Nitpicking Quotes

If we take the time or courage to find out what people feel and think, and to listen to the heart of their story, we are capable of losing the narrowness of our preconceptions and the nitpicking manipulations in our brain, making us geared up to view the world, openly and with confidence. ("With confidence »)

You next saw her when the incident occurred?” “That’s correct.” “Did you try to figure out what was happening?” “You’re not military, you don’t understand how we work. I’m not supposed to ask questions. I was just following orders.” “What orders were those?” “We have a duty to protect civilians.” “So there wasn’t a specific order that drove your decision?” “Now you’re nitpicking.” “We’re being exact, Major. We’d appreciate it if you tried to do the same.

Things had changed between us in a profound way, something I think we both knew. All our fighting and nitpicking seemed so silly now. So did my endless agonizing about whether or not I should be with him. Once a man disposes of a body for you, the moral high ground has been lost.

Lady Maccon cogitated. She would like to encourage this new spirit of social-mindedness. If Felicity needed anything in her life, it was a cause. Then she might stop nitpicking everyone else.

Cowards say it can't be done, critics say it shouldn't have been done, creator say well done.

Enforcing silence is easy. All you have to do is make it feel like the safest option. You can, for example, make speaking as unpleasant as possible, by creating an anonymous social media account to flood women with virulent personal criticism, sexual harassment, and threats. You can talk over women, or talk down to them, until they begin to doubt that they have anything worthwhile to say. You can encourage men's speech, and ignore women's, so that women will get the message that they are taking up too much room, and contributing too little value. You can nitpick a woman's actual voice—the way she writes, her grammar, her tone, her register, her accent—until she honestly believes she's bad at talking, and spends more time trying to sound 'better' than thinking about what she wants to say. And if a woman somehow makes it past all this, you can humiliate her anyway.

was continually harassed by an inner judge who was merciless, relentless, nit-picking, driving, often invisible but always on the job. I knew I would never treat a friend the way I treated myself, without mercy or kindness.

Three months after Columbine, the FBI organized a major summit on school shooters in Leesburg, Virginia. The Bureau assembled some of the world’s leading psychologists, including Dr. Hare. Near the end of the conference, Dr. Fuselier stepped up to the microphone and gave a thorough briefing on the minds of the two killers. “It looks like Eric Harris was a budding young psychopath,” he concluded. The room stirred. A renowned psychiatrist in the front row moved to speak. Here it comes, Fuselier thought. This guy is going to nitpick the assessment to death. “I don’t think he was a budding young psychopath,” the psychiatrist said. “What’s your objection?” “I think he was a full-blown psychopath.” His colleagues agreed. Eric Harris was textbook.

Do you mind if I contribute my thoughts to this one? If you could just stop nitpicking and dissecting every little thing, if you could learn to keep one eye closed and one eye open, and quit worrying about everything, you might discover life is pretty fucking beautiful. Am I right?

Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.

Behind every text footnote is a file folder with all the hardcopy documentation needed to document every sentence in this book at a moment’s notice. Moreover, I assembled a team of hair-splitting, nitpicking, adversarial researchers and archivists to review each and every sentence, collectively ensuring that each fact and fragment of a fact was backed up with the necessary black and white documents.

The biggest chore of training was coping with the nitpicking, rank-pulling, much-loathed lieutenant who oversaw their flights. Once, when one of Super Man’s engines quit during a routine flight, Phil turned the plane back and landed at Kahuku, only to be accosted by the furious lieutenant in a speeding jeep, ordering them back up. When Louie offered to fly on three engines so long as the lieutenant joined them, the lieutenant abruptly changed his mind.

Why did the two of you fight so much?” “We fought plenty, but I always respected him.” “But why all the arguing? The nitpicking? It always seemed strange to me.” It would. He smiled and turned his face to the sky. For all her practical, level-headed business sense, Mollie didn’t understand much about men. “Sometimes men just like to argue,” he said simply. “We like the competition. We sniff out the opposition, measure it up, challenge it. Frank never backed down. Even though he was blind, Frank was still a man, and when I came on the scene, I think he immediately sensed my interest in you. Long before you ever did.

