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 defense of intellectual freedom, as the optimists construe it, namely the freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it.

The Uses of Pessimism: And the Danger of False Hope