"All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others"
About this Quote
Butler’s line has the snap of a Victorian pin stuck into the balloon of Big Ideas. “Ride them home” is the tell: a philosophy can look elegant in the parlor, polished into aphorisms and systems, but follow it all the way to lived reality and it starts bucking. The phrase suggests testing doctrine the way you’d test a horse for soundness: take it out of the showroom, put weight on it, see where it throws you.
The first punch is democratic skepticism. “All philosophies” get equal suspicion, not because thought is useless, but because any total explanation of life needs to sand down the jagged parts that won’t fit. Butler isn’t arguing for anti-intellectualism; he’s mocking the intellectual habit of mistaking a map for the terrain, then blaming the terrain for being messy.
The second punch is the sly ranking: “some are greater nonsense than others.” That twist keeps him from nihilism. If everything collapses under pressure, you still have to choose what to live by. Butler implies a pragmatic ethics: pick the “nonsense” that fails in the least cruel, least stupid, most workable way. It’s a jab at absolutists who demand purity over consequence.
Context matters. Butler wrote in an era drunk on systems: Darwin reshaping biology, utilitarians turning morality into calculus, theologians defending old certainties with new scaffolding. As a poet and satirist (and a critic of Victorian pieties), he’s telling the reader to keep a wicked little distance from any creed that promises to explain everything. Wisdom, for Butler, starts in the moment you notice the sales pitch.
The first punch is democratic skepticism. “All philosophies” get equal suspicion, not because thought is useless, but because any total explanation of life needs to sand down the jagged parts that won’t fit. Butler isn’t arguing for anti-intellectualism; he’s mocking the intellectual habit of mistaking a map for the terrain, then blaming the terrain for being messy.
The second punch is the sly ranking: “some are greater nonsense than others.” That twist keeps him from nihilism. If everything collapses under pressure, you still have to choose what to live by. Butler implies a pragmatic ethics: pick the “nonsense” that fails in the least cruel, least stupid, most workable way. It’s a jab at absolutists who demand purity over consequence.
Context matters. Butler wrote in an era drunk on systems: Darwin reshaping biology, utilitarians turning morality into calculus, theologians defending old certainties with new scaffolding. As a poet and satirist (and a critic of Victorian pieties), he’s telling the reader to keep a wicked little distance from any creed that promises to explain everything. Wisdom, for Butler, starts in the moment you notice the sales pitch.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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