When taking Spock to see the spores, Leila comments, "It's not much further." having been beaten about the head severely on the difference between "further" and "farther," I believe I can say with some trembling confidence that she should say, "it's not much farther." "Further" means "to a greater extent or degree" whereas "farther" means "to a greater distance." (I know this is really picky, but hey, that's my business.)

The one who causes trouble always have a reason and an excuse. The one who nitpicks about it eventually becomes the problem. Isn't that amazing?

I mean, she’s the president. If there’s one thing our country’s any good at, it’s nitpicking our leader.

Really, it's not easy being the badly brought-up center of attention of a family of nitpickers.

Boss, you’re nitpicking to avoid admitting that it was your fault, not mine.

In practice, deconstructive approaches to language therefore look very much like nitpicking at words in order to deliberately miss the point.

Petite-Ma retained a most special place in Asya's heart. She loved her dearly. Unlike some others in the family, Petite-Ma had always been capable of loving without suffocating. She would never nag or nitpick or sting. Her protectiveness was not possessive.

...some people become hypercritical when stressed. Then again, he hadn't been stressed last week. She giggled, remembering how he'd instructed her on the proper way to fold hand towels. Talk about nitpicky. Perhaps this would be a good time to call it quits.

If you're always telling people why you can't do something, if you parse everything and nitpick, I've got news for you: You're not going anywhere. If you want to make it in this world, learn to say, "sure, no problem." Practice. It's good for you. When is the last time you went on a limb trusting your gut feeling?

Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma.

We take care of each other like two monkeys picking each other’s nits. Folks underestimate a good nit-pick.

If I’d wanted to do just an adequate job, I could have done only so much and no more; if I wanted to do it right, I could do it right. But just because I’d get down to details didn’t necessarily mean my labors were always appreciated. Some folks would call it tedious nit-picking. Still, as I said before, I’m one for doing my best. It’s just my nature. And even more, it’s a matter of pride.

Most authors would confess they hear an inner editor, an internal naysayer that hampers and nitpicks their attempts at first drafts. Mine has taken the form of Athena. Haughtily she peruses and dismisses every story idea I attempt: "too trite", "too formulaic", "too white". She's even harsher at the sentence level: "the rhythm's off", "that imagery doesn't work", "seriously, another em dash?

In psychology, they call the holistic view you form about another person your global evaluation. As you can see, your global evaluation about the height or beauty of another person greatly affects your other estimations, but many other global evaluations can produce the halo effect. When it comes to your favorite bands, directors, brands, or companies, you often lie to yourself about their shortcomings. For example, if you really, truly love a particular musician or band, you will forgive their poorer works much more readily than will a less-devoted fan. You may find yourself defending their latest album, explaining the nuances to the uninitiated, wondering why they can’t appreciate it. Or maybe you absolutely love a particular director or author, and believe her to be a genius who can do no wrong. When critics slam her latest movie or book, how do you react? Like most fanatics, you probably see the dissenters as naysayers and nitpickers drunk on their own haterade. The halo effect nullifies your objectivity.

As youngest among us, but small no more, Your life can be trying, for we have the chore Of becoming your teachers, a terrible bore. "We've got experience! Take it from me!" "We've done this all before, you see. We know the ropes, we know the same." Since time immemorial, always the same. One's own shortcomings are nothing but fluff, But everyone else's are heavier stuff: Faultfinding comes easy when this is our plight, But it's hard for your parents, try as they might, To treat you with fairness, and kindness as well; Nitpicking's a habit that's hard to dispel. Men you're living with old folks, all you can do Is put up with their nagging -- it's hard but it's true. The pill may be bitter, but down it must go, For it's meant to keep the peace, you know. The many months here have not been in vain, Since wasting time noes against your Brain. You read and study nearly all the day, Determined to chase the boredom away. The more difficult question, much harder to bear, Is "What on earth do I have to wear? I've got no more panties, my clothes are too tight, My shirt is a loincloth, I'm really a siaht! To put on my shoes I must off my toes, Dh dear, I'm plagued with so many woes!

outrageously at his temples (by then his need to do something had become like a panic, a fierce drive up ward and outward from his self that had begun to cut like flame through the boozy dreamland, the nit-picking, the inertia, the navel-gazing), said loudly and impatiently: “What do you mean there is not a hope in the world?

