Popular quotes about Nonsense! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 45
What makes you think that nonsense is bad? If they'd nurtured and cared for human nonsense over the ages the way they did intelligence, it might have turned into something of special value.
Yevgeny ZamyatinIf every trace of any single religion were wiped out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
Penn JilletteAll philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.
Samuel Butler'Totally mad,' he said, 'utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.'
Douglas AdamsThe plays of children are nonsense, but very educative nonsense. So it is with the largest and solemnest things, with commerce, government, church, marriage, and so with the history of every man's bread, and the ways by which he is to come by it.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhat (Stephen) Hawking says in his book The Grand Design is the universe exists because it needed to exist, and because it needed to exist, it therefore created itself. His conclusion merely restates his premise, which means his argument is circular. Nonsense is nonsense, even when spoken by famous scientists.
John LennoxThe 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 CarrollThere is nothing that can be said by mathematical symbols and relations which cannot also be said by words. The converse, however, is false. Much that can be and is said by words cannot successfully be put into equations, because it is nonsense.
Clifford TruesdellThe teachings of Christianity - from vicarious redemption to the love of enemies, no thought for the morrow need be taken, that no thrift or care or family or society or solidarity is necessary - these are immoral teachings that have done and continue to inflict untold moral and physical harm on our species. And until we outgrow this nonsense, we have no chance of emancipating ourselves.
Christopher HitchensBill Clinton persuaded some people that he was really a civilized character and his Administration had the best interests of humanity at heart. These days we don't have to put up with that nonsense. It's very clear that the George W. Bush Administration is out of control. It contains some truly dangerous people.
John PilgerThe clichรฉ I tried to avoid was I hated "teenage sidekicks." I always figured if I were a superhero, there's no way on God's earth that I'm gonna pal around with some teenager. So my publisher insisted I have a teenager in the series, because they always felt teenagers won't read the books unless there's a teenager in the story; which is nonsense.
Stan LeeSin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other "sins" are invented nonsense.
Robert A. HeinleinFor me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.
Gene RoddenberryAt 50 you're more confident, more comfortable in your skin and you don't put up with nonsense, especially from men.
Amanda DonohoeAs a result of all his education, from everything he hears and sees around him, the child absorbs such a lot of lies and foolish nonsense, mixed in with essential truths, that the first duty of the adolescent who wants to be a healthy man is to disgorge it all.
Romain RollandI 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 MeadHuman beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.
Aldous HuxleyMan has a tendency to try to give clear reasons to be rational, but often you can see how all those reasons are not convincing and turn out to be a big nonsense.
Ai WeiweiDogmatic toleration is nonsense: I would no more tolerate the teaching of Calvinism to children if I had power to persecute it than the British Raj tolerated suttee in India. Every civilized authority must draw a line between the tolerable and the intolerable.
George Bernard ShawPeople will think you're courting me.' 'Nonsense, everyone knows I don't court respectable women.
Julia QuinnI believe that I can create whatever I want to create. If I can put my head on it right, study it, learn the patterns, and - it's hard to put into words, it's real metaphysical, esoteric nonsense, but I feel very strongly that we are who we choose to be.
Will SmithThe old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.
Benjamin BrittenI turned down Halloween parties every year, where people wanted zombies raised at the stroke of midnight or some such nonsense. The scarier my reputation got, the more people wanted me to come be scary for them. I'd told Bert I could always go and threaten to shoot all the partygoers, that'd be scary. Bert had not been amused. But he had stopped asking me to do parties.
Laurell K. HamiltonLeaders of the world, my message to you is simple: to achieve universal peace and understanding on this planet you have only to speak plainly, even though you may look foolish. This is a thousand times better than looking good and talking nonsense.
David SmallI like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.
Dr. SeussIn truth it is best to learn wisdom, and abandoning all nonsense, to leave it to boys to enjoy their season of play and mirth.
HoraceBut it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the sky and see the utter nonsense of everything including all the solemn stuff given out by professional asses about the spiritual life; and simply to burst out laughing, and laugh and laugh, with the sky and the trees because God is not in words, and not in systems, and not in liturgical movements, and not in "contemplation" with a big "C," or in asceticism or in anything like that, not even in the apostolate.
Thomas MertonWhy 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? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean.
Dmitri MendeleevThe introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps.
Alexander GrothendieckI run a taxpayer group - the most powerful guy in D.C., nonsense. OK? There are buildings with thousands of people in them, all lobbying for more spending and higher levels of spending and more government commitments. And there are a handful - a handful of groups that fight for less spending.
Grover NorquistIn 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.
Stephen BurtCan a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.
C. S. LewisThere is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Bertrand RussellI 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 DickensI'm open to anyone who can or has demonstrated that they can effectively market and distribute with the best. It wouldn't hurt if they could put up with my nonsense too.
Vantile WhitfieldYou swore you loved me, and laughed and warned me that you would not love me forever. I did not hear you. You were speaking in a language I did not understand. Never, never, I can conceive of a love which is able to foresee its own termination. Love is its own eternity. Love is in every moment of its being: all time. It is the only glimpse we are permitted of what eternity is. So I did not hear you. The words were nonsense.
Thornton WilderYou've always been free. You've always been bright and shining. Everything else is just nonsense.
Robert AdamsDevotion means for the total; it is never for Rama, never for Krishna. Of course, Rama and Krishna are implied in the total, but it is never for a chosen one. Love is always for the chosen one, devotion is for the whole. So you cannot be a devotee of Rama. If you are for Rama, you are only a lover; and when you are a lover, then competition is bound to be there. Then Krishna will be a competitor, and Christ will be a competitor, and the same jealousies, the same conflicts, and all the same nonsense will follow. It has followed.
Rajneesh