Quotes about nonsense (488 quotes, page 3)

“Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense.”

Georg Solti (1912–1997) Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor

Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 256-261 ISBN 0-575-04088-2

“A little nonsense now and then
Is relished by the wisest men.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

This appears to be an anonymous proverb of unknown authorship, only occasionally attributed to Addison.
Misattributed

Men

“My career was a hollow success, a tissue of fantasies on film. Cheryl loved my mother, and they were both comfortably endowed in my will. I had never before felt or believed I could be in such a dark hole mentally, physically, and worst of all spiritually. All the good in my life—my mother, my child, my work, my friends—was blotted out by the dead feeling that nothing really mattered. I hadnt heard that suicide was a cry for help. To me it meant putting a big stop to the pain and anguish. There was none of that Ill show them. Boy, they'll miss me when Im gone nonsense. I wasnt trying to hurt anyone. I was aware that everyone would go on and survive, but I knew I definitely could not. I wanted out.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

On her depression and suicide attempt, p. 158.
Autobiography

Love , Life , Pain , Feeling

“There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Darwin's Dangerous Disciple: An Interview by Frank Miele (1995)

Imagination

“It obliges one to think with a particular kind of logic and severity. If it is nonsense, it will not go into Latin…I regard it as cruelty to the young to deprive them of that insight into language…Who would have thought Thatcher would be responsible for introducing the Prussian system, of dictating from central government the content of education in the supposed interest of the state? Translation into Latin was the great stamp and mark of English classical scholarship…My fatal decision was not to be pedantic and leave it in Latin. I had written Et Tiberim multo spumantem sanguine cerno: from Virgil in the Aeneid.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

And at the last minute I said, 'I can't put that out in Latin, that's pedantic'...In Latin, it would have been lost.
Interview with Valerie Grove, The Times (6 August 1993), p. 15
1990s

Education , Thinking , Decision

“The Barnum Statements are very famous and well known about and there’s a great experiment… There’s a terrific experiment that was done on this with students. I’ve filmed this myself. We did it with three different groups of people across the world, where you have… everybody in the group is given a reading, a personality reading. Normally beforehand there’s some nonsense about asking for their birth date or getting some objects off them - so there’s some sort of process apparently involved - and they’re given a reading. And it’s a long reading, it’s a very detailed personality reading and they all get one individually, they’re all asked to read it and, invariably, they will all say afterwards that it’s very, very accurate, that it was not at all vague or ambiguous or what people might expect and they’ll give it 85, 90, 95 percent accuracy. I’ve seen this happen and people are amazed by it. And then you get them to swap with each other and say “perhaps you can identify someone else by their reading”. Then they realise they’ve all been given exactly the same thing which was written months ago before I even met them and the statements that fill those sorts of readings are generally Barnum Statements. Barnum statements are things which essentially apply to anybody – this is only part of the cold-reading skill but it’s a major part of it… PT Barnum… “something for everyone” and, famously “a sucker is born every minute””

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Other TV and web appearances, The Enemies of Reason (Richard Dawkins)

People , World , Birth , Reading

“Faced with the nonsense question 'What is the meaning of a word?' and perhaps dimly recognizing it to be nonsense, we are nevertheless not inclined to give it up.”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Source: Philosophical Papers (1979), p. 58.

Question

“There is no such thing as "natural law": this expression is nothing but old nonsense… Prior to laws, what is natural is only the strength of the lion, or the need of the creature suffering from hunger or cold, in short, need.”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

Il n’y a point de droit naturel: ce mot n'est qu’une antique niaiserie... Avant la loi il n’y a de naturel que la force du lion, ou le besoin de l’être qui a faim, qui a froid, le besoin en un mot.
Vol. II, ch. XLIV
Variant translation: There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing more than a silly anachronism … There is no such thing as right, except when there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment. Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the lion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it in one word, need.
As translated by Horace B. Samuel (1916)
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

Hunger , Law , Nature , Suffering

“We are not given any specific data or comment about the nature of the blasphemy because it is not necessary to know these things. It was very obviously a flagrant offense and one that struck at the authority and majesty of the covenant Lord… [It] was a denial of God and His covenant, a declaration that belief in God and His covenant with Israel and also His providential care are nonsense. In some form it was a challenge, with contempt and a denial of the authority of the covenant God of Israel.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Blasphemy (n. d.)

God , Nature

“What are wanted for the Indian as for the Englishman, the Frenchman, the German, and the Russian, are not Constitutions and Revolutions, nor all sorts of Conferences and Congresses, nor the many ingenious devices for submarine navigation and aerial navigation, nor powerful explosives, nor all sorts of conveniences to add to the enjoyment of the rich, ruling classes; nor new schools and universities with innumerable faculties of science, nor an augmentation of papers and books, nor gramophones and cinematographs, nor those childish and for the most part corrupt stupidities termed art — but one thing only is needful: the knowledge of the simple and clear truth which finds place in every soul that is not stupefied by religious and scientific superstitions — the truth that for our life one law is valid — the law of love, which brings the highest happiness to every individual as well as to all mankind. Free your minds from those overgrown, mountainous imbecilities which hinder your recognition of it, and at once the truth will emerge from amid the pseudo-religious nonsense that has been smothering it: the indubitable, eternal truth inherent in man, which is one and the same in all the great religions of the world. It will in due time emerge and make its way to general recognition, and the nonsense that has obscured it will disappear of itself, and with it will go the evil from which humanity now suffers.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

A Letter to a Hindu (1908)

Love , Life , Truth , Books

“Kergan Banbeck threw up his hands, turned once more to the sacerdote. “How can I halt his nonsense? How can I make him see reason?
The sacerdote reflected. “He speaks not nonsense, but rather a language you fail to understand. You can make him understand your language by erasing all knowledge and training from his mind, and replacing it with patterns of your own.””

Jack Vance book The Dragon Masters

Section 2
The Dragon Masters (1962)

Understanding , Knowledge , Training

“I had to go to the Bauhaus to the basic course that was given by Itten. And I submitted to that although I was a little older than Itten. But I have not the best memories of my studies there. So when that course was over everyone had to exhibit his work and then it was decided whether or not one could continue. I was accepted to continue. But I wanted to go into a workshop and I wanted to make stained glass. That was my old dream. Glass pictures. But Itten thought I was not ready for that. Certainly to delay my study in glass, Itten said, 'Glass painting is a branch of wall painting and you should go first to our wall painting workshop,' And I said, 'That's nonsense. Wall painting has to do with reflected light and glass painting with direct light.' So I said 'Sorry, I'll do my own stuff on my own.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

I had no money. Just a Rucksack and a hammer. And I started these assemblages. That was in 1921, But in all books on assemblages these things are not mentioned.
Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Money , Books , Dreams , Study

“Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
Auditorium monitors moved in, truncheons ready to club down anyone foolish enough to try jumping the lecture platform; and finally there was relative silence. And I heard scattered voices screaming from the back of the room, "Who? And I said, "Yes. Who!”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Recalling an address to science-fiction fans, in his Introduction to Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) by Terrance Dicks, p. vii

War , Star , Silence , Science

“President Obama repeated the grandiose nonsense that has tainted American foreign policy since World War II, the hubristic absurdity that the United States is the one indispensable nation in world affairs.”