I agree with Kilgore Trout about realistic novels and their accumulations of nit-picking details. In Trout’s novel, The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank, the hero is on a space ship two hundred miles long and sixty-two miles in diameter. He gets a realistic novel out of the branch library in his neighborhood. He reads about sixty pages of it, and then he takes it back. The librarian asks him why he doesn’t like it, and he says to her, “I already know about human beings.

Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: “There’s no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.” The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop.

Many women feel invisible or aberrant when they are subsumed under a masculine term that is supposed to be universal; yet they are often made to feel trivial and nit-picking if they object. But look at it this way: Would a man feel included in “womankind”? Would he refer to himself as “chairwoman,” “Congresswoman,” or “Mr. Mary Smith”? If a male student earned a “Spinster of Arts” degree, a “Mistress of Science,” or had to apply for a “Sistership,” would he feel equal in academia? If men had grown up seeing God portrayed only as Mother and She, would they feel an equal godliness within themselves?

I could go on and on with the intimate details about the various lives of people on the super-ambulance, but what good is more information? I agree with Kilgore Trout about realistic novels and their accumulations of nit-picking details. In Trout's novel, 'The Pan-Galactic Memory Bank,' the hero is on a space ship two hundred miles long and sixty-two miles in diameter. He gets a realistic novel out of the branch library in his neighborhood. He reads about sixty pages of it, and then he takes it back. The librarian asks him why he doesn't like it, and he says to her, 'I already know about human beings.

The misuse of history to condemn evils common around the world as if they were peculiarities of the West has serious practical implications. Two wrongs do not make a right but undermining the society which has the smaller evil only makes it more vulnerable to the greater evils in other societies and in international terrorist networks. Far more is involved than questions of objectivity or honesty, important as such questions are. Without understanding the features of one’s own society that have provided a prosperity, a freedom, and a security rare to non-existent over much of the rest of the world, one risks losing by default all these things for oneself and posterity. American society is one whose underlying bases are always under attack by both internal opportunists and external enemies. Those who have no conception of the Constitution of the United States, except as an object of nit-picking, cannot be expected to defend its integrity against the inevitable encroachments of political opportunists and judicial power-seekers. Those who have no conception of the unique heritage of Western civilization have no idea what losing that heritage would mean – to them and to generations yet unborn – and why it must be defended against passing fads at home and lethal threats from abroad.

Herein lies the delicious torture, the 'flowery combat' of intimacy—the lover who really turns you on deep in your sexual heart will also really frustrate you in more superficial moments. If you have a feminine essence, then your masculine lover's deep confidence and integrity will turn you on, except when bulldozing your feelings and nit-picking the content of everything you say in a moment of conflict. If you have a masculine essence, then your feminine lover's spontaneous laughter and fluid sexual responsiveness will turn you on, except during times of whacko hysteria and unpredictable shutdowns. In moments of deep communion, the masculine and feminine open as a singular gift—two facets of one jewel.

This is a new idea you might want to write down. Having your own life is authentically irresistible because it keeps you (and him) from losing yourselves in the relationship. If you imagine that people are like rechargeable batteries, having your own life keeps you fully charged. When you focus all your time and attention only on him, there’s no possibility for you to get naturally recharged by life—by other friends, activities, adventures, nature, the universe. Your energy depletes; this is apparent in how you look and feel. You start pulling on him for all of your energy, and he feels exhausted and resentful. The conversations get dull. You begin to nitpick and nag. “What do you want to do?” and “I don’t care—whatever you want to do” is all you ever seem to say to each other. When you devote all of your time, energy, and attention only to each other, it drains both of you and slowly erodes what could be an otherwise wonderful relationship. Having your own life is a natural way to keep yourself centered so you have more to contribute to your partner and the other important people in and aspects of your life. Let’s be honest. Success is sexy. When you live an inspired and energized life, men naturally find you irresistible because you are irresistible. Invest in your health, create community, make a difference, learn new skills, have fun, and share yourself with others. This is what will keep him wanting more, more, more. Men are no different from women in this respect. They want to be with someone who is expressive, engaged, and active in life. They want a woman who can introduce them to new things and is both interested and interesting.

Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: “There’s no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.” The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: “Now what is this thing doing?” —THE MENTAT HANDBOOK

A blanket could be used to silence your internal critic. And if you don’t shut him up, I’ll do it for you. Geez, I’m trying to read over here, and I can’t focus with his incessant nitpicking. 


Her life at the age of twenty was nothing like mine. Whenever I did try to open up, my mom seemed unconcerned. When I was sad about something, she told me to “get a thicker skin”; when I was upset, she told me to “stop nitpicking.” My mom has always had faith that things would be okay—but saying “Tomorrow will be a better day” wasn’t enough for me.

The imminent arrival of NT had turned the computer industry on its ear. After outsiders took stock of the first beta, expectations for NT grew. While easy to nitpick over flaws, some heralded the program as a grand achievement likely to alter the destinies of scores of computer and software companies. Those rivals most at risk—IBM, Sun Microsystems and Novell, to name the three biggest—girded themselves against the onslaught. First Boston, a securities firm that advised investors on the industry’s outlook, captured the mood on February 15, 1993, calling NT the “most aggressive new piece of software ever.” Eight

As of 2010, the company was carrying out 12,000 RCTs every year. This is an astonishing amount of experimentation and it means that Google clocks up thousands of little failures. Each RCT may seem like nitpicking, but the cumulative effect starts to look very different.

As a matter of fact, sometimes it pays not to nitpick; when you do, pseudoscience supporters will simply throw more facts and figures at you, hoping either to dazzle you with their database of knowledge or to confuse you beyond hope of reaching any rational conclusion.

It was either that, or allow the impossible standards of the industry to chip away at her self-esteem, one nitpick at a time, until she crumbled under the weight of her insecurities. But he said it so easily, without hesitation, as if he’d already told her a million times. As if tonight weren’t surreal enough already.

The first draft is where you explain it to yourself. The second draft is where you try to explain it to your reader. In other words, when you write your first draft – don’t worry about getting it right. Don’t worry about it even making sense. The door is closed. Nobody will see it, so stop worrying and nit-picking as you go along.

It has been that long since all the moral crises of his youth were washed clean. Suddenly gone were all the ethical dilemmas and doctrinal controversies and denominational nitpicking, all the guilt and doubts and complications that had cluttered his life. Years and years have passed since the realization formed in his brain and finally screamed to him with the voice of reason and logic and common sense—the voice that would be heard—that he simply no longer could believe in the existence of God. He’s been free that long. Why, he wonders, did it not happen sooner? Santa Claus died for him when he was six. The unwelcome knowledge that the benevolent old giver of gifts was merely a myth came as a disappointment, of course, but he soon got over it, knowing even then, even that young, that a grasp of reality—seeing things the way they are, not simply as one would like them to be—was ultimately far more satisfying, more liberating than living a game, living a lie. Things fit. If Santa died so painlessly when Manning was six, how did God manage to linger for another twenty years?

Mama, is that Aunt Eula’s chicken recipe?” Emily tore into a drumstick with enough fervor for both of them. “Sure is.” Her aunts had been up since before dawn cooking. The sweets table was piled with pies and sponge cake with fresh berries and Aunt Marline’s divinity fudge. She picked at her chicken, feeling her appetite improving with each bite of familiar cooking. “Can I have seconds, Mama?” “Of course. let me get some for you.” Alaine took Em’s plate to the buffet, still loaded with more food than an army could do away with. She chose a drumstick from the plate of chicken, then froze. “Now, Stella, it’s quaint,” Mrs. Mark Grafton, Pierce’s mother. Alaine stiffened. “They’ve done the best they can— and I think they rather expected us to enjoy a country luncheon.” “But chicken fricassee? For a wedding luncheon? Are they going to have us dance a reel next?” A woman younger than Mrs. Grafton, but bearing the same sharp dark eyes, tittered quietly. “I told Pierce they should have a fish course, at least. And a consommé. Of course I knew an aspic would be asking far too much.” “Pierce always did have an independent streak.” Stella said this as though it were a blight. “Marrying some country nobody when the Harris girls or Georgia Lawson would have—” “Not polite to speak of it now, dear,” Mrs. Grafton said with a tone that told Alaine it was only propriety keeping her from joining. Alaine seethed. Delphine wasn’t a nobody— she was better than any of these Perrysburg ninnies. “Pierce has his career to consider, that’s all I’m saying. She can’t go blundering about, mucking that up. After all, we stand to catch the ill effects of any mistakes she makes.” “I’ve advised Pierce how to handle himself, and he’ll make sure she knows her place. You needn’t concern yourself with your brother’s affairs.” Mrs. Grafton swept away in a wake of heady perfume, but not before Alaine heard her add in a sharp whisper, “He didn’t listen to me about marrying the girl, why do you think he’d listen about a fish course?” Neither Grafton woman had noticed Alaine; they were, Alaine presumed, well practiced in ignoring anything that didn’t benefit them specifically. Country nobody, indeed— Del would show them all up before Christmas. If the best chicken in the county wasn’t good enough for the Graftons, she would enjoy it double.


