Nonsense Quotes - Page 6

• As charms are nonsense,
  nonsense is a charm.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Charm

  Benjamin Franklin (2013). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.74, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect

  Jacques Barzun

  Character, Small Acts, Long

  Jacques Barzun (1959). “The House of Intellect”

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• We know that violent measures against religion are nonsense; but this is an opinion: as socialism grows, religion will disappear. Its disappearance must be done by social development, in which education must play a part.

  Karl Marx

  Play, Done, Development

  Karl Marx (1973). “The Karl Marx Library: On the First International”

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• Liberals have created, and the minority leadership has exploited, a community of dependent people, unaware of the true route to prosperity and happiness: self-reliance and self-investment. Instead, people are told that American is unjust, unfair, and full of disadvantages. They are told that their only hope is for government to fix their problems. What has happened is that generations of people have bought into this nonsense and as result have remained hopelessly mired in poverty and despair -- because the promised solutions don't work. And they will never work -- they never have.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Government, Self, People

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• Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Stupid, Islam, West

  "The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan". Le Nouvel Observateur Interview, www.globalresearch.ca. January, 1998.

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• Millions for nonsense, but not one cent for entropy.

  Alfred Bester

  Entropy, Cents, Millions

  Alfred Bester (1974). “Tiger! Tiger!”

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• Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurist drivel; ‘Star Trek’ can turn your brains into 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!

  Harlan Ellison

  Stars, War, Doctors

  "Doctor Who and the Talons of Weng-Chiang". Book by Terrance Dicks. Introduction, p. 7, 1977.

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• As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense.

  Jane Jacobs

  Cities, Urban Renewal, Years

  Jane Jacobs (2016). “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, p.13, Vintage

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• The only reaction against an unbearable society is equally unbearable nonsense.

  Kathy Acker

  Unbearable, Reactions

  Kathy Acker (1997). “Bodies of Work: Essays”, Serpents Tail

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• War is utter damn nonsense, a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking malignity on the part of those who don't do the fighting.

  John Dos Passos

  Peace, Cancer, Lying

  John Dos Passos (1973). “The Fourteenth Chronicle: Letters and Diaries of John Dos Passos”, Harvard Common Press

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• To appreciate nonsense you must first acquire wisdom, then compromise the two; only then will the fool understand you, and believe himself to be wise.

  Ernest Chapman

  Wise, Believe, Two

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• There are dark forces in the world that would have you believe that you can't succeed and that you're a failure and that you're evil and all this nonsense.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Believe, Buddhism

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• A part of us resists all of this and wants to make it sound as if it's much too religious, an arbitrary thing that we have to do with our life. This is nonsense. This is the real fun.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Religious, Fun

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• Writing is not something you can do or you can't. It's not even something that 'other people do' or 'for smart people only' or even 'for people who finished school and went to University'. Nonsense. Anyone can do it. But no-one can do it straight off the bat. Like plastering, brain surgery or assembling truck engines, you have to do a bit of training - get your hands dirty - and make some mistakes.

  Jasper Fforde

  Mistake, Smart, Dirty

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• People used to believe only a professional could do tiling or install track lighting. That's utter nonsense.

  Bernard Marcus

  Believe, People, Track

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• The way I think of it, economics and ecology occupy two intellectual silos, isolated from each other. Even when they do take each other into consideration, it's not uncommon for ecologists to spout absolute nonsense about economics, and vice versa.

  Charles C. Mann

  Thinking, Two, Intellectual

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• My dreams are the usual incoherent nonsense. Like most writers, at some point in my career I thought, well, I have these great dreams but I always forget them in the morning so I’ll leave a pad on my bedside table so I can write it down, and then you have some incredible dream and you write it down and the next morning you wake up and you’ve written ‘purple socks’.

  George R. R. Martin

  Dream, Morning, Writing

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• Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is crisscrossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.

  Pope Francis

  Moving, Circles, Ideas

  "The Pope: how the Church will change". Interview with Eugenio Scalfari, www.repubblica.it. October 1, 2013.

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• The meaning of the directions in kata is not well understood, and frequently mistakes are made in the interpretation of kata movements. In extreme cases, it is sometimes heard that "this kata moves in 8 directions so it is designed for fighting 8 opponents" or some such nonsense.

  Kenwa Mabuni

  Mistake, Moving, Fighting

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• Goodness often blossoms like roses on very rickety trellis-work, and beauty can grow out of nonsense.

  Hubert Butler

  Rose, Goodness, Grows

  Hubert Butler (1988). “The Children of Drancy”, Lilliput Press

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• The notion that artists flourish upon adversity and misunderstanding, that they are able to function to the utmost in an atmosphere of indifference or hostility - this notion is nine-tenths nonsense.

  H. L. Mencken

  Adversity, Artist, Atmosphere

  H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (2010). “H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series”, Hubsta Ltd

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• But there is no sole person for another's heart. Souls cannot be broken and then completed by another. That's not healthy, nor wise. There are infinite possibilities as there are infinite people and some matches are better than others...Just don't say that you'll die without the other one or that you'll never love again or that you're not whole-That's the stuff of Romeo and Juliet, hasty nonsense, and you know how well that turned out...Just don't be desperate about it. That's where souls go wrong, when they think they don't have choices. The heart must make choices.

  Leanna Renee Hieber

  Wise, Heart, Thinking

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• Even the standard example of ancient nonsense - the debate about angels on pinheads - makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Angel, Numbers, House

  Stephen Jay Gould (2010). “The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History”, p.149, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Crude absurdities, trivial nonsense, and sublime truths are equally potent in readying people for self-sacrifice if they are accepted as the sole, eternal truth

  Eric Hoffer

  Truth, Sacrifice, Self

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• A fool contributes nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything.

  Aristotle

  Hearing, Fool, Offense

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