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2012, " The State of the Union is Still a State of War http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7189"

War , World

“Faith is a vice pretending to be a virtue, its lies and errors and frothy nonsense deluding us and distracting us from action. There's no salvation in wishful thinking, only inertia. Faith is the enemy of reason. The one thing every single one of us here must be united in despising is faith. It's the barren refuge of the vacuous, the fearful, the frauds, and the obstacles to accomplishment.”

PZ Myers (1957) American scientist and associate professor of biology

Reason Rally speech, National Mall, Washington, DC,

Fear , Faith , Error , Fraud

“Another stupid party last night; perhaps if larger they might be less intolerable, but here there were only just enough to make one card-table, with six people to look on and talk nonsense to each other.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1801-05-12) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

People , Stupidity , Night

“There are so many elements flying in so many different directions that you really have to go with what feels like instinctively. The nature of the universe is fairly whimsical and nonsensical. In the most somber, beatific peacefulness there's complete chaos and maniacal laughter. I think music that doesn't reflect that is boring.”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Guitar magazine, January 1999

Peace , Music , Feeling , Nature

“The whole history of negotiation with the Soviet Union teaches us that if you do something they want without insisting on something in return, the Soviets do not regard it as a kindness to be reciprocated, but as a weakness to be exploited. There is a lot of fashionable nonsense talked about how we misunderstand Communism, misrepresent Communism, see Communists under every bed. An attempt is being made, it seems, to create an atmosphere where truth and commonsense on these matters is actively discouraged. I believe the people of this country understand better the truth of the matter than those who try to mislead them. We must work for a real relaxation of tension, but in our negotiations with the Eastern bloc we must not accept words or gestures as a substitute for genuine detente. No flood of words emanating from a summit conference will mean anything unless it is accompanied by some positive action by which the Soviet leaders show that their ingrained attitudes are really beginning to change.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Chelsea Conservative Association (26 July 1975) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102750
Leader of the Opposition

People , Truth , History , Communication

“Yes! The world would be nonsense, the whole creation an absurdity without immortality.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 357

World

“Any such inklings were like a few scattered grains of truth dissolved in an ocean of nonsense, and were anyway generally inextricably bound up with patently paranoid ravings which served only to devalue the small amounts of sense and pertinence with which they were associated.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 11 “Regarding Gravious” section VI (p. 365).

Truth , Sense

“The capacity of the human mind for swallowing nonsense and spewing it forth in violent and repressive action has never yet been plumbed.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Revolt in 2100

Revolt in 2100 (1953), postscript

“He caught a glimpse of that extraordinary faculty in man, that strange, altruistic, rare, and obstinate decency which will make writers or scientists maintain their truths at the risk of death. Eppur si muove, Galileo was to say; it moves all the same. They were to be in a position to burn him if he would go on with it, with his preposterous nonsense about the earth moving round the sun, but he was to continue with the sublime assertion because there was something which he valued more than himself. The Truth. To recognize and to acknowledge What Is. That was the thing which man could do, which his English could do, his beloved, his sleeping, his now defenceless English. They might be stupid, ferocious, unpolitical, almost hopeless. But here and there, oh so seldome, oh so rare, oh so glorious, there were those all the same who would face the rack, the executioner, and even utter extinction, in the cause of something greater than themselves. Truth, that strange thing, the jest of Pilate's. Many stupid young men had thought they were dying for it, and many would continue to die for it, perhaps for a thousand years. They did not have to be right about their truth, as Galileo was to be. It was enough that they, the few and martyred, should establish a greatness, a thing above the sum of all they ignorantly had.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Death , Men , Truth , Stupidity

“You are hurrying to the sweet place, to the nonsense chasing your spirit and in the nonsense you look for answers.”

Dejan Stojanovic book Circling: 1978-1987

“The Circle,” p. 39
Circling: 1978-1987 (1993), Sequence: “A Conversations with Atoms”

“The atrocities are, for me, the most horrible part of the accusation in this trial. They thought that I took it lightly or laughed about it or some such nonsense, in court. That is definitely a mistake. I am the type of person who is naturally against such things and my own psychological reaction is to laugh or smile in the face of adversity. Perhaps that explains my attitude in court. Besides, I was not to blame for these horrors. It's not just that I am a hard man because of my long experience in the army and in politics. It's true that I saw plenty in the First World War and during the air raids and at the front in this war. But I was always a person who felt the suffering of others. To paint me as an unfeeling ogre who laughs in court at the atrocities is stupid.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (24 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

War , Stupidity , World , Smile

“Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I nor anybody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand,—only free yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

as spoken by Peter Hovenden
"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Life , Beauty , Understanding , Success

“"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense, I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." — Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991”

Pat Robertson (1930) American media mogul, executive chairman, and a former Southern Baptist minister

“The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Adams (5 July 1814). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 397–398
1810s

Understanding , Christ

“The places I come from, we don’t deal with that kind of petty nonsense… I’m just not going to be part of this effort to divide this administration.”

Rex Tillerson (1952) 69th United States Secretary of State

Remark about the "moron" remark. As quoted in [Flegenheimer, Matt, Oct. 4 2017, ‘Petty Nonsense’ of Washington: Tillerson Joins in Thrashing the Capital, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/us/politics/tillerson-trump-moron.html, New York Times, Mar. 20 2018]

Effort , Parting

“For a decade, feminists have drilled their disciples to say, “Rape is a crime of violence but not of sex.” This sugar-coated Shirley Temple nonsense has exposed young women to disaster. Misled by feminism, they do not expect rape from the nice boys from good homes who sit next to them in class.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Rape and Modern Sex War, p. 51

Women , Sex , Home , Boy

“Anybody who picks up a guitar and tells you that there's some inner message that they're trying to convey... it's nonsense. They're not being honest. The reason they're doing this is they wanna get lots of chicks and they don't want to work for a living.”

Gene Simmons (1949) Israeli-born American rock bass guitarist, singer-songwriter, record producer, entrepreneur, and actor

What I've Learned (July 2002)

“We are full of dreams […] We long for the unattainable. We believe in the nonsense of fables. There is no pure love; there is lust and there is need.”

