A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.
C. S. LewisRead
Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote implies that illogical or meaningless discussions do not gain significance, even when they pertain to divine matters.
C. S. Lewis suggests that engaging in nonsensical arguments or irrational discourse regarding God does not elevate the content or make it more valid. Instead, nonsense retains its nature regardless of the subject, highlighting the importance of reason and clarity in discussions about faith and divinity.
Themes
NonsenseFaithGodReasonDiscussion
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about the existence of God, you can reference this quote to emphasize the need for rational arguments over nonsensical claims.
More from C. S. Lewis
All quotes βI enjoyed my breakfast this morning, and I think that was a good thing and do not think it was condemned by God. But I do not think myself a good man for enjoying it.
C. S. LewisRead
Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C. S. LewisRead
Forgiving and being forgiven are two names for the same thing. The important thing is that a discord has been resolved.
C. S. LewisRead
I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. It doesn't change God - it changes me.
C. S. LewisRead
The instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred
C. S. LewisRead
Similar quotes
The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.
Azar NafisiRead
The most moral activity of all is the creation of space for life to move around.
Robert M. PirsigRead
There remains an experience of incomparable value . . . to see the great events of world history from below; from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled ---- in short, from the perspective of those who suffer . . . to look with new eyes on matters great and small.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another.
Charles DarwinRead
Nothing is more natural than grief, no emotion more common to our daily experience. It's an innate response to loss in a world where everything is impermanent.
Stephen LevineRead
I will not judge a person to be spiritually dead whom I have judged formerly to have had spiritual life, though I see him at present in a swoon (faint)as to all evidences of the spiritual life. And the reason why I will not judge him so is this -- because if you judge a person dead, you neglect him, you leave him; but if you judge him in a swoon,(faint) though never so dangerous, you use all means for the retrieving of his life.
John OwenRead