Nonsense has taken up residence in the heart of public debate and also in the academy. This nonsense is part of the huge fund of unreason on which the plans and schemes of optimists draw for their vitality. Nonsense confiscates meaning. It thereby puts truth and falsehood, reason and unreason, light and darkness on an equal footing. It is a blow cast in defence of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.Roger Scruton
About This Quote
Words are powerful. They can be used to spread ideas, to guide us, to inspire us to do good things. But sometimes the words we use are used in ways that diminish their true meaning. This quote about nonsense is about words being taken out of context and used in ways that have nothing to do with what they originally meant.
The word nonsense is a very broad term that can be applied to anything that is incorrect or misleading. It has nothing to do with intellectual freedom, which would imply people are free to believe anything regardless of the truth.
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