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We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will talk sense to the American people. But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense. And the notion that this Nation is headed for defeat through deficit, or that strength is but a matter of slogans, is nothing but just plain nonsense.
John F. KennedySometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good.
Fyodor Dostoevsky'Totally mad,' he said, 'utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.'
Douglas AdamsIt is amazing that when someone else spouts the nonsense you yourself believe you can readily perceive it as nonsense
Philip K. DickThere's huge amounts of nonsense that goes with everything surrounding music and art. All the things you have to do promote yourself - there's huge amounts of nonsense.
Laura MarlingThe Red Queen shook her head. "You may call it 'nonsense' if you like," she said, "but I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary!
Lewis CarrollI certainly should have,' he agrees, smiling and thinking what an absurd and universally-accepted bit of nonsense it is, that your best friends must necessarily be the ones who best understand you. As if there weren't far too much understanding in the world already; above all, that understanding between lovers, celebrated in song and story, which is actually such torture that no two of them can bear it without frequent separations or fights.
Christopher IsherwoodBy deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.
Horace WalpoleThere is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense... Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.
StendhalIt would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road...A stone has no interests because it cannot suffer. The capacity for suffering and enjoyment is, however, not only necessary, but also sufficient for us to say that a being has interests - at an absolute minimum, an interest in not suffering. A mouse, for example, does have an interest in not being kicked along the road because it will suffer if it is.
Peter SingerIt's all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can't possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two Centuries haven't got a Common Denominator. They have. It's Human Nature.
Frederick RolfeIf I'm teaching deep things, then I view it as important to make people feel like they're learning deep things, because otherwise, they will still have a hole in their mind for "deep truths" that needs filling, and they will go off and fill their heads with complete nonsense that has been written in a more satisfying style.
Eliezer YudkowskyI was told that my going to college wouldn't be good for my career. I think that's nonsense. It's good to empower yourself by cutting yourself off from this business every once in a while.
Claire DanesIf the Army wants witches and satanists in its ranks, then it can do it without Christians in those ranks. It's time for the Christians in this country to put a stop to this kind of nonsense. A Christian recruiting strike will compel the Army to think seriously about what it is doing.
Paul WeyrichIn the presence of some people we inevitably depart From ourselves: we are inaccurate, we say things we do not feel, And talk nonsense. When we get home we are conscious that we Have made fools of ourselves. Never go near these people.
Francois de La RochefoucauldWhy do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense?
Dmitri MendeleevI canโt have it either. It affects the babies in utero.โ โNonsense,โ he said, tossing his long auburn hair over one shoulder. Life would be easier if he wasnโt so damned good-looking. โWhy, my mother drank wine every day, and I turned out just fine.โ โI think youโre proving my point for me,โ I said dryly
Richelle MeadYou can be distracted by your love life, by the baseball game, movies, by the nonsense. "Can I get my kid into this private school? Can I get this girl to go out with me Saturday night? Am I going to get the promotion in my office?" All this stuff, but in the end the universe burns out. So I think it's completely meaningless.
Woody AllenLove sometimes wants to do us a great favor: hold us upside down and shake all the nonsense out.
HafezIโd heard you were dead.โ "I heard you wear a red lace corset,โ I said matter-of-factly. โBut I donโt believe every bit of nonsense that gets rumored about.
Patrick RothfussI understand your higher and lower tendencies. There is something beyond all of this nonsense. There is a wonderful glitter that you can follow in life.
Frederick LenzI don't put much stock in powers that people have to hurt others, in sorcery and all this nonsense. There are murders and there are dictators. That is just a part of life. The intelligent use of power in yoga can assist you avoiding that side of humanity.
Frederick LenzI lived a very isolated life. When you start at 20, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system.
Edie SedgwickThere is an old motto that runs, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." This is nonsense. It ought to read, "If at first you don't succeed, quit, quit at once."
Stephen LeacockEveryone says youve got to do a foundation and legal structure to finance social change. What nonsense!
Bill DraytonIt is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.
Alfred North WhiteheadA women who knows her true value will only put up with a mans nonsense for so long, you either get right or get left.
Harriet MorganI think myself I ought to be shot for writing such nonsense.... But it's unquestionably good escapist literature and I think I should rather like it if I were sitting in an air-raid shelter or recovering from flu.
Georgette HeyerYeah, we don't consider many stupid things. I mean, we get rid of 'em fast...Just getting rid of the nonsense -- just figuring out that if people call you and say, 'I've got this great, wonderful idea', you don't spend 10 minutes once you know in the first sentence that it isn't a great, wonderful idea...Don't be polite and go through the whole process.
Warren BuffettIt is better to use this available energy for your observation, inner observation. Just watch everything - and it is good because you have nothing much to do. You have not to go here and there and visit people and become a member of the Rotary Club. You are saved from so much nonsense that I felt really jealous of you! Enjoy it! And feel sorry for everybody else! They are poorer and you can become immensely rich. And the art of that richness is witnessing. Witnessing is another name for meditation.
RajneeshA mind is a terrible thing. All this evolution nonsense is making me feel like a complete APE!
Berkeley BreathedI have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt, and, of course, if it ceased to beat, I would cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, noโsympathyโsentimentโnonsense.
Charles DickensIn truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.
Jorge Luis BorgesThe popular image that Hollywood is ruined by difficult prima donna actors is nonsense. They're certainly very nice to directors. I can't say the same about producers, who I found difficult, paranoid, and certifiably insane, mostly.
Nigel ColeI don't believe in school prayer. I think it's total nonsense...who is the teacher there that is going to have them pray? And is the teacher going to be Catholic or Mormon or Episcopalian or what? It just causes all sorts of problems. And what are the kids praying about anyway? Does it really matter, does praying in school...what are you doing it for? The whole thing just opens up all sorts of elements of discussion. I think it's crazy.
Charles M. SchulzSometimes the world seems like a big hole. You spend all your life shouting down it and all you hear are echoes of some idiot yelling nonsense down a hole.
Adam DuritzIts obvious nonsense, but it makes nice people feel good about themselves to do their bit for the planet. Its vanity of a grotesque kind to believe that mankind, and our carbon footprint, has more impact on the future of Earth than Nature, which bends our planet to its will, as it sees fit.
Charles SaatchiLife goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on.
Mary Ann ShafferSince science's competence extends to observable and measurable phenomena, not to the inner being of things, and to the means, not to the ends of human life, it would be nonsense to expect that the progress of science will provide men with a new type of metaphysics, ethics, or religion.
Jacques MaritainMan feels the urge to run up against the limits of language. Think for example of the astonishment that anything at all exists. This astonishment cannot be expressed in the form of a question, and there is also no answer whatsoever. Anything we might say is a priori bound to be nonsense. Nevertheless we do run up against the limits of language. Kierkegaard too saw that there is this running up against something, and he referred to it in a fairly similar way (as running up against paradox). This running up against the limits of language is ethics.
Ludwig WittgensteinEmployees hate meetings because they reveal that self-promotion, sycophancy, dissimulation and constantly talking nonsense in a loud confident voice are more impressive than merely being good at the job - and it is depressing to lack these skills but even more depressing to discover one's self using them.
Michael Foley... semantics ... is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions of being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflict. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense
Alfred Tarski