David Gemmell book Quest for Lost Heroes

Source: Drenai series, Quest for Lost Heroes, Ch. 12

Love , Dreams

“Edward Norman (then Dean of Peterhouse) had attempted to mount a Christian argument for nuclear weapons. The discussion moved on to 'Western values'. Mrs Thatcher said (in effect) that Norman had shown that the Bomb was necessary for the defence of our values. Powell: 'No, we do not fight for values. I would fight for this country even if it had a communist government.' Thatcher (it was just before the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands): ‘Nonsense, Enoch. If I send British troops abroad, it will be to defend our values.' 'No, Prime Minister, values exist in a transcendental realm, beyond space and time. They can neither be fought for, nor destroyed.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Mrs Thatcher looked utterly baffled. She had just been presented with the difference between Toryism and American Republicanism.
John Casey, ' The revival of Tory philosophy http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/28511/the-revival-of-tory-philosophy/', The Spectator (17 March 2007)
1980s

Time , Fight , Country

“I have twice seen Macready act; once in Macbeth and once in Othello. I astounded a dinner-party by honestly saying I did not like him. It is the fashion to rave about his splendid acting; anything more false and artificial, less genuinely impressive than his whole style, I could scarcely have imagined. The fact is, the stage-system altogether is hollow nonsense. They act farces well enough; the actors comprehend their parts and do them justice. They comprehend nothing about tragedy or Shakespeare, and it is a failure. I said so, and by so saying produced a blank silence, a mute consternation.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

Charlotte Brontë, on William Macready. Charlotte Brontë and Her Circle, (by Clement King Shorter) (1896)

Justice , Imagination , Fashion , Failure

“If I'm teaching deep things, then I view it as important to make people feel like they're learning deep things, because otherwise, they will still have a hole in their mind for "deep truths" that needs filling, and they will go off and fill their heads with complete nonsense that has been written in a more satisfying style.”

Eliezer Yudkowsky (1979) American blogger, writer, and artificial intelligence researcher

A comment on "Mind Control and Me" at LessWrong.com (March 2009) http://lesswrong.com/lw/46/mind_control_and_me/319?context=1

People , Truth , Feeling , Learning

“It is perhaps worth while saying that semantics as conceived in this paper (and in former papers of the author) is a sober and modest discipline which has no pretensions to being a universal patent-medicine for all the ills and diseases of mankind, whether imaginary or real. You will not find in semantics any remedy for decayed teeth or illusions of grandeur or class conflicts. Nor is semantics a device for establishing that everyone except the speaker and his friends is speaking nonsense.”

Alfred Tarski (1901–1983) Polish-American logician

Source: The Semantic Conception of Truth (1952), p. 17; as cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 90.

Disease , Universe

“You have no business to be an unbeliever. You ought to stand for all the things these stupid people call superstitions. Come now, don't you think there's a lot in those old wives' tales about luck and charms and so on, silver bullets included? What do you say about them as a Catholic?'
'I say I'm an agnostic,' replied Father Brown, smiling.
'Nonsense,' said Aylmer impatiently. 'It's your business to believe things.'
'Well, I do believe some things, of course,' conceded Father Brown; 'and therefore, of course, I don't believe other things.'.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Dagger with Wings (1926)

People , Stupidity , Smile , Business

“That is just total nonsense and anybody who believes that is an idiot or a liar. The race issue was a fundamental problem. It was just a cancer on American society from day one.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Regarding claims that the American Civil War was not about slavery; "After Words with Bruce Bartlett" http://www.c-span.org/video/?204475-1/words-bruce-bartlett (7 April 2008), C-SPAN
2000s

Problem

“This view that the action of the Federal Reserve authorities in 1927 was responsible for the speculation and collapse which followed has never been seriously shaken. There are reasons why it is attractive. It is simple, and it exonerates both the American people and the economic system from substantial blame… Yet the explanation obviously assumes that people will always speculate if only they can get the money to finance it. Nothing could be farther from the case. There were times before and there has been long periods since when credit was plentiful and cheap -- far cheaper than in 1927-29 -- and when speculation was negligible. Nor was speculation out of control after 1927, except that it was beyond the reach of men who did not want in the least to control it. The explanation is a tribute only to a recurrent preference, in economic matters, for formidable nonsense.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, "Vision and Boundless Hope and Optimism" p. 10

Men , Money , People , Time

“The founding fathers were not interested in democracy, in fact, in a country with 3 1/4 million people, which is about what we were at the time of the separation from England, only 700,000 people could vote — white males of property. So it's never been terribly democratic. …and they put together a constitution which would protect property for all time. No nonsense about democracy!”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2010s, "Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia" (2013)

People , Democracy , Time , Country

“The state of health is a state of nonsensation, even of nonreality. As soon as we cease to suffer, we cease to exist.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Health , Suffering

“To enjoy life, you don't need fancy nonsense, but you do need to control your time and realize that most things just aren't as serious as you make them out to be.”

Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

Life , Time

“People that make up stuff and call it truth have the power to imagine all kinds of nonsense. But that’s what it is all about. It really is make believe, and it took me the longest time to figure that out. I thought, honestly, naively, even into middle age. I was in my 30s before I realised there were some people who do not believe what they do for a reason.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

People , Truth , Age , Imagination

“Yet the greater part of it, I shall show, is nonsense, tricked out with a variety of metaphysical conceits, and its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.”

Peter Medawar (1915–1987) scientist

1960s, Review of Teilhard de Chardin's "The Phenomenon of Man", 1961

Pain , Parting

“The idea of a ‘system approach’ is both quite popular and quite unpopular. It’s popular because it sounds good to say that the whole system is being considered, but it’s quite unpopular because it sounds either like a lot of nonsense or else downright dangerous – so much evil can be created under the guise of serving the whole.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach (1968), p. 11

Idea , Evil

“I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! … So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none! … I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, “Well, it might be true.” For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there’s a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that’s all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there’s no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn’t eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn’t produce anything.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

interview published in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1988) edited by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown, p. 193-194

Way , Feeling , Mathematics , Idea

“I believe people can solve complex problems eventually. By repeated trial and error they will get there; but they need a long time. At this point I agree with Herbert Simon. People do not learn immediately, as those rational expectations models seem to imply. I don't believe that.
The statement that assumptions do not matter is nonsense. It is funny. Yes, I assume people are consistent in their behavior. I assume that not because I believe everybody actually is, but because I believe, on the average, you do not get too far from it.”

