“There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.”

— Bertrand Russell

Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

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Bertrand Russell 562

logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

Laurie R. King book Justice Hall

Source: Justice Hall

“Cosmetic surgery processes the bodies of woman-made women, who make up the vast majority of its patient pool, into man-made women.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth

“The wealthiest have garnered the vast majority of wealth and burned the vast majority of carbon at the expense of the lives and the health of the poor.”

Laurie Zoloth (1950) American ethicist

"Interrupting Your Life: An Ethics for the Coming Storm" (2014)

“All the holy scriptures of all the world's major religions are nonsense.”

Jim Goad (1961) Author, publisher

The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks and White Trash Became America's Scapegoats (Simon & Schuster, 1997)

“That which has no existence cannot be destroyed — that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.”

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer

A Critical Examination of the Declaration of Rights
Anarchical Fallacies (1843)
Context: That which has no existence cannot be destroyed — that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate the smallest particle.

“Philosophy must be of some use and we must take it seriously; it must clear our thoughts and so our actions. Or else it is a disposition that we have to check, and an inquiry to see that this is so; i. e. the chief proposition of philosophy is that philosophy is nonsense. And again we must then take seriously that it is nonsense, and not pretend, as Wittgenstein does, that it is important nonsense!”

Frank P. Ramsey (1903–1930) British mathematician, philosopher

"Philosophy" (1929) as quoted by Nils-Eric Sahlin, The Philosophy of F. P. Ramsey (1990)

“For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life.”

James C. Collins book Good to Great

Highlighted section cited in: Lisa Marshall (2004), Speak the Truth and Point to Hope: The Leader's Journey to Maturity. p. 32
Good to Great, 2001
Context: For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.

“If I cannot say a priori what elementary propositions there are, then the attempt to do so must lead to obvious nonsense.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

5.5571
Original German: Wenn ich die Elementarsätze nicht a priori angeben kann, dann muss es zu offenbarem Unsinn führen, sie angeben zu wollen.
1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)

“War is waged by governmental action and war can be prevented only by actions of governments. This means that individuals must act as citizens and influence the behavior of governments if they are to be effective in preventing war.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

“Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious beliefs and opinions, they may with practices.”

Morrison Waite (1816–1888) American politician

Reynolds v. United States, 980 U.S. 145 (1879), upholding convictions of Mormons practicing polygamy

“There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.”

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Bertrand Russell 562

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