He was scolding me as if I were a child and harping on every little imperfection he could find, making me feel naive and low. Along with his sobriety came his ability to nitpick the most insignificant of circumstances.

I have a shameful confession to make: Secretly, I am not lazy. I’ve learned that if I do literally nothing for more than a year, two at most, I start to get depressed. I’m not recanting my old manifesto. I still hope to make it to my grave without ever getting a job job — showing up for eight or more hours a day to a place with fluorescent lighting where I’m expected to feign bushido devotion to a company that could fire me tomorrow and someone’s allowed to yell at you but you’re not allowed to yell back. But once I become genuinely engaged in a project, I can become fanatically absorbed, spending hundreds of hours on it, no matter how useless and unremunerative. As a teacher, I edit my students’ writing with a nit-picking precision and big-picture ambition they may likely never experience again. And I don’t believe most people are lazy. They would love to be fully, deeply engaged in something worthwhile, something that actually mattered, instead of forfeiting their limited hours on Earth to make a little more money for men they’d rather throw fruit at as they pass by in tumbrels. It’s no coincidence that so many social movements arose during the enforced idleness of quarantine. One important function of jobs is to keep you too preoccupied and tired to do anything else. Grade school teachers called it “busywork” — pointless, time-wasting tasks to keep you from acting up and bothering them. ("It’s Time to Stop Living the American Scam", The New York Times)

the Schuyler Mansion State Historic Site in Albany, Ian Mumpton and Danielle Funiciello, who provided copies of letters and answered a thousand questions, large and small. Though any errors you may find in this manuscript are ours alone. Thanks also go to the Daughters of the American Revolution and their magazine for providing research material of interest for subjects like Sinterklaas and Dutch culture in Eliza’s time. Lars Hedbor for helping to nitpick the historical accuracy of everything from coffee to French uniforms. Alison Morton and Annalori Ferrell for

Everything. I nitpick little things I did or said throughout the day. I think about things I can’t control.

Average employee: Not too bright. Exceptionally well qualified: Made no major blunders yet. Character above reproach: Still one step ahead of the law. Zealous attitude: Opinionated. Quick-thinking: Offers plausible excuses. Careful thinker: Won’t make a decision. Takes pride in work: Conceited. Forceful: Argumentative. Aggressive: Obnoxious. A keen analyst: Thoroughly confused. Conscientious: Scared. Meticulous attention to detail: A nitpicker. Has leadership qualities: Is tall or has a loud voice. Strong principles: Stubborn Career-minded: Backstabber Coming along well: About to be let go. Independent worker: Nobody knows what he/she does. Forward-thinking: Procrastinator. Loyal: Can’t get a job anywhere else.

So when you and I begin feeling pressure and tension and splintering and conflict at home, when little trifling things start bunching together to become this one big thing—when the nitpicking turns into bickering; the bickering into outbursts; the outbursts into rude, below-the-belt unkindness and bitterness; the bitterness into slow, seething pullbacks of silence and isolation—is it just your husband being terrible? Acting awful? Is it just you being overly sensitive, slow to relinquish a foothold of cherished, hard-fought ground? Is it just your child pulling away into isolation or overt rebellion? Is it just all of you going to your own rooms—disconnected, disjointed, fragmented?

