This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put.
--
"Churchill on Prepositions", and alt.english.usage at google groups have been the most immediate sources for much of the information which indicates this remark or others like it were probably not remarks actually made by Churchill.Winston Churchill
» Winston Churchill - all quotes »
Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how to discourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethics how to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to be hypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be pedantry of logic, or of esthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy.
Miguel de Unamuno
As I search the archives of my memory I seem to discern six types or methods which divide themselves from one another with measurable distinctness. There is the type magisterial or imperative; the type laconic or sententious; the type conversational or homely; the type refined or artificial, smelling of the lamp, verging at times upon preciosity or euphuism; the demonstrative or persuasive; and finally the type tonsorial or agglutinative, so called from the shears and the pastepot which are its implements and emblem.
Benjamin N. Cardozo
Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry. ... To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.
George Polya
Half the Truth is often as arrant a Lye, as can be made.
George Savile
This same philosophy is a good horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.
Oliver Goldsmith
Churchill, Winston
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