Franco Modigliani (1918–2003) Italian-American economist

Conversations with Economists (1983)

People , Behavior , Error , Problem

“[Kenneth Patchen] has a real, but disorganized, self-indulgent, but rather commonplace talent.
This is not Mr. Patchen’s opinion of himself. (Nor is it that of William Carlos Williams, who almost invents a new language, a kind of system of emotional nonsense syllables, in his effort to praise Mr. Patchen properly. For instance, Mr. Patchen is “a hawk on the grave of John Donne.” I should have called him a parrot on the stones of half a cemetery.)”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Poetry in a Dry Season”, p. 35
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)

Effort

“While the easiest way in metaphysics is to condemn all metaphysics as nonsense, the easiest way in morals is to elevate the common practice of the community into a moral absolute.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), Ch. 3, The Physiology of Thought and Morals, Introduction, p. 111.

Way , Communication

“The public be damned. What does the public care for railroads except to get as much out of them for as small a consideration as possible? I don't take any stock in this silly nonsense about working for anybody's good but our own, because we are not. When we make a move, we do it because it is in our interest to do so, and not because we expect to do somebody else good. Of course, we like to do everything possible for the benefit of humanity in general, but when we do, we first see that we are benefiting ourselves. Railroads are not run on sentiment, but on business principles and to pay, and I don't mean to be egotistic when I say that the roads which I have had anything to do with have generally paid pretty well.”

William Henry Vanderbilt (1821–1885) American philanthropist

Quoted in Clarence P. Dresser, "Vanderbilt in the West" New York Times (9 October 1882). Dresser's account has Vanderbilt denying that he ran a particular passenger express service for the public benefit, but rather to drive down prices of a competing Pennsylvania Railroad service. By some accounts Dresser fabricated the interview except for the first sentence, which Vanderbilt said in refusing to give an interview. See "Reporter C. P. Dresser Dead", New York Times (25 April 1891).
Disputed

Business

“Today, the Israelis tightened the noose on the mass media in northern occupied Palestine and occupied Palestine. No one can report any news or broadcast any footage. [News reports] are subject to the Israeli censorship which permits and disseminates them. Even you at Al-Jazeera Channel were subjected to arrests, interrogation, restricted activities, and the like. Why do the Israelis resort to concealing the truth on the other side? Why? Do they do that only because they accuse the media outlets of setting the coordinates? This is nonsense. We have the coordinates of these Israeli settlements and military positions in the north, centre, or in any part of occupied Palestine. We do not need anybody to give us information, images, or the like. In that case, they want to conceal the true scene of the war on the other side because it will have definite impact on the Israeli street and media and the morale of the Israelis.”

Hassan Nasrallah (1960) Secretary General of Hezbollah

Hassan Nasrallah, Al-Jazeera interviews Hezbollah chief http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=AL-20060722&articleId=2790 Al-Jazeera 20 July 2006
Quote, 2006

War , Truth , Parting

“The right hon. gentleman is like the Bourbons. He has learned nothing. He comes back to this new House of Commons with the same airy graces – the same subtle dialectics – and the same light and frivolous way of dealing with great questions. He little knows the temper of the new House of Commons if he thinks those methods will prevail here. The right hon. gentleman has…asked certain questions which he seemed to think were posers. …I have no direct answer to give to them. They are utterly futile, nonsensical and misleading. They are invented by the right hon. gentleman for the purpose of occupying time in this debate. I say, enough of this foolery.”

Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

… Move your amendments and let us get to business.
Speech in the House of Commons answering Conservative leader Arthur Balfour (12 March 1906), quoted in John Wilson, C.B.: A Life of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (London: Constable, 1973), p. 497
Prime Minister

Way , Question , Business , Thinking

“A recurring theme in western journalism, academia, and collectivist politics is the quaint notion that firearms are intrinsically evil. That is, that they have a will of their own, that somehow inspires their owners to murder and mayhem. I liken this nonsensical belief to voodoo.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Source: Tools For Survival (2009), p. 149

Evil

“Reporter: The “Protocols” trial is on today. I’ve been assigned to report on it for my paper.
Reporter 2: What’s your hurry Carl? The Jewish community’s lawyer is trying to show the damage done by the “Protocols of Zion” book.
Lawyer: Your honor, we have demonstrated that the “Protocols” is ‘’’smut…’’’ I would conclude by exhibiting evidence of its influence on public opinion as a fraud.
Judge: You may proceed!
Lawyer: Since its first publication in Russia by Dr. Nilus in 1905, four printings have been distributed there!
In 1919, type script copies were distributed to delegated at the Versailles peace conference by white Russians.
In England Victor Marsden translated the “protocols” into English in 1922.
In 1920, the first polish language edition was brought into the United States and South America by Polish immigrants.
In 1921, the first Arabic and the first Italian copies appeared!
In 1921, “The Times” of London published its famous expose of this false document!
And because of his fame, Henry Ford’s work deserves recounting.
Lawyer: In 1920, Henry ford the American auto magnate, bought a small newspaper, the “Dearborn Independent.” He began a series, “The International Jew,” made up of borrowings from the “Protocols of the Elders on Zion.”
Later, in 1922, it was published in sxteen language for a world-wide distribution. It sold over a ‘’’half million’’’ copies in America alone!
Reporter: Actually, Ford recanted in 1926 when he was threatened with a libel suit.

Reporter 2: Really?
Reporter 3: What did he say?
Reporter: He said in part, “…To my great regret I learn that in the ‘Dearborn Independent’ there appeared articles which induced the Jews to regard me as their enemy promoting anti-Semitism!”
HE WENT ON TO SAY, “…I am…mortified that this Journal…is giving currency to ‘The Protocols of the wise men of Zion,’ which I learn to be gross forgeries…I deem it my duty…to make amends for the wrong done to the Jews as fellow men and brothers by asking their forgiveness.
HE GOES ON BY RECITING SOME OF THE MORE “evil ingredients” in the “Protocols” AND HE REFERS TO IT AS AN “infamous forgery.”
Reporter 3: DID HIS APOLOGY CHANGE ANYTHING?? HENRY FORD WAS FAMOUS the world over…his apology must have had influence!
Reporter: Not very much. In fact publication increased all over the globe.
Reporter 3: Look! Here I have two French translations of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that were published in ‘’’France,’’’ dated 1934. Later they had many printings!
Judge: …I hope to see the day when nobody will be able to understand why otherwise sane and reasonable men should torment their brains for fourteen days over the authenticity or fabrication of the “Protocols of Zion”’’’…I regard the “protocols” as ridiculous nonsense!
Reporter: Good news! …judge Meyer found against the Nazis and imposed a fine on them…

Publisher: We will publish the judge’s decision!
Reporter: This should put an end to the “Protocols” at last!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 102-107

Men , Books , World , Peace

“The little folk dare anything", said his friend. "And they talk a lot of nonsense. But they talks an awful lot of sense, as well. You listen to 'em at your peril, and you ignore 'em at your peril, too.”