Oliver Marley supposed there were more dignified ways to end his life. A lifelong victim to the twin sins of an infertile imagination and pragmatism, the thought of travel simply never crossed his mind.   Had it occurred to him, Oliver could have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, into the abyss of the Grand Canyon or said au revoir off the Eiffel Tower. But truth be told, Oliver never was much of a traveler. Even locally there were certainly higher quality casinos to choose from, taller parking garages from which to leap. Instead he found himself perched atop the nearest appropriately-sized structure to his home, that being the parking garage of the Circus Time Hotel & Casino. His view not of Alcatraz Island and the rough waters of the San Francisco Bay, nor the breathtaking vistas of the Arizona desert, or the romanticism of the Paris skyline for that matter. Rather he found himself bathed in a noxious blend of pink and green neon, staring into a pair of giant blinking pastel eyes belonging to the eighty-foot clown staring down at him like a frilly guardian angel. Then again, when your primary objective is to pancake yourself on a public sidewalk, perhaps you’re not in the best position to nitpick over the intricacies of what does and does not constitute bad taste. Oliver would just have to live with the clown, at least for another minute or two.

The real Machiavellian genius of the First Amendment is that free speech turns out to be mostly harmless — a lot of P.C. nit-picking, dingbat conspiracy theories, tedious libertarian screeds and name calling. The only “free speech” that has any effect in a stable, well-run plutocracy is the kind protected by Buckley vs. Valeo in the form of campaign contributions.

But as you grow, do not become a “professional sermon listener” who is always hearing but never learning. Beware of false knowledge that “puffs up” (1 Cor. 1:8; Col. 2:18) and tends to cause strife and dissension. Mortify any tendencies toward pride, the condemnation of others, and critical nit-picking. Instead, seek to meet Jesus each time you come to the Scripture; gather from the Word fuel for all-of-life worship. Instead of exalting ourselves, let us remember the apostle Peter’s words: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time” (1 Pet. 5:6).

PEER GROUP SHAMING I remember Arnold. He was a brilliant accountant. He had been viciously shamed in high school. His presenting problem was his criticalness of women. No woman was ever good enough. As his relationship with a woman would intensify, Arnold would start finding fault. He was a nitpicker of great expertise. The outcome of all this was that he was forty years old and fairly successful financially but painfully alone.

Critiquing is a nitpicky business, but don't unnecessarily nitpick for the sake of being seen as a good critic.

I had not lost my faith—I still have not—but I had lost my belief in the exact ways I had been brought up to follow my faith in. It did not make sense any more—this intense hatred and violence being practised in the name of a religion that stood for peace, this endless nitpicking bureaucratic intolerance being practised in the name of a God whose most common attributes, as I had been told from the time I was an infant, were mercy and forgiveness!

Shake off the tonnage of old genetics, nitpicking naysayers and hand-me-down Egos hoarding junk in the back of your mind. Be a Friday night liberty set loose on Monday morning.

I don’t mean to nitpick, but there are a few questions that come to mind about this scientific explanation of the law of attraction. How, exactly, does sending out thought frequencies make something materialize in our lives? Let’s say I have my heart set on a new wide-screen TV that is sitting in the showroom of my local electronics dealer. I ask the universe for the TV, believe that I will get it, and receive positive thoughts and feelings about it. My positive thought frequencies zoom out of my head and into the showroom, and because they are magnetic, the TV moves closer to me. But wait a minute—does it actually inch closer each day? Won’t the store personnel be a little suspicious when they arrive in the morning and find that the TV has moved to the loading dock? And how exactly does the TV get into my living room? Does it swoop in through the chimney like Santa delivering presents on Christmas Eve? Aren’t there a few unresolved questions here?

If I were to nitpick (which I’ve been known to do), I would say her last sentence should have restated the conclusion by saying, “And that’s why I recommend the client expand Program B in the short term.

Well, he’s killed numerous people the same way with the same methodology and reasoning…so technically he’s a serial killer too. It’s logically truthful. Other than wearing a badge to find it legally justifiable, we’re the same. Well, I torture my victims first, but that’s just nitpicking at facts.

