Quotes About Nonsense

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

Sometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good.

Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

'Totally mad,' he said, 'utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.'

I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never serious." "Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but nonsense." "Nobody ever does.

There'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.

Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe.

The 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!

There are more martyrs to nonsense than truth, truth preferring missionaries.

Now there is any amount of this nonsense cropping up among American cranks. Anybody may propose to establish coercive Eugenics; or enforce psychoanalysis that is, enforce confession without absolution.

I don't really believe in the mystery of cinematography - what happens in the camera is what the cinematographers create and all that nonsense.

There was a time, before I was in graduate school, when political philosophy pretty much ceased to exist. The positivists thought there were only two things you could do: conceptual analysis or empirical investigation. Any kind of political theory or even ethical theory was nonsense.

If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don't mess with you much. What that means is you've got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop. So the baboon is a wonderful model for living well enough and long enough to pay the price for all the social-stressor nonsense that they create for each other. They're just like us: They're not getting done in by predators and famines, they're getting done in by each other.

We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we 'understand.' Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then.

All of these declarations of what writing ought to be, which I had myself-though, thank God I had never committed them to paper-I think are nonsense. You write what you write, and then either it holds up or it doesn't hold up. There are no rules or particular sensibilities. I don't believe in that at all anymore.

A true creator researches how to have confidence in nonsense.

Another dream. Another long-distance call on my phantom party line. No wonder i had steadfastly refused to have dreams for most of my life. So stupid; such pointless, obvious symbols. Totally uncontrollable anxiety soup, hateful, blatant nonsense.

I 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.

Some people want tolerance to mean now that all ideas are equally valid. That's nonsense. There are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong.

Bes had indeed put on his ugly outfit. He climbed onto the roof of the limbo and stood there, legs planted, arms akimbo, like superman-exept with only the underwear. I wasn't sure what to say except: "Put some clothes on!" "These children are under my protection," Bes insisted. "I don't know you," I said, "I never met you before today." "Nonsense. You expressly asked for my attention." "I didn't ask for the Speedo Patrol!

Do not be selfish and feel new people will take more of the teacher's attention and you won't get it. That's nonsense. With that attitude, you won't get it. The teacher sees that attitude and will have very little to do with you.

I can’t have it either. It affects the babies in utero.” “Nonsense,” he said, tossing his long auburn hair over one shoulder. Life would be easier if he wasn’t so damned good-looking. “Why, my mother drank wine every day, and I turned out just fine.” “I think you’re proving my point for me,” I said dryly

The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born - that there is a genetic factor to leadership. This myth asserts that people simply either have certain charismatic qualities or not. That's nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.

You don't have to be the best guitar player, or have the best voice, or even be the best looking person - writing a song that moves people is worth more than all the other nonsense. (Just look at Bob Dylan - he's got almost no vocal range at all, but his songs are deeply moving and iconic.) If I had to offer one piece of advice: Write a song that moves people, and write it from within yourself. Your personal narrative is more engaging and moving than anything else you can imagine in your mind.

A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

It is from him, from Beolco Ruzzante, that I've learned to free myself from conventional literary writing and to express myself with words that you can chew, with unusual sounds, with various techniques of rhythm and breathing, even with the rambling nonsense-speech of the 'grammelot.'

I find it difficult to believe that I belong to such an idiotic, rotten species - the species that actually boasts of its freedom of will, heroism on command, senseless violence, and all of the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism.

Why can't you harness Might so that it works for Right? I know it sounds nonsense, but, I mean, you can't just say there is no such thing. The Might is there, in the bad half of people, and you can't neglect it. You can't cut it out but you might be able to direct it, if you see what I mean, so that it was useful instead of bad.

Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.

To his enemies the householder must be a hero. Them he must resist. That is the duty of the householder. He must not sit down in a corner and weep, and talk nonsense about non-resistance. If he does not show himself a hero to his enemies he has not done his duty.

They are saying that if life has a structure, a staff, a sensible scaffold, we hang our nonsense on it. And they are saying that broken parts add color and music to the staff of life.

New Zealand is a pretty no-nonsense place to work like Australia. I mean it doesn't falter to anyone. There's a nice sense of reality on the set and it's really enjoyable. There's a good camaraderie and a good banter between the obviously New Zealand and Australian rivalry.

A women who knows her true value will only put up with a mans nonsense for so long, you either get right or get left.

I know for a fact that this idea of the Jews causing the war and the Jews being so all important is nonsense. But that was Hitler's idea, and...was pure fantasy. As I say, Hitler is a riddle to me and will always remain so.

I 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.

Nonsense is so good only because common sense is so limited.

They don't understand the multi-life sequences. Anything they can't see in a laboratory, they think is nonsense.

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

The history of acceptance of new theories frequently shows the following steps: At first the new idea is treated as pure nonsense, not worth looking at. Then comes a time when a multitude of contradictory objections are raised, such as: the new theory is too fancy, or merely a new terminology; it is not fruitful, or simply wrong. Finally a state is reached when everyone seems to claim that he had always followed this theory. This usually marks the last state before general acceptance.

I tried to swallow his nonsense without choking.

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now and then, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.

In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current crop of American poets necessarily give up on others.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us? Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.

It is my experience that people who don't participate in society, who don't have jobs, who don't have friends, are just very stuck in irresponsibility and cultism and all kinds of nonsense.

Jean [Kennedy Smith, JFK's sister] told me she thinks the whole sports angle has been overplayed, that politics was central to him. This nonsense that he only went into politics because his older brother Joe was killed is not true. He was determined he was going to be in politics, but he would have waited his turn.

I've always wanted to be a writer. I've been writing since I was probably four years old - it was nonsense, but it was still my little attempts at being a storyteller.