Most Nonsensical Quotes & Sayings

If the assertion that there is a god is nonsensical, then the atheist's assertion that there is no god is equally nonsensical, since it is only a significant proposition that can be significantly contradicted. — A.J. Ayer

Once apparently the chief concern and masterpiece of the gods, the human race now begins to bear the aspect of an accidental by-product of their vast, inscrutable and probably nonsensical operations. — H.L. Mencken

Only a hundred years ago the idea that an order might arise without a personal Author appeared so nonsensical to you that it inspired seemingly absurd jokes, like the one about the pack of monkeys hammering away at typewriters until the Encyclopedia Britannica emerged. I recommend that you devote some of your free time to compiling an anthology of just such jokes, which amused your forebears as pure nonsense but now turn out to be parables of Nature. — Stanislaw Lem

You are right, Steppenwolf, a thousand times right, and yet you must perish. You are far too demanding, too hungry for today's straightforward, cosy world, satisfied as it is with so little. You have one dimension too many for its liking, so it will spit you out. It is impossible for anyone wishing to live and enjoy life in today's world to be like you or me. It is no home, this fine world, for people like us who, instead of nonsensical noise, demand music; instead of pleasure, joy; instead of money, soul; instead of industrial production, genuine labour; instead of frivolity, genuine passion ... — Anonymous

It's finding those nonsensical pieces of conversation that we all do all the time. We do all the time. When we're talking on the telephone, there are arguments with people who agree when they both think that they disagree. — Barry Levinson

As an actor you're only supposed to be a lover. I am a romantic hero though I don't like that tag. With all the hardships, problems, illness, goodness, badness, awards and money ... an actor will always be a lover. And a lover makes mistakes. You'll be silly, nonsensical and stupid. — Shahrukh Khan

One defining symptom of decadence is a fondness for vast and nonsensical extravagance. — Robert Silverberg

The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words. — Lord Kelvin

Whenever Sadie sees engagement rings, she feels a strange mix of emotions: a kind of excitement mixed
with a vague sadness. A longing for a speci??c kind of inclusion she both aspires to and fears. And, oddly, she feels a sense of failure, of
shame. She knows it's nonsensical, but there it is, big inside her, this sense of having screwed everything up, of having lost something she
never had. — Elizabeth Berg

And now there's this. A talent show. Silly and nonsensical. Stupid and fun. Together. Laughing. Being part of the human race. Knowing about the horrors that have happened and will happen but choosing to live anyway. Maybe there's an art to being human. — Susan Ee

Stupid things, in the end. Nonsensical. But stupid, nonsensical things were sometimes the most important. — Wildbow

forced to endure his nonsensical prattle any longer, "at least point me — Isabella Amaris

Except I'm aware that as a writer you can't get away with as much writing for children as you can with adults. Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge. — Alan Bradley

Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past. — Anne Rice

The Council's expanding the refuges, at least, but it's still nonsensical. — Francesca Haig

Politics is work. Hiphop is music. The idea that hiphop, because it makes the body feel good to move to it and it makes the soul feel good to hear out angry young black men, can be transmuted into changing the world is narcotic but nonsensical. Wherever hiphop is ever "going," we can be sure it will not be in a constructive direction, anymore than fashions in the color of cars. And it shouldn't "concern" us in the least. — John H. McWhorter

He wanted to crumple her up and toss her from his mind like a scrap piece of paper filled with nonsensical doodles or dissonant words that formed unbalanced rhymes. Yet, he refused throw her away. — Emmie White

I was alone in a great spinning wheel surrounded by things that were made out of meat, things that moved all by themselves. Some of them were wrapped in pieces of cloth. Strange nonsensical sounds came from holes at their top ends, and there were other things up there, bumps and ridges and something like marbles or black buttons, wet and shiny and embedded in the slabs of meat. They glistened and jiggled and moved as if trying to escape. I didn't understand the sounds the meat was making, but I heard a voice from somewhere. It was like God talking, and that I couldn't help but understand. — Peter Watts

The reality of the dying person is very different from that of the living. She is experiencing we cannot fully understand or enter into. If a person is conscious and able to talk, I always listen and take my cues from him. The desires of the dying, however nonsensical or puzzling they may be, are met. If the patient talks about the past, or about people long dead, I assume she is experiencing things we in the room are unaware of. I never discount that reality. If the person is unconscious, I speak as if he is able to hear and understand. If words from loved ones are forthcoming, it is again important to assume that the patient hears and understands what is being said. The most important thing to remember is that the experience is about the dying person, not the survivors. — Megory Anderson

I think we must attack
wherever we meet it
the nonsensical idea that mutually exclusive propositions about God can both be true. — C.S. Lewis

Love is irrational. Nonsensical. Makes you feel things that seem wildly inappropriate when you consider the surrounding circumstances. And yet you shouldn't ever question it, shouldn't ever doubt it. You should just accept it for the gift it is. — Alyson Noel