Nope, you are nitpicking and biased, I win, bye bye.

deconstructive approaches to language therefore look very much like nitpicking at words in order to deliberately miss the point.

Consequently, since discourses are believed to create and maintain oppression, they have to be carefully monitored and deconstructed. This has obvious implications for moral and political action. The most common postmodernist response to this derives from Derrida’s proposed solution: to read “deconstructively,” by looking for internal inconsistencies (aporia) in which a text contradicts and undermines itself and its own purposes when the words are examined closely enough (which is to say, too closely and, especially since the 1990s, with an agenda—Theory’s normative agenda). In practice, deconstructive approaches to language therefore look very much like nitpicking at words in order to deliberately miss the point.

Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nitpicking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: “There’s no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.” The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: “Now what is this thing doing?” —The Mentat Handbook

no one’s ever really stormed the U.S. Capitol Building before. You know, no one’s ever done that. So… NOTE: Nitpicking history teacher moment: the British Canadians stormed the U.S. Capitol in 1814, set it and most of the city’s landmarks on fire, but then retreated the next day when they were hit with a rainstorm and tornado.[75] True story. :-) me: It reminds me ... uh, tangent, it reminds me of how early in the French Revolution the common people stormed the French Palace, the Royal French Palace, and they didn’t really do anything then. They just kind of pushed their way in so they could yell at the royal family.[76] It wasn’t until a few years later that people started getting their heads chopped off. Wolf Patch: Yeah. me: So ... but that’s a tangent.

It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: “There’s no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.

According to the thinking in our community, lower dashes meant more humbleness, but this type of nitpicking over an inch played a role in driving me to leave the Amish community. Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. (Colossians 2:14)

No one’s getting married anytime soon,” Ollie cuts in. “And if I was, fuck you both very much for being more interested in who you could fuck at the bachelor party than the happiest day of my life.” “Not to nitpick, but wouldn’t it be the third happiest day of your life?

When Arrays Are Pointers The C standard has the following to say about the matter. Rule 1. An array name in an expression (in contrast with a declaration) is treated by the compiler as a pointer to the first element of the array1 (paraphrase, ANSI C Standard, paragraph 6.2.2.1). 1. OK nitpickers, there are a few minuscule exceptions that concern arrays treated as a whole. A reference to an array is not replaced by a pointer to the first element when: • the array appears as the operand of sizeof()—-obviously you want the size of the whole array here, not just a pointer to it. • the array’s address is taken with the & operator. • the array is a string or wide-string literal initializer. Rule 2. A subscript is always equivalent to an offset from a pointer (paraphrase, ANSI C Standard, paragraph 6.3.2.1). Rule 3. An array name in the declaration of a function parameter is treated by the compiler as a pointer to the first element of the array (paraphrase, ANSI C Standard, paragraph 6.7.1).

Many people may lack a sense of aesthetics, but it is only when things change in a way that causes them feel nitpick, lose, or compromise, then they become acutely aware of the difference between beautiful and ugly.

Examples of ROCD’s manifestations include: - Wondering if one is truly compatible with one’s partner - Wondering if one might be missing out on a relationship with someone who they would be more compatible with - Wondering if one is leading one’s partner on - Wondering if one’s partner is more “in love” than oneself - Wondering if one is truly attracted to one’s partner - Perceiving mild negative feelings, such as irritation with one’s partner, as a sign that the relationship isn’t right - Comparing one’s relationship to those of one’s peers, or to those found in movies, TV, and books - Obsessively comparing one’s partner to other people - Nitpicking the personality or appearance of one’s partner, or questioning their intelligence There are of course many more manifestations, but this should provide a decent overview

MALONE: Well, on the treatment front, the Merck and Pfizer drugs are really fairly toxic and not particularly effective. That will come out publicly. The deadly nature of remdesivir will become more and more clear. The safety and effectiveness of the early treatment strategies that Drs. Tony Urso, Ryan Cole, and Peter McCullough and everybody have been promoting will become clearer. So it will become clearer that there were unnecessary deaths due to suppression of early treatment. As for the vaccines, because the Pfizer data package will continue to roll out and continue to be nitpicked, you’ll learn more and more about the various malfeasance that’s occurred. There will be increasing awareness of the reproductive risks and the coagulopathy, stroke, blood clotting, autoimmune disease, and this kind of chronic malaise of the post-vaccinated. Those risks will be known to a greater extent. I think that there’ll be increased awareness of the damage to immune systems and the dangerous consequences of that.

