“The fashion pages have always puzzled me. In my smugly ignorant view, the articles appear to be so full of fluff and nonsense as to make the astrology columns seem insightful by comparison.”

Source: A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995), Chapter 40, “Top Designs for the Busy Working Woman” (p. 173)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The fashion pages have always puzzled me. In my smugly ignorant view, the articles appear to be so full of fluff and no…" by John Allen Paulos?
John Allen Paulos photo
John Allen Paulos 48
American mathematician 1945

Related quotes

Clint Eastwood photo

“In recent times it just seems that women have been relegated to either romantic roles or fluff pieces. So the appeal, for me, is to make a picture about a real woman.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Maher, Kevin, " Clint Eastwood the bashful legend: somebody stop me http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article5137911.ece," Times Online, (2008-11-13).

John Allen Paulos photo

“Any bit of nonsense can be computerized—astrology, biorhythms, the I Ching—but that doesn’t make the nonsense any more valid.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (p. 68)

R. A. Lafferty photo

“It succeeded in so twisted a fashion that the Devil himself was puzzled as to whether he had gained or lost ground by it. And he isn't easily puzzled.”

Source: Fourth Mansions (1969), Ch. 4
Context: "There was a later time when sincere men tried to build an organization as wide as the world to secure the peace of the world. It had been tried before and it had failed before. Perhaps if it failed this time it would not be tried again for a very long while. The idea of the thing was attacked by good and bad men, in good faith and bad. The final realization of it was so close that it could be touched with the fingertips. A gambler wouldn't have given odds on it either way. It teetered, and it almost seemed as though it would succeed. Then members of that group interfered."
"And it failed, O'Claire?"
"No. It succeeded, Foley, as in the other case. It succeeded in so twisted a fashion that the Devil himself was puzzled as to whether he had gained or lost ground by it. And he isn't easily puzzled."

Gary Zukav photo
Stephen Fry photo

“All the cold-reading clairvoyants and the nonsensical astrologers and absurd ESP merchants and other such people who talk about vibrations and energies…. God, if there’s a word that drives me mad it’s “energy” used in a nonsensical way—don’t get me started!”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

" Last Chance to Think http://www.csicop.org/si/show/stephen_fry--last_chance_to_think/" Interview (2010) by Kylie Sturgess in Skeptical Inquirer. Vol 34 (1)
2000s

George Mason photo

“I begin to grow heartily tired of the etiquette and nonsense so fashionable in this city.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Letter to his son, George Mason, V (27 May 1787)

Jared Diamond photo
Bertolt Brecht photo

“Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books?”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

A response to the Nazi book burnings, in "To Posterity" (1939) as translated by H. R. Hays (1947)
Context: Do not treat me in this fashion. Don't leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!

Related topics