What makes you think that nonsense is bad? If they'd nurtured and cared for human nonsense over the ages the way they did intelligence, it might have turned into something of special value.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that what we often dismiss as nonsense could hold significant value if properly nurtured and appreciated.
Yevgeny Zamyatin's quote challenges conventional thinking about intelligence and creativity, arguing that society has undervalued 'nonsense'—a term that can refer to imaginative, irrational, or unconventional ideas. By suggesting that if we had invested the same care into nurturing these 'nonsense' ideas as we do in intelligence, they might have developed into something profoundly valuable, the quote opens up discussions about the importance of creativity, imagination, and the potential merit of unconventional thoughts in advancing human understanding.
In practice
In a class about creativity, this quote could be used to encourage students to embrace unconventional ideas.
The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.
Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.
The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy...
The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (“A Story About The Most Important Thing”)
A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading.
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.
I lost my sleep, and this is the greatest tragedy that can befall someone. It is much worse than sitting in prison.
Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.
We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the world and stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain!" They're going "You can't claim us, we live here! Five hundred million of us!" "Do you have a flag …? "No..." "Well, if you don't have a flag, then you can't have a country. Those are the rules... that I just made up!
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
News is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising.
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