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This is my life now. Absurd, but unpredictable. Not absurd because unpredictable but unpredictable because absurd. If I have lost the meaning of my life, I might still find small treasured things among the spilled and pilfered trash.
Joyce Carol OatesI said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.
Albert CamusAbsurd, irreducible; nothing โ not even a profound and secret delirium of nature โ could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it.
Jean-Paul SartreI don't think Kant's theory looks bad to people except insofar as they have misunderstood it (for instance, as heartless and ironheaded, or as committed to an absurd metaphysical conception of freedom that violates Kant's own philosophy).
Allen W. WoodThe belief that it is useless to employ partial and palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully by meanness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd.
Theodor MommsenThe Western press has always insisted that India was Pakistan's enemy and vice versa, that the Hindus were against the Muslims and vice versa. They've never said, for instance, that my party has been fighting this attitude ever since we have maintained that religious hostilities are wrong and absurd, that minorities cannot be eliminated from a country, that people of different religions must live together.
Indira GandhiIn proportion as the machine is improved and performs man's work with an ever increasing rapidity and exactness, the labourer, instead of prolonging his former rest times, redoubles his ardour, as if he wished to rival the machine. O, absurd and murderous competition!
Paul LafargueWe are surrounded by the absurd excess of the universe. By meaningless bulk, vastness without size, power without consequence. The stubborn iteration that is present without being felt. Nothing the spirit can marry. Merely phenomenon and its physics. An endless, endless of going on. No habitat where the brain can recognize itself. No pertinence for the heart. Helpless duplication.
Jack GilbertI rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.
George WashingtonThere once was an old man of Lyme who married three wives at a time when asked, 'Why a third?' he replied 'One's absurd! and bigamy, sir, is a crime!'
William Cosmo MonkhouseI like to imagine a person's psyche to be like a boardinghouse full of characters. The ones who show up regularly and who habitually follow the house rules may not have met other long-term residents who stay behind closed doors, or who only appear at night. An adequate theory of character must make room for character actors, for the stuntmen and animal handlers, for all the figures who play bit parts and produce unexpected acts. They often make the show fateful, or tragic, or farcically absurd.
James HillmanI thought to myself: if itโs true that every person has a star in the sky, mine must be distant, dim, and absurd. Perhaps I never had a star.
Sadegh HedayatImagine filling a college with the first 1,000 students to get perfect SATs. Whatever the racial composition of that class would be, the notion seems absurd because we know that college in America is supposed to be about creating citizens and leaders in a diverse nation.
Eric LiuMy dear wife has, I would say, probably never opened a religious book, and seems to be one of those people to whom the whole idea is utterly remote and absurd.
Christopher HitchensIt's absurd and quite tragic the way people have managed to pit science against faith. They aren't in conflict at all - they're long lost dance partners. I don't divide the world up into Christians and other people - we are all human beings, brothers and sisters, and we embrace truth wherever we find it, whether that's in a lab, a field or a cathedral. Because sometimes you need a scientist and sometimes you need a poet.
Rob BellThe climate, financial and national security crises are all connected. They share the same cause: Our [the USA's] absurd dependency on foreign oil. As long as we need to spend billions of dollars each year to buy foreign oil from state-run oil companies in the Persian Gulf, our problems of a trade deficit, a budget deficit and a climate crisis will persist.
Al GoreIf I convince myself that this life has no other aspect than that of the absurd, if I feel that its whole equilibrium depends on that perpetual opposition between my conscious revolt and the darkness in which it struggles, if I admit that my freedom has no meaning except in relation to its limited fate, then I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living.
Albert CamusBut we live in a modern world, you know, and, and also it does seem to me that if you - that whatever talents you have, it... I mean it may sound a bit absurd but I, I think it's your, absolutely your duty to resolve them, you know?
Tim CurryI had this idea about terrible things happening to orphans, and I knew it was such a horrible idea that the idea of writing it down and then submitting it professionally was obviously absurd.
Daniel HandlerWhat is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.