Neil Gaiman book Stardust

Stardust (1999)

Sense

“Actually I despise royalty. I always have done. It's fairy story nonsense. The very idea of their existence in these days when people are dying daily because they don't have enough money to operate one's radiator in the house, to me is immoral. As far as I can see, money spent on royalty is money burnt. I've never met anyone who supports royalty, and believe me I've searched. Okay, so there's some deaf and elderly pensioner in Hartlepool who has pictures of Prince Edward pinned on the toilet seat, but I know streams of people who can't wait to get rid of them. It's a false devotion anyway. I think it's fascist and very, very cruel. To me there's something dramatically ugly about a person who can wear a dress for £6,000 when at the same time there are people who can't afford to eat. When she puts on that dress for £6,000 the statement she is making to the nation is: "I am the fantastically gifted royalty, and you are the snivelling peasants."”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

The very idea that people would be interested in the facts about this dress is massively insulting to the human race.
from "This Charming Man", interview by Simon Garfield, Timeout March 1985
In interviews etc., About politics and society

Money , People , Search , Idea

“I heard the comments of the crowd in front of the painting of 'Burial at Ornans', I had the courage to read the nonsense that was printed regarding this picture and I wrote this article.. [in Le Messager de l'Assemblée]”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote from an article in 'Le Messager de l'Assemblée' (25th & 26th February 1851); as cited in 'Posterity', Musée-dOrsay http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/courbet-dossier/biography.html
1840s - 1850s

Courage , Reading , Painting

“When it was clear that I was leaving Ajax [in 1973], I was sent all kinds of poisonous messages and lots more of that kind of nonsense. But the worst thing for me was that Ajax gave my mother, who had always done her best for the club, an inferior seat in the stadium. Behind a pole. That absolutely crushed me.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

reported in Johan Cruyff (2016). My Turn: The Autobiography.

“Put in a nut-shell, my thesis amounts to this. The repeated attempts made by Rudolf Carnap to show that the demarcation between science and metaphysics coincides with that between sense and nonsense have failed. The reason is that the positivistic concept of 'meaning' or 'sense' (or of verifiability, or of inductive confirmability, etc.) is inappropriate for achieving this demarcation — simply because metaphysics need not be meaningless even though it is not science. In all its variations demarcation by meaninglessness has tended to be at the same time too narrow and too wide: as against all intentions and all claims, it has tended to exclude scientific theories as meaningless, while failing to exclude even that part of metaphysics which is known as 'rational theology'.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Ch 11. "The Demarcation between Science and Metaphysics." (Summary, p. 253)
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)

Sense , Science , Time , Parting

“The reason for getting an education here—or anywhere else—is that it is better to be educated than not to be. It is better in and of itself. Not because it gets you something. Not because it is a means to some other end. It is better because it is better. Note that this statement implies that the phrase “aims of education” is nonsensical; education is not a thing of which aims can be predicated. It has no aim other than itself.”

Andrew Abbott (1948) American sociologist and Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago.

Abott (2002) “Welcome to the University of Chicago http://www.ditext.com/abbott/abbott_aims.html Aims of Education Address. 2002

Education

“I should say today that it's tragic that people lose faith in what was once an honourable profession but people will lose faith in journalists. There's nothing one can do about it. People no longer trust journalists - we'll have to turn to politics instead for our belief in people. I almost mean that. Although, of course, anybody can talk about snouts in troughs and go on about it, for journalists to do so is almost beyond belief. Beyond belief. I know lots of journalists - I know more journalists than I know politicians - and I've never met a more venal and disgusting crowd of people when it comes to expenses and allowances… Not all [of them] but then not all human beings are either. I've cheated expenses. I've fiddled things. You have, of course you have. Let's not confuse what politicians get really wrong - things like wars, things where people die - with the rather tedious bourgeois obsession with whether or not they've charged for their wisteria. It's not that important, it really isn't. It isn't what we're fighting for. It isn't what voting is for and the idea that 'Oh, we've all lost faith in politics' [is] nonsense. It's a journalistic made-up frenzy. I know you don't want me to say that. You want me to say "No, it matters, it's important." It isn't it. Believe me, it isn't. It's not the big deal; it's not what we should be worrying about. I know no one's going to pay any attention and newspapers will great joy over filling yards and yards of newsprint with tiny, pointless details of this politician's or that politician's squalid and sad little life as they see it. It's not the big picture, it really isn't. You know, we get the politicians we deserve, it's our fault as much as anybody else's. This has been going on for years and suddenly because a journalist discovers it it's the biggest story ever! It's absolute nonsense, it really is.”

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

On the expenses scandal in the UK.
On Newsnight on the BBC Website http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8045869.stm
2000s

Life , War , People , Sadness

“a million blockheads looking authoritatively into one man of what you call genius, or noble sense, will make nothing but nonsense out of him and his qualities, and his virtues and defects, if they look till the end of time. He understands them, sees what they are; but that they should understand him, and see with rounded outline what his limits are,—this, which would mean that they are bigger than he, is forever denied them. Their one good understanding of him is that they at last should loyally say, "We do not quite understand thee; we perceive thee to be nobler and wiser and bigger than we, and will loyally follow thee."”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The New Downing Street (April 15, 1850)

Understanding , Sense , Time

“The "divine" in man: creative bliss, the experience of perfection, the surprising joys of love all human, not divine. …It is time that God was put in his place, that is, in man, and no nonsense about it. But, to prevent misunderstanding, instead of speaking of the "divine" in man I will call it the human sense of perfection or unity. …Need I add that we may retain the Sermon on the Mount, Saint Paul's poem to charity, and much else, though we discard the Christian God?”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

The Universe of Experience: A Worldview Beyond Science and Religion (1974)

Love , God , Sense , Time

“Catholic priests know where the shoe pinches. But their day is done, and they know it. They are far too intelligent not to see that, and to enter upon a hopeless battle. But if they do, I shall certainly not make martyrs of them. We shall brand them as ordinary criminals. I shall tear the mask of honesty from their faces. And if that is not enough, I shall make them appear ridiculous and contemptible. I shall order films to be made about them. We shall show the history of the monks on the cinema. Let the whole mass of nonsense, selfishness, repression and deceit be revealed: how they drained the money out of the country, how they haggled with the Jews for the world, how they committed incest.”

Hermann Rauschning (1887–1982) German politician

Source: The Voice of Destruction (1940), pp. 52-53

Money , World , Shoe , History

“A careless song, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Letter to Sir Horace Mann (1774); this is derived from an proverb of unknown authorship: "A little nonsense now and then / Is relished by the wisest men".

“I lived a very isolated life. When you start at 20, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system.”

