I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Dr. — Dr. Seuss

I like nonsense; it wakes up the brain cells. Dr.

Author: Dr. Seuss

Insight: There's something we forget as we get older: making sense of everything all the time is exhausting. We become so focused on fitting things into neat categories and following predictable rules that our minds actually start to atrophy. When you encounter something absurd—a ridiculous pun, a backwards way of thinking about a familiar problem, or even just permission to be playful—your brain has to work. It has to hold two contradictory ideas at once, find unexpected connections, or laugh at something that shouldn't quite work but does. That mental friction is where real thinking happens. This matters more now than ever, when we're trapped in algorithmic comfort zones fed exactly what we already believe. We need the nonsense—the weird questions, the jokes that make you groan, the "wrong" answers that somehow reveal something true. Kids understand this instinctively. They're not trying to be efficient or impressive; they're following curiosity wherever it leads, and that's actually the opposite of lazy thinking. It's the most alert version of thought there is.

Source: I Like Nonsense, It Wakes Up the Brain Cells, Delightfully Different, 1965