry, May

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• The pulpit style of Germany has been always rustically negligent, or bristling with pedantry.

  Thomas de Quincey

  Style, Germany, Pulpit

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• My readers, who may at first be apt to consider Quotation as downright pedantry, will be surprised when I assure them, that next to the simple imitation of sounds and gestures, Quotation is the most natural and most frequent habitude of human nature. For, Quotation must not be confined to passages adduced out of authors. He who cites the opinion, or remark, or saying of another, whether it has been written or spoken, is certainly one who quotes; and this we shall find to be universally practiced.

  James Boswell

  Simple, Next, Firsts

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• 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

  Past, Names, History

  Thomas Carlyle (1843). “Past and Present”, p.36

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• Economic analysis is the first principle of Marxism. Professors who were genuine leftists would have challenged the entire economics-driven machinery of American academe the wasteful multidepartmental structure, the divisive pedantry of overspecialization, the cronyism and sycophancy in recruitment and promotion, the boondoggling ostentation of pointless conferences, the exploitation of graduate students and part-time teachers, the subservience of faculty to overpaid administrators, the mediocrity and folly of the ruling cliques of the Modern Language Association.

  Camille Paglia

  Teacher, Association, Firsts

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.19, Vintage

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