Edie Sedgwick (1943–1971) Socialite, actress, model

Edie : Girl On Fire (2006)

Life

“The Entertainment Industry on Planet Earth had decided that in order to acquire Layer 7 Data Security, it was necessary to lock up layers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 so that no technological progress could occur without their permission. This was known by the IT Industry and the Consumer Electronics Industry on the planet to be offensive nonsense, but there was no counterweight to it, and there was no organised consumer dissent sufficient to require them to stand up for technical merit and their own right to run their own businesses without dictation from companies a tenth their size. Not surprisingly, since it is part of the role we play in this political power concentrated in poverty, humility, and sanctity, we brought them to a consensus they were unable to bring themselves to - which is represented in the license by a rule which fundamentally says "If you want to experiment with locking down layer below 7 in the pursuit of data networks inside businesses that keep the business's data at home, you may do so freely, we have no objection - not only do we have no objection to you doing it, we've no objection to your using our parts to do it with. But when you use our parts to build machines which control peoples' daily lives - which provide them with education and culture, build devices which are modifiable by them to the same extent that they're modifiable by you. That's all we want. If you can modify the device after you give it to them, then they must be able to modify the device after you give it to them - that's a price for using our parts. That's a deal which has been accepted.”

Eben Moglen (1959) American law professor and free software advocate

Talk titled The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3, Edinburgh, Scotland, June 26, 2007 http://www.archive.org/details/EbenMoglenLectureEdinburghJune2007text.

People , Education , Home , Business

“In eight simple ways, my Bill seeks to provide a framework for giving pensioners a decent living standard. First, it would fix old-age pensions for couples at half average industrial earnings, and for single people it would be a third…Secondly, my Bill would require central Government to appoint a Minister responsible for the co-ordination of policy on pensioners. Thirdly, it would require local authorities to produce a comprehensive annual report about their policies on pensioners and on the conditions of pensioners in their communities. Fourthly, every health authority would also be asked to do that. Fifthly, the present anomalous system means that in some parts of the country where there are foresighted Labour local authorities there are concessionary transport schemes — free bus passes. They do not exist in some parts of Britain and the Bill would make them a national responsibility and they would be paid for nationally…My sixth point is one of the most important. It is about the introduction of a flat-rate winter heating allowance instead of the nonsensical system of waiting for the cold to run from Monday to Sunday, and then if it is sufficiently cold a rebate is paid in arrears. Last winter that resulted in many old people living in homes that were too cold because they could not afford to heat them. If they did get any aid, it was far too late. My seventh point concerns the abolition of standing charges on gas, electricity and telephones for elderly people. They are paying about £250 million a year towards the profits of the gas industry and those profits will be about £1.5 billion. Standing charges should be cancelled, unit prices maintained and the cost of the standing charge should be taken from the profits of the gas board or the electricity board — if it ends up being privatised. They could well afford to pay for that rather than forcing old people to live in cold and misery throughout the winter. Finally, the Bill would prohibit the cutting off of gas and electricity in any pensioner household.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/dec/01/elimination-of-poverty-in-old-age-etc in the House of Commons (1 December 1987).
1980s

People , Health , Age , Way

“As for drugs, my impression is that their effect was almost completely negative, simply removing people from meaningful struggle and engagement. Just the other day I was sitting in a radio studio waiting for a satellite arrangement abroad to be set up. The engineers were putting together interviews with Bob Dylan from about 1966-7 or so (judging by the references), and I was listening (I'd never heard him talk before — if you can call that talking). He sounded as though he was so drugged he was barely coherent, but the message got through clearly enough through the haze. He said over and over that he'd been through all of this protest thing, realized it was nonsense, and that the only thing that was important was to live his own life happily and freely, not to "mess around with other people's lives" by working for civil and human rights, ending war and poverty, etc. He was asked what he thought about the Berkeley "free speech movement" and said that he didn't understand it. He said something like: "I have free speech, I can do what I want, so it has nothing to do with me. Period."”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

If the capitalist PR machine [term used in the question] wanted to invent someone for their purposes, they couldn't have made a better choice.
Reply (via email) to Douglas Lain, June 1994 https://web.archive.org/web/20021214024709/http://www.douglaslain.com/diet-soap.html
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994

Life , War , People , Understanding

“That is not the dream. That is a perversion of the dream. We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights. Equal rights. Justice. Equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice, but equal justice. We are the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it. They're perverting it, and they're doing it intentionally. And they're selling us a line of global nonsense.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2010s, 2010

People , Justice , Dreams

“…the argument is that by bombing at a time when most of the atrocities were attributed to the KLA guerrillas, with the anticipation that the bombing would lead to far worse atrocities, NATO was preventing atrocities. The fact that this is the strongest argument that can be contrived by serious analysts, and I stress serious because there's plenty of nonsense, that tells us a good deal about the decision to bomb, particularly when we recall that there apparently were diplomatic options.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2005, Illegal but Legitimate: A Dubious Doctrine for the Times, 2004

Decision , Time

“And today many artists like myself refuse to be involved in some ideas. In painting – for me – no fooling-the-eye, no window-hole-in-the wall, no illusions, no representations, no associations, no distortions, no paint-caricaturing, no dream pictures of dripping, no delirium trimmings, no sadism or slashing, no therapy, no kicking-the-effigy, no clowning, no acrobatics, no heroics, no self-pity, no guilt.... no abstraction of everything, no nonsense, no involvements, no confusing painting with everything that is no painting.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

1940 - 1955
Source: Contemporary American Painting, University of Illinois, Urbana 1952, p. 226-227

Dreams , Fools , Idea , Painting

“They've gotta stop reporting wind chill. That's nonsense. It really is. I don't know where they came up with it, why they came up with it, but it's a lie. They come on, "Well, it's 27 degrees today, but with the wind chill, it's minus 3." … WELL, THEN IT'S MINUS 3, ASSHOLE! I don't need to know what the weather was like if the conditions were perfect!”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Rules of Enragement (2003)

Lie , Perfection , Weather

“You cannot spend your way out of a recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we are well placed to weather the storm, I have to tell you, you sound like a Brezhnev era apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it's nonsense. Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so. The European Commission has said so. The markets have said so, which is why our currency has devalued by thirty percent. And soon, the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

Speech to Gordon Brown in the European Parliament, 24 March 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs
2000s

Way , Chance , Time , Weather

“Entering through the double doors, I had to make my way through room after room of African masks and voodoo dolls dating from no particular time, as well as clay pots and things crafted by all sorts of third-world people. I'm happy for these people that they have their ways, though some of it gave me the creeps. But I want to know: why is all this primitive nonsense in a prestigious museum? Even more absurdly, why does it take up the first three rooms in a place that surely lacks sufficient space for exhibits? Clearly the nutty multiculturalists had prevailed here.”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: Letter From New England, archive.lewrockwell.com, 2016-05-22 http://archive.lewrockwell.com/orig/tucker5.html,

People , World , Way , Time

““Is all this serious?” Gurgeh said, turning, amused, from the screen to the drone.
“Deadly serious,” Flere-Imsaho told him.
Gurgeh laughed and shook his head. He thought the common people must be remarkably stupid if they believed all this nonsense.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 2 (p. 225).