Aldous HuxleyOne of the rules that I always follow is that no matter how crazy characters may act, and no matter how absurd or strange their actions may be, that it's justified in the character's mind why they are doing it. Not to get all heady about it, but it's fun for me to test how far I can go with things while still keeping it grounded enough that you believe that the character really believes that what he's doing will get him what he wants. It's a personal challenge to me to see how far I can go with that.
Glenn HowertonAnd I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.
Robert BrowningAbsolute honesty is as absurd an abstraction as an absolute temperature or an absolute value.
George Bernard ShawI think my favourite memory from filming 'Jurassic World' would just be a compilation of me running through the jungle in heels, and just how absurd that really was. That that actually happened.
Bryce Dallas HowardIn the ordinary affairs of life we do not require nor expect demonstrative evidence, because it is inconsistent with the nature of matters of fact, and to insist on its production would be unreasonable and absurd.
Simon GreenleafMy turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then.
Lord ByronRationally considered, nothing can be more absurd than the baptism of infants under any circumstances. No statement, no matter by whom it may be said to have been uttered, can make that true which is radically false. If an innocent child, unconscious of good or evil, irresponsible to God and man, incapable of thought or action, is not already, in accordance with Christian theology, a member of Christ, then no vicarious promise or priestly ablution can make him one. For if this were so, a similar ceremony under devil worship could make him a member of Satan.
Tennessee Celeste ClaflinAnd again, we're kind of trying to be in that place, that's just so absurd and irreverent and hysterical and it's something that at our company we're kind of, we're so irreverent about everything, we're sort of irreverent about the establishment, we're irreverent about civilization, we're irreverent about philosophy, we're irreverent about religion.
Brian HensonEvery man knows about a particular body part that often seems to have a mind of its own. And every woman knows how absurd men become when that is the body part they allow to influence their choices and decisions.
Neale Donald WalschThe whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, '2001' shows that what some people call 'god' is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don't understand, they call 'god' -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963
Stanley KubrickThere is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Carl JungSwinburne was an absurd character. He was a bird of showy strut and plumage. One could not but admire his glorious feathers; but, as soon as he began to moult ... one saw how very little body there was underneath.
Robert Wilson LyndIn the end, the art of hunger can be described as an existential art. It is a way of looking death in the face, and by death I mean death as we live it today: without God, without hope of salvation. Death as the abrupt and absurd end of life
Paul AusterI just heard a very funny story about somebody who died yesterday, I'm sorry to say so but it was so absurd that you can't help laughing. And the person that was concerned about that story was laughing too
Sophie MarceauIt is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.
George MacDonaldIn Russia no one is surprised when an official accepts a bribe while at the same time portraying the state as some sacred entity to which the bourgeois should pay homage. This all sounds absurd. But for Russians it is completely normal.
Vladimir Sorokina man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up oneโs watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny.
Vladimir NabokovI try and remind our viewers that climate is always in a state of flux and yes, the world has warmed over the last 25 years but claiming that Katrina is a product of global warming is absurd. We have had much stronger hurricanes hit the United States in the past, the Labor Day or Keys hurricane of 1935 and Camille in 1969 to name just two. There is much more development now on our shores.
Topper ShuttI cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls.
Albert EinsteinThis idea that people have to love and understand each other is absurd. It's not human nature.
Fran LebowitzTo say she was my girlfriend was absurd: no one the wrong side of thirty has a girlfriendโฆ I suppose I ought to have realize itโs ominous that forty thousand years of human language had failed to produce a word for our relationship.
Robert HarrisThe government, for example, has determined that black people (somehow) have fewer abilities than white people, and, so, must be given certain preferences. Anyone acquainted with both black and white people knows this assessment is not only absurd but monstrous. And yet it is the law.
David MametIn France those absurd perversions of the art of war which covered themselves under the name of chivalry were more omnipotent than in any other country of Europe. The strength of the armies of Philip and John of Valois was composed of a fiery and undisciplined aristocracy which imagined itself to be the most efficient military force in the world, but which was in reality little removed from an armed mob.
Charles William Chadwick Oman