Popular quotes about Absurd! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
How so many absurd rules of conduct, as well as so many absurd religious beliefs, have originated, we do not know; nor how it is that they have become, in all quarters of the world, so deeply impressed on the minds of men; but it is worthy of remark that a belief constantly inculcated during the early years of life, while the brain is impressionable, appears to acquire almost the nature of an instinct; and the very essence of an instinct is that it is followed independently of reason.
Charles Darwin[Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And yet it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is - absurd.
Richard P. FeynmanThis absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator.
Albert CamusOne thing I'm a big fan of is the theater of the absurd. That's what I come from, that's what I love to do more than anything. What I love about absurdity is the words "comedy" and "drama" get thrown out the window and it's just life, which is absurd.
Michael ShannonThere's nothing in the First Amendment that even remotely talks about spending money for political contests, and to say that an individual can spend as much of his or her own money as he or she wants constitutionally without any limitation, I think is just absurd.
Arlen SpecterMen towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.
Emma GoldmanI just don't know when we all decided that if it doesn't fit in a Happy Meal box, it's not for kids. I remember flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz, and I grew up watching Monty Python. I think that kids can handle a lot more than we give them credit for, especially when it comes to the absurd.
Gore VerbinskiYou have always told me it was Ernest. I have introduced you to every one as Ernest. You answer to the name of Ernest. You look as if your name was Ernest. You are the most earnest-looking person I ever saw in my life. It is perfectly absurd your saying that your name isn't Ernest.
Oscar WildeI have seen the day, when, if a man made himself ridiculous, the world would laugh at him. But now, everything that is mean, disgusting, and absurd, pleases them but so much the better!
Joanna BaillieIn chess, as a purely intellectual game, where randomness is excluded, - for someone to play against himself is absurd ... It is as paradoxical, as attempting to jump over his own shadow.
Stefan ZweigCongressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default. ... The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.
Thomas SowellTreating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.
Jeff TweedyIf 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 CamusWhat 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 HuxleyI think coming to work and being absurd and neurotic and thoughtful at the same time is far more interesting.
Lake BellI've got childhood friends who are working for non-profit foundations, or who are running for state senate and doing things that actually do fight evil in this world. And what am I doing? I bang on some drums in a rock band. I try to tell myself that by doing that, I'm fighting evil - which is completely absurd. Music is not equipped in any way to fight against anything. Other than, I guess, it could fight against silence.
Greg SaunierI 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 HowardMy 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 ByronWhatever happens, every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as absurd to fancy that a philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as it is to fancy that an individual can overleap his own age, jump over Rhodes.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelIn any case, the idea of giving "all" of reality is overly simple and absurd.
Michelangelo AntonioniJay-Z's a guy that wears the Che Guevara t-shirt and he doesn't realize Che Guevara was a racist. Che Guevara was a murderer and a killer. So look, he's an entertainer, obviously. He's not in the middle of any public discourse here. But I think it's important to point out when people take stances like this that are absurd.
Marco RubioIf men will permit themselves to think, as rational beings ought to think, nothing can appear more ridiculous and absurd, exclusive of all moral reflections, than to be at the expence of building navies, filling them with men, and then hauling them into the ocean, to try which can sink each other fastester. Peace, which costs nothing, is attended with infintely more advantage than any victory with all its expence. But this, though it best answers the purpose of Nations, does not that of Court Governments, whose habited policy is pretence for taxation, places, and offices.
Thomas PaineAmerica has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. We are one and undivided.
Sam WatkinsGiven that the label "immigrant literature" is already established, unavoidable for anyone with a migrant background and used in any given context, I strongly advocate an absurd amount of specification to go along with the label.
Sasa StanisicRefusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.
Annie BesantPeople think they can tame the earth. How absurd! The vanity of human wishes is endless. It is more fun to dance with life.
Frederick LenzIt is the great business of every Christian to save souls. People complain that they do not know how to take hold of this matter. Why, the reason is plain enough; they have never studied it. They have never taken the proper pains to qualify themselves for the work. If you do not make it a matter of study, how you may successfully act in building up the kingdom of Christ, you are acting a very wicked and absurd part as a Christian.
Charles Grandison FinneyHow are we going to know what sounds are important before we've even heard those sounds? It's an absurd question. The only thing we can say is that we're going to base it on our past experience. In other words, modern listening doesn't inform us of anything new. It simply keeps us in the past.
Gordon HemptonThe idea of a Supreme Being who creates a world in which one creature is designed to eat another in order to subsist, and then pass a law saying, "Thou shalt not kill," is so monstrously, immeasurably, bottomlessly absurd that I am at a loss to understand how mankind has entertained or given it house room all this long.
Peter De VriesThere 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 LyndIt is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus.
Murray RothbardIf believing absurd falsehoods increase the odds of getting laid or avoiding predators, your brain will believe those falsehoods with all its metaphorical little heart.
Peter WattsAfter 50, the rock 'n' roll road is a little absurd. It's very difficult to play these little places. You're out there on a rickety old bus with no place to shower.
Nancy SinatraA man of the best parts and greatest learning, if he does not know the world by his own experience and observation, will be very absurd, and consequently very unwelcome in company. He may say very good things; but they will be probably so ill-timed, misplaced, or improperly addressed, that he had much better hold his tongue.
Lord ChesterfieldAs soon as an American man loves a girl he wants to marry her. This is not only a blunder but it is rather absurd. It is so typical of American men, always wanting to do the noble thing.
Helen LawrensonI 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 absurd to imagine that any child will be able to earn a living, let alone contribute to resolving our world's complex problems, without knowing how to read and write. My foundation supports the National Writing Project so that teachers can be more effective in their efforts to improve literacy for all students.
Isabel AllendeI have often been asked whether I am a women or an athlete. The question is absurd. Men are not asked that. I am an athlete. I am a women.
Billie Jean KingName me the final number, the highest, the greatest. But that's absurd! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number? Then how can you speak of a final revolution? There is no final one. Revolutions are infinite.
Yevgeny ZamyatinNo language can fitly express the meanness, the baseness, the brutality, with which the world has ever treated its victims of one age and boasts of the next. Dante is worshipped at that grave to which he was hurried by persecution. Milton, in his own day, was "Mr. Milton, the blind adder, that spit his venom on the king's person"; and soon after, "the mighty orb of song." These absurd transitions from hatred to apotheosis, this recognition just at the moment when it becomes a mockery, saddens all intellectual history.
Edwin Percy WhippleI 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 Shutt