People , Stupidity

“What is the secret of the opposition and slander that is being raised up against me and against all who, like me, are Bible students? It is malice, hatred, envy, strife, on the part of those who are still hugging the nonsense of the Dark Ages and neglecting true Bible study. They see that their influence is waning. But they have not yet awakened to the true situation. They think that I am responsible for their smaller congregations and small collections. But not so. The real difficulty for them is that the people are becoming more intelligent and can no longer be driven with the crack of a merely man-made whip of fear.”

Charles Taze Russell (1852–1916) Founder of the Bible Student Movement

The Watch Tower (October 15, 1914), p. 287.

People , Secret , Age , Fear

“First, weaken the black family, but don't blame it on individual choices. You have to preach that today's weak black family is a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and racism. The truth is that black female-headed households were just 18 percent of households in 1950, as opposed to about 68 percent today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940, the black marriage rate was slightly higher than that of whites… In New York City, in 1925, 85 percent of black households were two-parent households… Disgustingly, black politicians, civil rights leaders, liberals and the president are talking nonsense about "having a conversation about race." That's beyond useless. Tell me how a conversation with white people is going to stop black predators from preying on blacks. How is such a conversation going to eliminate the 75 percent illegitimacy rate? What will such a conversation do about the breakdown of the black family… Only black people can solve our problems.”

Walter E. Williams (1936) American economist, commentator, and academic

"A case of black self-sabatoge" (31 July 2013)
2010s

Marriage , People , Truth , Family

“One cannot help but be struck by the diversity that characterizes efforts to study the management process. If it is true that psychologists like to study personality traits in terms of a person's reactions to objects and events, they could not choose a better stimulus than management science. Some feel it is a technique, some feel it is a branch of mathematics, or of mathematical economics, or of the "behavioral sciences," or of consultation services, or just so much nonsense. Some feel it is for management (vs. labor), some feel it ought to be for the good of mankind — or for the good of underpaid professors.
But this diversity of attitude, which is really characteristic of all fields of endeavor, is matched by another and more serious kind of diversity. In the management sciences, we have become used to talking about game theory, inventory theory, waiting line theory. What we mean by "theory" in this context is that if certain assumptions are valid, then such-and-such conclusions follow. Thus inventory theory is not a set of statements that predict how inventories will behave, or even how they should behave in actual situations, but is rather a deductive system which becomes useful if the assumptions happen to hold. The diversity of attitude on this point is reflected in two opposing points of view: that the important problems of management science are theoretical, and that the important problems are factual.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

quote in: Fremont A. Shull (ed.), Selected readings in management https://archive.org/stream/selectedreadings00shul#page/n13/mode/2up, , 1957. p. 7-8
1940s - 1950s, "Management Science — Fact or Theory?" 1956

Behavior , Feeling , Game , Mathematics

“There's nobody in the world I'd sooner oblige than you and this young gentleman here. But the whole thing's nonsense, and conventionality, and popular thick-headedness. There's absolutely nothing to fight about, from beginning to end. And anyhow I'm not going to, so that settles it!”

Kenneth Grahame book The Reluctant Dragon

The dragon to St. George.
Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon

World , Fight

“He was just Ron and I kinda liked him, mostly because he wrote well, and I never felt he took all that Scientology nonsense seriously but knew how to make a good buck, and he liked me, and… well, he was a friend who died.”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

Introduction to Angry Candy (1988)

“In following Seth's dream recall instructions, we found ourselves collecting some excellent examples of precognitive dreams. Some were clear-cut and almost exactly matched the foreseen future event. Others were partially disguised in symbolism. Still others were so interwoven with other dream material that we marked them as indicative of precognition and let it go at that. Sometimes dreams that seemed nonsense contained one clear, important image that shortly -- within a few days -- would appear in a different context entirely. In several cases, two or more future events would be condensed into one dream.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 249

Dreams , Appearance , Future

“For Linnaeus, Homo sapiens was both special and not special. […] Special and not special have come to mean nonbiological and biological, or nurture and nature. These later polarizations are nonsensical. Humans are animals and everything we do lies within our biological potential. […] [T]he statement that humans are animals does not imply that our specific patterns of behavior and social arrangements are in any way directly determined by our genes. Potentiality and determination are different concepts.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Ever Since Darwin

"Biological Potentiality vs. Biological Determinism", p. 251
Ever Since Darwin (1977)

Way , Behavior , Nature , Animals

“The equilibrium price level is determined at the point where the money market is in equilibrium. The temporary suspension of Walras' Law, far from making economic nonsense, thus appears as the crucial "trick" by which the tatonnement process is decomposed in two parts.
This analysis confirms that for a neoclassical general equilibrium system with neutral money there is indeed a consistent decomposition procedure, based on appropriate compensation principles, permitting the determination of real variables in the real sector while the price level is determined in the monetary sector. However, the amount of intellectual effort which, in the wake of Lange and Patinkin, was devoted to this issue, is entirely out of proportion to its economic significance. The real economic question is not whether a system can be dichotomized, but whether money is neutral.”

Jürg Niehans (1919–2007) Swiss economist

Source: The theory of money, 1978, p. 12

Money , Law , Question , Effort

“It's all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can't possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two Centuries haven't got a Common Denominator. They have. It's Human Nature.”

