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It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.
Archibald MacLeishGod has told us Latter-day Saints that we shall be condemned if we do not enter into that principle of polygamy; and yet I have heard now and then (I am very glad to say that only a low such instances have come under my notice) a brother or a sister say, 'I am a Latter-day Saint, but I do not believe in polygamy.' Oh, what an absurd expression! What an absurd idea! A person might as well say, 'I am a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, but I do not believe in him.'
Orson PrattIt is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in nutrition, in agriculture, in the wholesomeness of mind and spirit is as absurd as a farmer who is uninterested in health. Our fragmentation of this subject cannot be our cure, because it is our disease. The body cannot be whole alone. Persons cannot be whole alone. It is wrong to think that bodily health is compatible with spiritual confusion or cultural disorder, or with polluted air and water or impoverished soil.
Wendell BerryIn the whole of your absurd past you discover so much that's absurd, so much deceit and credulity, that it might be a good idea to stop being young this minute, to wait for youth to break away from you and pass you by, to watch it going away, receding in the distance, to see all its vanity, run your hand through the empty space it has left behind, take a last look at it, and then start moving, make sure your youth has really gone, and then calmly, all by yourself, cross to the other side of Time to see what people and things really look like.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine. . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!
Friedrich NietzscheI pitched Jay Hunt the opening scene (prime minister, middle of the night, he's woken up...). She paused, and then she laughed. She was very intrigued and all that, and then she said, "Does it have to be a pig?" So we went through various options: Could it be a supermarket frozen chicken? A giant wheel of cheese? A pig seemed just the right level of absurd, but then when he walks in and there's actually a pig there, it's awful.
Charlie BrookerIt 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 WatsonExistence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It was appalling, it was disgusting, it was stupid.
Charles BukowskiThis is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.
Bertrand RussellImagine 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 LiuI trust Angela Merkel, she is a very open person. She is also subject to certain constraints and limitations. But she is honestly trying to settle the crisis, also in the south-east of Ukraine. However, what the European Union is doing with those sanctions is nothing but a theatre of the absurd.
Vladimir PutinThe masses will not vote for their own upliftment in a higher order of society. This has to be accomplished without their support and request, despite them and indeed against them. It is absurd to pivot your whole project, as does a conventional party, on the submission of change to the decision of those who so need to be changed. You might as well make the case for law and order conditional on the approval of the criminals.
Colin JordanBecause 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 BontaHuman beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow. It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation. I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.
Charlotte BronteIf the feminine issue is so absurd, is because the male's arrogance made it "a discussion
Simone de BeauvoirIt is as absurd to expect members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of art departments to be artists.
Leo StraussWhen the institutions of money rule the world, it is perhaps inevitable that the interests of money will take precedence over the interests of people. What we are experiencing might best be described as a case of money colonizing life. To accept this absurd distortion of human institutions and purpose should be considered nothing less than an act of collective, suicidal insanity.
David KortenIt is an absurd fiction that the churches are useful. They are nothing more than propaganda centers for superstitious faiths and doctrines. Church members have a right to believe in and propagate their various doctrines. But they should pay every item of the cost, of this propaganda, including fair taxation for all church property.
E. Haldeman-JuliusWhat 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 HowertonI 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 HowardThe theist must present an intelligible description of god. Until he does so, god makes no more sense than unie; both are cognitively empty, and any attempt at proof is logically absurd.
George H. SmithIt begins and ends with money. It's absurd in this day and age when we need so much money for education, health, for people, that a $100 million dollars can be spent on a film. It's obscene
Kathleen TurnerIt is absurd if something that is fundamental for humanity and for its survival should in itself be defined as submission. That would mean that society can't carry on without the submission of women.
Kristina SchroderVaclav Havel was the most amazing man in terms of being the combination of somebody with massive moral authority, great courage for having espoused the concepts of democracy, freedom throughout a very difficult communist period, a very modest man, and somebody with a fabulous sense of humor and the idea of being able to see the absurd in situations.
Judy WoodruffWe are divided between those who think with their heads and those who know with their heart. Consider Harriet Miers. If you think about Harriet Miers, of course her nomination is absurd. But the President didn't say he thought about his selection. He said this: "I know her heart." Notice how he said nothing about her brain? He didn't have to. He feels the truth about Harriet Miers.
Stephen ColbertYou're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation.
Octave MirbeauI mean, if you're asking a fellow to come out of a room so that you can dismember him with a carving knife, it's absurd to tack a 'sir' on to every sentence. The two things don't go together.
P. G. WodehouseThe Bible was written between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago, and it's filled with the knowledge that people had in that period of time, some of which you and I rejected long ago. The Bible says that women are property, that homosexuals ought to be put to death, that anybody who worships a false God ought to be executed, that a child that talks back to his parents ought to be stoned at the gates of the city. Those ideas are absurd.
John Shelby SpongIt 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 WattsIt is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.
Benjamin GrahamThe self identity of Man is transcultural, and thus cannot have any single point of reference. Pluralism is not synonymous with tolerance of a variety of opinions. Pluralism amounts to the recognition of the unthinkable, the absurd, and up to a limit, intolerable. Reality in itself does not need to be transparent intelligible.
Raimon PanikkarThe caricature of what George Osborne is doing on the fiscal side is absurd. If you read some of the commentary, particularly from the left, you would think he was turning the clock back to the 1930s.
Nick CleggI like the unreality of your mind; the whole thing is very splendid and voluptuous and absurd.
Virginia WoolfConstitutions are violated, and it would be absurd to expect the federal government to enforce the Constitution against itself. If the very federal judges the Constitution was partly intended to restrain were the ones exclusively charged with enforcing it, then "America possesses only the effigy of a Constitution." The states, the very constituents of the Union, had to do the enforcing.
John TaylorThe media have the ability to attract the craziest people to call in perfectly absurd tips. Every newsroom in the world gets updates from UFOlogists, graphologists, scientologists, paranoiacs, and every sort of conspiracy theorist.
Steig LarssonI told [Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted "Mary had a little lamb," etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. On first words spoken on a phonograph.
Thomas A. EdisonIn some ways it is absurd for me to assert, counter to evidence, that I have not been writing.
Shirley Geok-lin LimI did extensive research on media and anorexia and found out that the fashion magazines are to blame in a way. They project an image of a woman that is completely absurd, but girls and women believe they should be very skinny. They don't look like real woman anymore.
Oliviero ToscaniWorld peace through nonviolent means is neither absurd nor unattainable. All other methods have failed. Thus we must begin anew. Nonviolence is a good starting point. Those of us who believe in this method can be voices of reason, sanity, and understanding amid the voices of violence, hatred, and emotion. We can very well set a mood of peace out of which a system of peace can be built.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Imagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part.
John MalkovichThis ghastly state of things is what you call Bunburying, I suppose? Algernon. Yes, and a perfectly wonderful Bunbury it is. The most wonderful Bunbury I have ever had in my life. Jack. Well, you've no right whatsoever to Bunbury here. Algernon. That is absurd. One has a right to Bunbury anywhere one chooses. Every serious Bunburyist knows that.
Oscar Wilde