Nonsense Quotes - Page 32

• To succeed inside a political party, one must cultivate an ability to sit still and remain polite while foolish people speak nonsense

  Morton Blackwell

  Party, People, Political

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• To his enemies the householder must be a hero. Them he must resist. That is the duty of the householder. He must not sit down in a corner and weep, and talk nonsense about non-resistance. If he does not show himself a hero to his enemies he has not done his duty.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Hero, Enemy, Done

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.48, Manonmani Publishers

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• In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Library, Twenties, Example

  Jorge Luis Borges (1964). “Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings”, p.57, New Directions Publishing

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

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Inspirational, Bhajans, Dirt

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• From the earliest time the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Generations, Aging, Young

  Cakes and Ale ch. 11 (1930)

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• As a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats....When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation; when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead; this advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up! Good night and good luck.

  Keith Olbermann

  Good Night, War, Party

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

  Georg Solti

  Wagner, Specialists, Ifs

  "Conductors on Record". Book by John L. Holmes, pp. 256-261, 1988.

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• I am convinced that any photographic attempt to show the complete man is nonsense. We can only show, as best we can, what the outer man reveals. The inner man is seldom revealed to anyone, sometimes not even the man himself.

  Arnold Newman

  Men, Sometimes, He Man

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• I love exaggerated, and I love eccentric, but you must be comfortable. Otherwise it is nonsense. There is nothing charming about a woman who cannot walk in her shoes.

  Manolo Blahnik

  Shoes, Eccentric, Charming

  "Manolo Blahnik: 'There is nothing charming about a woman who cannot walk in her shoes'". Interview with Jess Cartner-Morley, www.theguardian.com. November 20, 2012.

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• If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don't mess with you much. What that means is you've got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop. So the baboon is a wonderful model for living well enough and long enough to pay the price for all the social-stressor nonsense that they create for each other. They're just like us: They're not getting done in by predators and famines, they're getting done in by each other.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Stress, Mean, Animal

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• This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

  Tavis Smiley

  Ideas, America, Firsts

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• You don't have to be the best guitar player, or have the best voice, or even be the best looking person - writing a song that moves people is worth more than all the other nonsense. (Just look at Bob Dylan - he's got almost no vocal range at all, but his songs are deeply moving and iconic.) If I had to offer one piece of advice: Write a song that moves people, and write it from within yourself. Your personal narrative is more engaging and moving than anything else you can imagine in your mind.

  Ryan Ross

  Song, Moving, Writing

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• You know, there's that silly saying 'We're born alone and we die alone' -it's nonsense. We're surrounded at birth and surrounded at death. It is in between that we're alone.

  Tom Rachman

  Silly, Birth, Born

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

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Psychology, Psychologist

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.234, Penguin

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

  John McGahern

  Mean, Chinese, Matter

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• I suppose the process of acceptance will pass through the usual four stages:
  (i) this is worthless nonsense;
  (ii) this is an interesting, but perverse, point of view;
  (iii) this is true, but quite unimportant;
  (iv) I always said so.

  John B. S. Haldane

  Acceptance, Views, Interesting

  Journal of Genetics, Vol. 58, 1963.

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• I detest that saying Everything happens for a reason; its nonsense.

  Gary Kemp

  Everything Happens For A Reason, Detest, Things Happen

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• We are as we are. How can you claim to know what life I was meant to lead, let alone threaten to force me into it? All your quibbling is nonsense. As well forbid your nose to snuff, or your ears to hear. We are as we do.

  Robin Hobb

  Noses, Ears, Snuff

  Robin Hobb (2002). “Royal Assassin: The Farseer Trilogy”, p.188, Spectra

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• The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk around my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.

  Anthony Burgess

  Wise, Brother, Wine

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• I was told once by some country people that a magician should never tell his dreams because the telling will make them come true. But I say that is great nonsense.

  Susanna Clarke

  Dream, Country, People

  Susanna Clarke (2009). “The Ladies of Grace Adieu: and Other Stories”, p.26, A&C Black

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• The perfect integrity of The NewYork Times, and its writers, is not precisely 'just silly nonsense,'

  Hedi Slimane

  Integrity, Silly, Perfect

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• I don't care about image and all that nonsense. I'm in sweat pants every day. I don't play the game at all.

  Zach Braff

  Games, Play, Sweat

  "Zach Braff Says He Has 'Mild Depression'". people.com. January 13, 2007.

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• Like Karl Kraus [Wittgenstein], was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby mostly offended his ear - particularly when they happened to speak philosophically; and like Karl Kraus, he suspected that the institutions could not but be corrupt if the idiom of the race was confused, presumptuous, and vacuous, a fabric of nonsense, untruth, deception, and self-deception.

  Thomas Szasz

  Confused, Men, Race

  "Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry". Book by Thomas Szasz and Karl Kraus (p. 67), March 1, 1990.

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• I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Animal, Men, Half

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1858). “The life and letters of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography and select correspondence, from original manuscripts”, p.183

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• I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.

  Bertrand Russell

  Home, Mean, Thinking

  Bertrand Russell, Nicholas Griffin (2002). “The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Private Years, 1884-1914”, p.25, Psychology Press

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