He’d thought he was being a good parent. By giving Sean room to learn about life on his own, when Julie rode him about taking on adult responsibilities. By cutting Rachel slack when Julie nitpicked her over her attitude and schoolwork. He’d even told himself Ben had been unaffected by the atmosphere in their home. He’d prided himself on his patience. His ability to wait and “hang in there” and approach life from a slower pace, and let Julie wear all the “bad guy” hats of discipline and planning and the tasks that came with running a household. Yet he now saw patience was simply the label he had used to cover the truth. He’d never been engaged with his family. Never been active and intentional. Before Ben he’d coasted because life had been easy, and after Ben he’d just maintained the fringes, justifying his inaction with Julie’s behavior. He’d lived reacting.

Be your own worst critic. You're going to nitpick and see things that no one else is going to see, but if you see it and you correct it, you will be the best at whatever it is you do. You have to put in the hours; you have to put in the time. - Julie Chen

Above all else, the mentat must be a generalist, not a specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The mentat-generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off from the broad sweep of what is happening in his universe. He must remain capable of saying: “There’s no real mystery about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to it.” The mentat-generalist must understand that anything which we can identify as our universe is merely part of larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles, knowing full well that such principles change, that they develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that the mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking yourself: “Now what is this thing doing?” -The Mentat Handbook

It is wise to have decisions of great moment monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit-picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma.

Encourage; Don’t Nitpick. Keep in mind that there’s no shortage of good, workable ideas, but that there’s a tremendous shortage of receptivity to ideas. Don’t be like one of those “wet blankets” that shot down the radio, the telephone, Federal Express, the personal computer, and NIKE shoes as “dumb ideas.

According to Dunbar, to understand the origins of gossip, we need look no further than the grooming behavior of apes. It’s thought early humans—like apes—bonded socially by grooming one another. Mutual stroking and nitpicking fostered goodwill so that later on, the two might share bananas or come to each other’s defense. But as humans grew more intelligent and the complexity of our activities and the size of our communities grew, language—and, more specifically, gossip—replaced grooming as a way to establish and maintain alliances, although we still pet and stroke those closest to us.

Specialists in information technology are the new lawyers. Long ago, lawyers realized that they could make themselves culturally essential if they made the vernacular of contracts too complex for anyone to understand except themselves. They made the language of contracts unreadable on purpose. (Easy example: I can write a book, and my editor can edit a book . . . but neither one of us can read and understand the contract that allows those things to happen.) IT workers became similarly unstoppable the moment they realized virtually every machine powering the modern world is too complicated for the average person to fix or calibrate. And they know this. This is what makes an IT guy different from you. He might make less money, he might have less social prestige, and people might look at him in the cafeteria like he’s a nitpick—but he can act however he wants. He can be nice, but only if he feels like it. He can ignore the company dress code. He can lie for no reason whatsoever (because how would anyone understand what he’s lying about). He can smoke weed at lunch, because he’ll still understand your iMac better than you. It doesn’t matter how he behaves: The IT department dominates technology, and technology dominates the rest of us. And this state of being creates a new kind of personality. It creates someone like Kim Dotcom, a man who’s essentially an IT guy for the entire planet.

I'm not a nitpicker

The farm labor movement saw him as a racist. He seemed to delight in the most outrageous snubs. Farm labor organizer Cesar Chavez was in the governor’s outer office, waiting to plead against a bill outlawing unions on Arizona farms, as Governor Williams was inside his office signing the bill. That action launched a recall effort against Williams in the mid-seventies—a drive that apparently collected the required signatures but was subverted when the Republican attorney general found a nitpicking technicality that disqualified most of the petitions. This was the man who held the fate of Winnie Ruth Judd in his hands.