Popular quotes about Absurd! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children.
Andre BretonI think the War on Terror is really absurd, especially coming from a country that is founded on terrorism.
Alice WalkerIn the years since The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, Voinovich has sharpened his satire, and Monumental Propaganda is a novel that slashes and rips -- but not on every page. He expands his narrative to accommodate shrewd philosophy and inventive portraiture, a very amusing disquisition on Soviet latrines and a number of outlandish plot developments. In his translation, Andrew Bromfield deftly shifts his tone and tools as required, remaining true to Voinovich's Vonnegut-like playfulness and appreciation of the absurd.
Ken KalfusThe 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 MommsenI hate the tribal hatred thesis - in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and places like that they kill each other because that's just what people do there. I think it's profoundly ignorant. I was astonished when Samuel Huntington wrote his famous clash of civilizations essay in response to the Yugoslavian war. I was on the streets in Sarajevo and every other person I met came from a mixed marriage. And here is Professor Huntington from Harvard writing this is a clash of civilizations. That was absurd.
Payam AkhavanIt is absurd to think that anything in us could have the least influence upon our election. Some say that God did foresee that such persons would believe, and therefore did choose them; so they would make the business of salvation to depend upon something in us. Whereas God does not choose us FOR faith, but TO faith. "He hath chosen us, that we should be holy" (Eph. 1:4), not because we would be holy, but that we might be holy. We are elected to boldness, not for it.
Thomas WatsonMen 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 am walking like a bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.
Edgar Allan PoeWe have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution at some point stopped and "history" took over is absurd, though it is widespread among various social scientists and humanists.
Robert Neelly Bellah... For all our alarm, it is clear that the religious right is responding to a real hunger in our society... a deep-seated yearning for stable values... When conservative Christian groups talk of failures in our educational system, the erosion of our moral standards, and the waste of young lives, they are addressing real and legitimate concerns... Among secularists, the aversion toward discussion of moral values, let alone religion, can reach absurd extremes.
Norman LearWithout discipline and detachment, an actor is an emotional slob, spilling his insides out. This abandonment is having an unfortunate vogue. It is tasteless, formless, absurd. Without containment there is no art. All this vomiting and wheezing and bursting at the seams is no more great acting than the convulsions of raving maniacs.
Bette DavisI 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 HedayatAnd when you cannot prove that people are wrong, but only that they are absurd, the best course is to let them alone.
Thomas HuxleyBut, as Douglas E Harding has pointed out, we tend to think of this planet as a life-infested rock, which is as absurd as thinking of the human body as a cell infested skeleton. Surely all forms of life, including man, must be understood as "symptoms" of the earth, the solar system, and the galaxy in which case we cannot escape the conclusion that the galaxy is intelligent.
Alan WattsI 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 BaillieBecause I had goodwill for all, I thought all were my friends. And then I learned of treachery, that some preferred my end. It wasn't the goodwill I felt that made someone a friend. What handy day, the one I learned the meaning of the word. How good to know my enemies (though their reasons are absurd!)
Vanna BontaIf the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it "a discussion
Simone de BeauvoirWhat an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.
Joseph AddisonHow absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.
Soren KierkegaardHumans are creatures, who spent their lifes trying to convince themselves, that their existence is not absurd
Albert CamusI 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 HowardWhatever 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 HegelI have never learned to say 'gas' for gasoline. It seems to me as absurd as if I were to say 'but' for butter.
Mary Roberts RinehartI think it's very important to feed the body what it craves and not be in your head about it, panicking, carrying around some calorie-counting wheel in your bag or something equally absurd. I'm really not a fan of that at all.
Tracy AndersonYou are walking in a desert.You hear a bird singing.As absurd as it may seem for a bird to be pending in the desert,you are obligated to make it a tree.That's poem
Kiki DimoulaI think certain people would be moved to be nostalgic about America's glory days, when the music set the tone for the cultural conversation and popular musicians had this absurd level of authority.
David LongstrethBlaming the imperialists nowadays is obviously absurd, as is blaming the Americans, who obviously don't have the slightest desire to control anything in the Middle East. The American desire is to get out as quickly as possible and the general view is that now that the Cold War is over and the Soviets are no longer a problem, we have no reason to stay there, let's get out. They will have to confront their own problems. Israel provides a useful scapegoat but it's a limited one.
Bernard LewisWhenever the essential nature of things is analysed by the intellect, it must seem absurd or paradoxical. This has always been recognized by the mystics, but has become a problem in science only very recently.
Fritjof CapraMy point of view is, I'm just a person, and there are times when I look at other people and think, 'My God, they spend so much time thinking about things that seem so absurd.' But I'm sure people must think the same thing about me.
Ian MacKayeAnother cause of confusion, and the resulting feelings of nervousness, hurry, and anxiety, is the absurd habit of trying to do many things at one time.
Maxwell MaltzEvolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.
Richard DawkinsThe idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard -it is absurd, unreal, dangerous. The fact is we can only love what we know personally. And we cannot know much.
E. M. ForsterIt is simply absurd to say you believe, or even want to believe, in Him, if you do not do anything He tells you.
George MacDonaldYou believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?
Mark TwainThe fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Bertrand RussellGlobal warming pollution, indeed all pollution, is now described by economists as an โexternality.โ This absurd label means, in essence: we donโt to keep track of this stuff so letโs pretend it doesnโt exist.
Al GoreChildren, by nature, are keen, passionate and curious. What was referred to as laziness is often merely an awakening of sensitivity, a psychological inability to submit to certain absurd duties, and a natural result of the distorted, unbalanced education given to them. This laziness, which leads to an insuperable reluctance to learn, is, contrary to appearances, sometimes proof of intellectual superiority and a condemnation of the teacher.
Octave MirbeauI think it is absurd to give such tremendous importance to the distinctions between men and women. When I meet someone I regard that person as a human being. I do not say "This is a man; this is a woman."
Jiddu KrishnamurtiGiving government aid to a bank basically transforms it into a utility. The huge salaries in this sector are only a symptom of a more profound misalignment. The profitability of the finance industry has been excessive. [...] That was absurd.
George SorosNothing can be proposed so wild or so absurd as not to find a party, and often a very large party to espouse it.
Richard CecilOnce an absurdity is accepted as truth, it will seem truer the more absurd it is shown to be.
Robert BreaultI like film because it brings you very close to the absurd reality that you might spend a day shooting and not get a single image that you like or works, and you won't really know for a few days at least as you wait. It connects you and grounds you to a material reality and a patience that seems lost with digital. I also think the grain texture remains forever different, and in my opinion, what I find to be more beautiful.
Anton Yelchin