Hairsplitting Quotes & Sayings

I think chemistry is being frittered away by the hairsplitting of the organic chemists; we have new compounds discovered, which scarcely differ from the known ones and when discovered are valueless-very illustrations perhaps of their refinements in analysis, but very little aiding the progress of true science. — Michael Faraday

Sloth is the great enemy
the inspirer of cowardice, irresolution, self-pitying grief, and trivial, hairsplitting doubts. Sloth may also be a psychological cause of sickness. It is tempting to relax from our duties, take refuge in ill-health and hide under a nice warm blanket. — Patanjali

The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide. — Saint Basil

The wisps of her crisp dark hair blew about her as she stooped, her eyes were big and wide and dark, when she looked up again, strange, startled, shy and sardonic at once. — D.H. Lawrence

Not by the hairsplitting distinctions of scholars but by the sure logic of faith, the childlike saint has solved the only problem in human life - establishment of unity with God. — Paramahansa Yogananda

At this point, a few words on this term 'horror' are perhaps called for. Some amateurs of this kind of literature engage in endless hairsplitting disputes, centered around this word and its close companion 'terror', as to which' stories may so be categorized and which may not, and whether or not descriptions such as weird or fantasy or macabre are preferable. The designation 'horror', with its connotations of revulsion, satisfies me no more than it does the purists but I believe that it is the only term which embraces all the stories in this collection and which succinctly suggests to the majority of readers what is in store for them. Horror then, in this instance, covers tales of the Supernatural and of physical terror, of ghosts and necromancy and of inhuman violence and all the dark corners and crevices of human belief and behavior that lie in between. ("An Age In Horror" - introduction) — Michel Parry

In a way the philosopher and the barber are of the same guild; the barber cuts hair and the philosopher splits hairs. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

You members of this Conference are to be the architects of the better world. In your hands rests our future. — Harry S. Truman

Why are weather people never right? It's probably the only profession in the world where you can be wrong most of time and still keep your job. — Jon Rance

The age of hairsplitting Jewish intellectualism is dead ... The past lies in flames. — Joseph Goebbels

The understanding of it [absolute] is very important as a beginning point. Then you can use meditation, further reasoning, long-term familiarity etc., you can use all kinds of methods to deepen this understanding and to have it counter the instinctual sense of being an absolute you. — Robert Thurman

I became a minister of the Eucharist when I was 17. My parents aren't very strict Catholics, but for some reason I decided this is what I want to do, and I have kept it up. — Sarah Bolger