Hair-splitting Quotes

It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom. (Karl Marx)
The profession of religion was not the same thing as godliness, and he was coming to doubt whether the insistence upon minute conformities of outward conduct and the hair-splitting doctrines were not devices of Satan to entangle souls. View quote
John Buchan
There is no room for legal hair-splitting when it comes to the humane treatment of detainees - not in a nation founded on the rule of law and respect for human rights. View quote
Dick Durbin