A Quote by Mason Cooley

Nonsense is socially OK, but not stupidity.

Mason Cooley

Quote Topics

Nonsense OK Socially Stupidity

Quote Author

Mason Cooley
American - Writer
1927 - 2002

Sometimes we desire absolute nonsense because in our stupidity we see in this nonsense the easiest way of attaining some conjectural good.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius.

Walter Bagehot

It is, after all, impossible in the modern world to shield everyone from nonsense and stupidity.

Lawrence M. Krauss

Socially, I'm fine, and academically, I'm doing OK too.

Lindsey Horan

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

Robertson Davies

Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.

Werner Herzog

In Madeleine's face was a stupidity Mitchell had never seen before. It was the stupidity of all normal people. It was the stupidity of the fortunate and the beautiful, of everybody who got what they wanted in life and so remained unremarkable.

Jeffrey Eugenides

There are people who are socially ambitious. If you go back aways, the Sculls, for instance, had a lot of money and they were socially ambitious. If you get an old master, it's not going to do you any good socially.

Garry Winogrand

Stupidity—The top of the list for Satanic Sins. The Cardinal Sin of Satanism. It’s too bad that stupidity isn’t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable. Satanists must learn to see through the tricks and cannot afford to be stupid.

Anton Szandor LaVey

It is ok to err, but it is not ok to stop playing; it is ok to lose, but it is not ok to give up.

John Kessel

If you're doing nonsense it has to be rather awful, because there'd be no point. I'm trying to think if there's sunny nonsense. Sunny, funny nonsense for children — oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either.

Edward Gorey

It's usually easier to rouse stupidity to action than to arouse wisdom to effort, for wisdom sees alternatives while stupidity lacks the imagination to do this. All sinister interests in a country can depend ultimately upon the strength of stupidity.

Chapman Cohen

Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human

Fyodor Dostoevsky

It's OK to burn a Bible, that's OK. OK to burn a flag, OK, that's all right. But just, you know, for heaven's sake, don't say anything that might offend someone of the Islamic religion.

Louie Gohmert

It's OK to want to look and feel your best. It's OK to work at being attractive, whatever that means to you. And it's also OK to not expect to be defined by that. It's OK to be powerful in every way: to be big, to take up space. To breathe and thrive.