Frederick Rolfe (1860–1913) British writer, photographer and historian

Don Tarquinio (1905; repr. London: Chatto and Windus, 1941), Prologue, p. x

Nature

“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)

Fashion

“First then, we find that when we regard ideas from a nominalistic, individualistic, sensualistic way, the simplest facts of mind become utterly meaningless. That one idea should resemble another or influence another, or that one state of mind should so much as be thought of in another is, from that standpoint, sheer nonsense.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Law of Mind (1892)

Way , Idea

“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.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

p. 129 http://books.google.com/books?id=KsI3sswEg14C&pg=PA129&dq=%22if+every+trace+of+any+single+religion%22
2010s, God, No!: Signs You May Already Be an Atheist and Other Magical Tales (2011)

Religion , Way , Science

“I have transcended that phase in my intellectual growth where I discover humour in simple freakishness. What exists is real; therefore it is tragic, since wherever lives must die. Only fantasy, the vapours rising from sheer nonsense, can now excite my laughter.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 5, section 3 (p. 430)

Laughter

“Their minds befogged by fashionable nonsense about globalisation, western leaders believe liberal democracy is spreading unstoppably. The reality is continuing political diversity. Republics, empires, liberal and illiberal democracies, and a wide variety of authoritarian regimes will be with us for the foreseeable future. Globalisation is nothing more than the industrialisation of the planet, and increasing resource nationalism is an integral part of the process. (So is accelerating climate change, but that's another story.) As industrialisation spreads, countries that control natural resources use these resources to advance their strategic objectives.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

"Folly of the progressive fairytale," http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/09/russia The Observer (2008-09-08)

Democracy , Fashion , Nature , Reality

“As for negative numbers… most mathematicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not accept them… In the fifteenth century Nicolas Chuquet and, in the sixteenth, Stifel both spoke of negative numbers as absurd numbers. …Descartes accepted them, in part. …he had shown that, given an equation, one can obtain another whose roots are larger than the original one by any given quantity. Thus an equation with negative roots could be transformed into one with positive roots. Since we can turn false roots into real roots, Descartes was willing to accept negative numbers. Pascal regarded the subtraction of 4 from zero as utter nonsense.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 252.

Parting , Falseness

“I started out like most people just finding my local martial arts gym … and it's quite easy to start thinking that whatever you're in is the best thing that you can do, so … I assumed that Taekwondo is the best. … I started thinking, “Well, maybe there's something else that the other arts have offer,” so I started cross-training. Anyway, that got me into competing in mixed martial arts. So, I thought my diet was pretty good … and it was until I got injured … that I actually had some time to sit back and really analyze what I was eating, and I realized I hadn't applied the same scrutiny to my diet as I had to the martial arts training. So I saw a parallel there, that in martial arts there's a lot of nonsense out there, people teaching stuff that really doesn't work, and I'd realized that and started finding the truth in martial arts, and basically I realized I hadn't found the truth in nutrition, so last year I spent over 1,000 hours looking at peer reviewed medical science and realized that a plant-based diet is superior and optimal for health and athletic performance.”

James Wilks (1978) English martial artist

Speech at the Healthy Lifestyle Expo, in Woodland Hills, California (October 12-15, 2012). Video in “MMA Ultimate Fighter - James "Lighting" Wilks - Is Vegan”, in VegSource.com http://www.vegsource.com/news/2012/12/mma-ultimate-fighter---james-lighting-wilks---is-vegan-video.html.

People , Health , Truth , Art

“[After describing a hopper for feeding winter game:] If you think you're too old to enjoy building such contraptions — that only Boy Scouts get a kick out of such nonsense — just try it. You may end up by building several.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

radio talk http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&id=AldoLeopold.ALYale&entity=AldoLeopold.ALYale.p0535&isize=XL "Feed Early to Keep Game at Home", 2 November 1933.
1930s

Game , Boy , Thinking , Winter

“In almost every edition (and consequently most performances) of Chopin's Sonata in B flat Minor, Op. 35, there is a serious error that makes awkward nonsense of an important moment in the first movement. The repeat of the exposition begins in the wrong place.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Romantic Generation (1995), Ch. 5 : Chopin: Counterpoint and the Narrative Forms

Error

“To suggest that the global market-place of the twenty first century there will be no role for the state and the public sector is clearly nonsense.”

Bob Rae (1948) Canadian politician

Source: The Three Questions - Prosperity and the Public Good (1998), Chapter Four, Self-Interest and the Public Interest: Taxes, Debts, and Deficits, p. 64

“When marine officers called on me at Palma, they remarked on the clean roads, the punctual trams and so on. 'Why', they exclaimed, 'business as usual - and you say there's killing going on? what nonsense!' They didn't realise that any tradesman who closed down, closed down at his peril. They didn't know that the relatives of the executed were not allowed to go into mourning. How can you expect the outside appearance of a town to be affected, just because the staff of its prisons is double, treble, ten times, a hundred times what it was? The discreet slaughter of fifteen or twenty wretched people per day, will not prevent tramways from running to schedule, cafés from being full, or churches resounding with the Te Deum.”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.98

People , Business , Appearance , Time

“That was what drew him to mathematics. Not because it was rarefied, but because it probed to the subtle, deeper reality. People said that mathematicians were unworldly, and yammered on about how Einstein couldn’t make correct change. Nonsense. Einstein just didn’t give a damn. It was the subtle, the beautiful that concerned him.”

Gregory Benford Artifact

Part 2, Chapter 6 (p. 76)
Artifact (1985)

People , Beauty , Mathematics , Reality

“It becoming ever more clear that the combination of racial gaps in IQ and the IQ taboo acts as a black hole that sucks all the intelligence out of an institution. Racial gaps in achievement are the overwhelmingly dominant fact driving school performance, for instance, but nobody is allowed to mention the IQ gap among the races, so misbegotten nonsense rushes in.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

Why Do We Keep Writing About Intelligence? An IQ FAQ http://www.vdare.com/articles/why-do-we-keep-writing-about-intelligence-an-iq-faq, VDARE, December 3, 2007

School , Intelligence

“The introduction of the digit 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 Grothendieck (1928–2014) French mathematician

R. Brown and T. Porter,Analogy, concepts and methodology, in mathematics, UWB Math Preprint, May 26,2006 Link http://math.stanford.edu/~vakil/216blog/FOAGjun1113public.pdf

Mathematics

“A lot of nonsense is spoken about morality. The world is full of people who have had affairs and most marriages, if you look at the statistics, break down, and does that make people evil? It's they've made bad decisions. It diminishes the situation to say someone is 'morally bankrupt' because they've had an affair.”

Paul Bettany (1971) British actor

Article http://www.paulbettany.net/articles/press.php?p=herald2

Marriage , People , World , Decision

“.. Your Lordship [Dartmouth], I am sure, will be sensible of the dress thus far, but I defy any but a painter of some sagacity (and such you see I am, my Lord) to be well aware of the different effects which one part of a picture has upon another, and how the eye may be cheated as to the appearance of size, &c., by an artful management of the accompaniments. A tune may be so confused by a false bass that if it is ever so plain, simple, and full of meaning it shall become a jumble of nonsense, and just so shall a handsome face be overset by a fictitious bundle of trumpery of the foolish painter's own inventing.... Lady Dartmouth's [second/repainted] picture will look more like and not so large when dressed properly..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainborough's letter to Lord Dartmouth, 18 April 1771, after critic on the first portrait he made of Lady Dartmouth; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 74
1770 - 1788

Art , Appearance , Parting , Cheating

Quotes about nonsense page 3

Quotes about nonsense
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