Quotes About Nonsense

For as to the dispersing of Books, that Circumstance does perhaps as much harm as good: Since Nonsense flies with greater Celerity, and makes greater Impression than Reason; though indeed no particular species of Nonsense is so durable. But the several Forms of Nonsense never cease succeeding one another; and Men are always under the Dominion of some one or other, though nothing was ever equal in Absurdity and Wickedness to our present Patriotism.

Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human

If 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.

I conclude that there is as much sense in nonsense as there is nonsense in sense.

I think we have a fascinating new and quite dominant input into politics - and it wont go away. From time to time, people articulate a view that we should ban opinion polls, but that's nonsense.

Have you ever considered how much pure stuff and nonsense surrounds this subject of interior decoration? Probably not. Almost everyone believes that there is something deep and mysterious about it or that you have to know all sorts of complicated details about periods before you can lift a finger. Well, you don't. Decorating is just sheer fun: a delight in color, an awareness of balance, a feeling for lighting, a sense of style, a zest for life and an amused enjoyment of the smart accessories of the moment.

cultivate in young minds an equal love of the good, the beautiful and the absurd; most people's lives are too lead-colored to lose the smallest twinkle of light from a flash of nonsense.

The 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.

For awareness you need not go to the Himalayas; you need not go anywhere. Your life gives you enough opportunities to be aware. Somebody insults you - listen to it in full awareness. And you will be surprised - the insult is no more an insult. You may even smile. It does not hurt; it hurts only when received in unawareness. Somebody praises and appreciates you - listen with alertness. And then nobody can persuade you to do foolish things. Nobody can bribe you; flattery becomes impossible. You will smile at the whole nonsense.

There is no systematic corruption in FIFA. That is nonsense. We are financially clean and clear.

The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.

If you have ever had a miserable experience, then you have probably had it said to you that you would feel better in the morning. This, of course, is utter nonsense, because a miserable experience remains a miserable experience even on the loveliest of morning.

There's a fake Facebook me. There's a fake me Twittering. Sometimes, when it was at the height of right-wing nonsense picking on me, there would be a fake me writing letters to the editor. Just totally not even something I've ever said, that will then become part of the echo chamber.

At 50 you're more confident, more comfortable in your skin and you don't put up with nonsense, especially from men.

What is the power of life? With all the ungraceful dirt, nonsense, you remain graceful.

Imagine 1050 blind persons each with a scrambled Rubik's cube, and try to conceive of the chance of them all simultaneously arriving at the solved form. You then have a chance of arriving by random shuffling, of just one of the many biopolymers on which life depends. The notion that not only the biopolymers but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.

Confidence in nonsense is a requirement for the creative process.

The point is seeing that THIS - the immediate, everyday and present experience - is IT, the entire and ultimate point for the existence of a universe. I believe that if this state of consciousness could become more universal, the pretentious nonsense which passes for the serious business of the world would dissolve in laughter.

Live in constant gratitude. No matter what the condition today, no matter how dark, how dreary, how painful and difficult....to day is merely the passing outcome of yesterday's nonsense. How you feel today, and what you give your attention to, builds tomorrow.

To demand 'sense' is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense.

They will do more whether we do what we're doing or whether we don't do what we're doing. And the idea that you could appease them [terrorists] by stopping doing what we're doing or some implication that by doing what we're doing we're inciting them to attack us is just utter nonsense. It's just - it's kind of like feeding an alligator, hoping it eats you last.

You have but to hold forth in cap and gown, and any gibberish becomes learning, all nonsense passes for sense.

The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every sort of antique nonsense

Take winter as you find him, and he turns out to be a thoroughly honest fellow; with no nonsense in him, which is a great comfort in the long-run.

I do agree that the science is not settled on this. The idea we would put Americans' economy in jeopardy based on scientific theory that is not settled yet to me is nonsense. Just because you have a group of scientists who stood up and said this is the fact... Galileo got outvoted for a spell. To put Americans' economic future in jeopardy, asking us to cut back in areas that would have monstrous economic impact on this country is not good economics and I would suggest is not necessarily good science.

If men were the automatons that behaviorists claim they are, the behaviorist psychologists could not have invented the amazing nonsense called 'behaviorist psychology.'

Leaders 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.

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.

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being skin deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?

If anybody thinks they should listen to me because I'm a professor at MIT, that's nonsense. You should decide whether something makes sense by its content, not by the letters after the name of the person who says it.

One man’s nonsense is another man’s sense.

Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we're absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.

I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein-- side by side with... visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and nexe year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it.

When I'm photographing, I don't have that kind of nonsense running around in my head. I'm photographing. It's irrelevant in the end, so it doesn't mean a thing. It's not going to make me do better work or worse work as I can see it now.

The 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.

I express many absurd opinions. But I am not the first man to do it; American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.

Sometimes 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.

While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?

Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on.

Man 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.

He was not only the most brilliant strategist of all our generals, but he had a good political sense. A man of that quality was too difficult for Hitler to swallow for long. At conferences Manstein often differed from Hitler, in front of others, and would go so far as to declare that some of the ideas which Hitler put forward were nonsense.

I think it's all absolute nonsense how people talk about photography as being an art. It's a very menial career that you do if you draw badly. Now they teach it at the Royal College of Art and get grand about it. It's the only course there that I don't understand.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

I claim the right to contradict myself. I don't want to deprive myself of the right to talk nonsense, and I ask humbly to be allowed to be wrong sometimes.

[T]omorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well & serenely, & with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day ... is too dear with its hopes & invitations to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.

The floods of nonsense printed in the form of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of the times, a chief obstacle to true culture.

I get fed up with all this nonsense of ringing people up and lighting cigarettes and answering the doorbell that passes for action in so many modern plays.

I love people who have such passion for complete nonsense.