Though Kurt would later claim that his graffiti messages were political, in fact, most of what he wrote was nonsensical. He enraged a neighbor with a boat by painting "Boat Ack" in red letters on the ship's hull; on the other side he lettered, "Boat people go home. — Charles R. Cross

You see?" Thane waved at the photo. "Everything about her is nonsensical. A dragon who lies with a wolf? I suppose pigs fly and the moon is blue, too. — Erin Kellison

When I wasn't internally grumbling about my physical state, I found my mind playing and replaying scraps of songs and jingles in an eternal, nonsensical loop, as if there were a mix-tape radio station in my head. Up against the silence, my brain answered back with fragmented lines from tunes I'd heard over the course of my life - bits from songs I loved and clear renditions of jingles from commercials that almost drove me mad. — Cheryl Strayed

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them
as steps
to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the whole world aright. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

The reason they outperformed her was that they accepted each new "product" without trying to understand it. They got behind the new pitch wholeheartedly, even when it was risible and/or made no sense, and then, if a prospective customer had trouble understanding the "product," they didn't vocally agree that it sure was difficult to understand, didn't make a good-faith effort to explain the complicated reasoning behind it, but simply kept hammering on the written pitch. And clearly this was the path to success, and it was all a double disillusionment to Pip, who not only felt actively punished for using her brain but was presented every month with fresh evidence that Bay Area consumers on average responded better to a rote and semi-nonsensical pitch than to a well-meaning saleswoman trying to help them understand the offer. — Jonathan Franzen

Hundreds of studies have shown that people overrate their health, leadership ability, intelligence, professional competence, sporting prowess, and managerial skills. People also hold the nonsensical belief that they are inherently lucky. Most people think they are more likely than the average person to attain a good first job, to have gifted children, and to live to a ripe old age. They also think that they are less likely than the average person to be the victim of an accident, crime, disease, depression, unwanted pregnancy, or earthquake. Why — Steven Pinker

If our most highly qualified General Staff officers had been told to work out the most nonsensical high level organization for war which they could think of, they could not have produced anything more stupid that that which we have at present. — Claus Von Stauffenberg

But of all Nonsense, Religious Nonsense is the most nonsensical; so enough, & more than enough of it - Only, by the bye, will you, or can you tell me, my dear Cunningham, why a religioso turn of mind has always a tendency to narrow and illiberalise the heart? — Robert Burns

Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Mad Olia had a lot to say, and most of it was nonsensical, if it could be understood at all. Like bad poetry spoken underwater. — Charlie N. Holmberg

Throughout the narrative you will find many statements that are obviously nonsensical and quite at variance with common sense. For the most part these are true. — Robert Gilmore

Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Stephen Tennant is the most sparkling talker who ever comes to my house, and perhaps the most amusing. He dances like the will-o'-the-wisp where other people stick in the mud. Though his really kindred spirits are the most exotic people he can find, he also greatly enjoys a talk with some extremely commonplace person, when he pretends that he thinks they mean something which they never thought of in their lives. He can be by turns poetic, malicious, and nonsensical. His talk is very pictorial and he handles words as if they were pait on a brush. When Stephen is alone with one friend he is often drawn to speak of very grave and profound subjects, and then he becomes unhappy, for he is never sure about what he loves and believes in, and would like to love and believe in so much. — Edith Olivier

Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you.'
I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her ... I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me. — George Eliot

The tapestry of my life was a ruin of unravelling threads. The brightest parts were a nonsensical madman's weaving. And now every day was a grey stitch, laid down with an outpatient's patience, one following the next following the next, a story in lines, like a railway track to nowhere, telling absolutely nothing. — Alexis Hall

What Mencken most strongly objected to in religion was not the expression of nonsensical views - these could easily be combated by rebuttal from the other side - but the inveterate tendency of religion to seek the enforcement of its views by the power of the government. — H.L. Mencken

One thing which I can't stress enough is thaft OCD is completely nonsensical and will not listen to reason. This is one of the most frightening things about having it. I knew that t
o anyone I told, there are Salvador Dali paintings that make more sense. — Joe Wells

Seen from the point of view of the composer, the most nonsensical practice is that of casting people in musicals who are unable to sing. No one would cast a dancing part with someone who cannot dance sufficiently to come up to professional standards. The same is true of acting. But when it comes to singing, more often than not it is amateur night ... Either musicals should be written for specified performers in the first place, or they should be cast with people who are adequate to its dancing, acting and singing demands. — Ernest Gold

One of the first exercises we did in acting class my freshman year was to stand in two rows, two lines facing each other as a class, and just make sounds and move in some completely nonsensical way out into the center of the room. Sort of make an idiot out of yourself, essentially, but to be okay with that. — Chris Parnell

Blaming TV as an abstract entity is nonsensical. It's our hand on the remote. There's a world out there outside the tube. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

If religion cannot find a meaning for human suffering, humanity is in major trouble. All healthy religion shows you what to do with your pain. Great religion shows you what to do with the absurd, the tragic, the nonsensical, the unjust. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If — Richard Rohr

