Patrick Mansell

Wisdom and Nonsense Patrick Mansell

Throughout history, going back as far as 3,000 years, great thinkers have shared their words of wisdom. Today, many more people are involved in producing quotes that inspire and repulse. We hold on to many of these bits of wisdom and we let some of them guide our lives. At the same time there are people who have an audience but produce nothing but nonsense. We may be inspired to know that Albert Einstein had deep convictions about a supreme power. We might also enlightened to know that our some of our founding fathers who created One Nation under God, actually did not have deep convictions about a supreme being, and that they had little use for the church. Then again some quotes are simply quips to ponder or amuse. At the same time it is interesting to note that Michelangelo, Hemingway, and Freud loved cats, or that Tom Brokaw and Tiger Woods love their time fishing. Claude Monet was inspired by his garden, and Thomas Jefferson and Viggo Mortensen cherished their time digging in their gardens. We can learn all kinds of things from and about people if we just take the time to look. That's what Wisdom and Nonsense teaches: the diversity of what they said about subjects they either were expert at, or that surprise us to know they had any interest at all. And then sometimes we just need a boost to our intellectual curiosity or a moment of light entertainment without having to think too much.