It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved ... [A]ll utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical. — A.J. Ayer

the cosmogony of Genesis is so simple that even a yokel can grasp it. It is set forth in a few phrases. It offers, to an ignorant man, the irresistible reasonableness of the nonsensical. So he accepts it with loud hosannas, and has one more excuse for hating his betters. — Francis Wheen

I wouldn't so much as stick my head in a pool hall. Oh, look, this is as far as I go explaining what I am and am not like. I will not explain myself one more time. I will not make an inventory of my attributes for people or mention my goddamn sense of duty. I will not take one more round of his ridiculous, nonsensical crap!" Whereupon, — Philip Roth

So there are established sayings: Guidance to enlightenment seems nonsensical. Guidance to progress seems backwards. Guidance to equality seems to classify. Higher efficacy seems at a loss. Great purity seems like shame. Broad effectiveness seems insufficient. Constructive effectiveness seems casual. Basic reality seems changeable. A great expanse has no shores. A large container takes a long time to make. Important news is rarely heard. — Lao-Tzu

In his humble opinion, she possessed the least appealing traits a woman can put on display: undiscriminating curiosity and nonsensical verbosity. — Carol Vorvain

Up here in Alaska we're sitting on billions of barrels of oil. We're sitting on hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of natural gas onshore and offshore. And it seems to be only the Republicans who understand that companies should be competing for the right to tap those resources, and get that energy source flowing into these hungry markets so that we will be less reliant on foreign sources of energy. In a volatile world, relying on foreign regimes that are not friendly to Americans, asking them to ramp up resource production for our benefit, that's nonsensical. — Sarah Palin

At the time, infatuated with Nietzsche (and half asleep), Leonard didn't want to get into this argument, the truth of which wasn't that all religions were equally valid but that they were equally nonsensical. — Jeffrey Eugenides

What mankind needs today is liberation from the rule of nonsensical slogans and a return to sound reasoning. — Ludwig Von Mises

Trying to block women from getting access to contraception or defunding Planned Parenthood is completely nonsensical from a policy standpoint. — Richard Carmona

Civic duty? Perhaps it would be a little naive to try to coerce me into voting. I assure you my basic standards of healthy living are very different from yours, which is the reason I do not vote. You should note that, as nonsensical a scenario, if forced to choose I would most definitely rather live in a failing, Christ-honoring, God-fearing nation than a flourishing one that mocks said Creator. Beware of my personal ambitions. — Criss Jami

Writing 'Deadpool' can be a lot of fun. When I first started working with the character, I wasn't sure I'd like him. I quickly realized, though, that a writer can do pretty much anything with him - comedic stories, serious stories, completely nonsensical stories. — Cullen Bunn

The attention is to be kept pure. In Sahaja Yoga you know all the methods how the attention, one can keep it pure. If the attention is not pure, then this desire will be always attacked by all petty, nonsensical things which have no meaning in your ascent. — Nirmala Srivastava

Lack of leadership can have fearsome consequences. A dog's mental health, after all, depends to a large degree on leadership: dogs get enormously distressed when they think no one is in charge. Accordingly, it's not only nonsensical to fail to establish rules and limits with a dog ... but cruel. — Caroline Knapp

Gear-shifting is thus a phenomenon of a higher logical type than giving gas, and it would be patently nonsensical to talk about the mechanics of complex gears in the language of the thermodynamics of fuel supply. — Paul Watzlawick

In the present world, this technological, psychotic, politicised, nonsensical world, you have to believe that the good guys are going to win! That evil will be banished somehow! — Rufus Wainwright

Peeta crouches down on the other side of her and strokes her hair. When he begins to speak in a soft voice, it seems almost nonsensical, but the words aren't for me. With my paint box at home, I can make every color imaginable. Pink. As pale as a baby's skin. Or as deep as rhubarb. Green like spring grass. Blue that shimmers like ice on water. — Suzanne Collins

No mistake is so commonly made by clever people as that of assuming a cause to be bad because the arguments of its supporters are, to a great extent, nonsensical — Thomas Huxley

One ounce of the practice of righteousness and of spiritual Self-realisation outweighs tons and tons of frothy talk and nonsensical sentiments. — Swami Vivekananda

Please drop a note to the clerk of the weather, and have a good, rousing snow-storm
say on the twenty-second. None of your meek, gentle, nonsensical, shilly-shallying snow-storms; not the sort where the flakes float lazily down from the sky as if they didn't care whether they ever got here or not, and then melt away as soon as they touch the earth, but a regular business-like whizzing, whirring, blurring, cutting snow-storm, warranted to freeze and stay on! — Kate Douglas Wiggin

I'd have found it amusing enough, I dare say, if I hadn't been irritated by the thought that these irresponsible Christian zealots were only making things harder for the Army and Company, who had important work to do. It was all so foolish and unnecessary - the heathen creeds, for all their nonsensical mumbo-jumbo, were as good as any for keeping the rabble in order, and what else is religion for? In — George MacDonald Fraser