Absurdity Quotes - Page 10

• It's one of the saving graces in a life, to be able to perceive one's own and others' absurdity, to notice our shared human frailties and be able, at least some of the time, to smile rather than grimace. Like most people, I must have started out with a comic worldview in my cupboard.

  Jane Hirshfield

  People, Grace, Saving

  Source: www.americanmicroreviews.com

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• Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities.

  Voltaire

  Believe, Atrocities, Made

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• Major Greene this evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the argument he advanced was, "that a mere creature or finite being could not make satisfaction to infinite justice for any crimes," and that "these things are very mysterious." Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity.

  John Adams

  Wisdom, Jesus, Justice

  John Adams (1961). “Diary and Autobiography of John Adams: Diary, 1755-1770”, Belknap Pr

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• Since natural law was thought to be accessible to the ordinary man, the theory invited each juror to inquire for himself whether a particular rule of law was consonant with principles of higher law. This view is reflected in John Adams' statement that it would be an 'absurdity' for jurors to be required to accept the judge's view of the law, 'against their own opinion, judgment, and conscience.'

  John Adams

  Men, Views, Law

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• The 'harmonious world' theory .. will help dispel doubts in the international community about China's continued development and refute the absurd 'China threat theory'.

  Ye Xiaowen

  Community, Doubt, Development

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• The abuse of grace is affectation, as the abuse of the sublime is absurdity; all perfection is nearly a fault.

  Voltaire

  Perfection, Grace, Sublime

  Voltaire (2016). “Voltaire – The Philosophical Works: Treatise On Tolerance, Philosophical Dictionary, Candide, Letters on England, Plato’s Dream, Dialogues, The Study of Nature, Ancient Faith and Fable, Zadig…: From the French writer, historian and philosopher, famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion and freedom of expression”, p.1061, e-artnow

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• Untruth being unacceptable to the mind of man, there is no other defence left for absurdity but obscurity.

  John Locke

  Men, Mind, Obscurity

  John Locke (1824). “Of human understanding. A defence of Mr. Locke's opinion concerning personal identity. Of the conduct of the understanding. Some thoughts concerning reading and study for a gentleman. Elements of natural philosophy. A new method of common-place-book”, p.29

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• There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

  Frank McCourt

  Poverty, Absurd

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• Art and work and art and life are very connected and my whole life has been absurd. There isn't a thing in my life that has happened that hasn't been extreme - personal health, family, economic situations...absurdity is the key word.

  Eva Hesse

  Art, Keys, Economic

  "Art since 1940, strategies of being". Book by Jonathan Fineberg, copyright Prentice Hall, Inc., 1995.

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• In the potential of absurdity, hiding in the disparate combination of the various different subjects which in themselves are nothing but daily items equally in the exclusive representation of a normal item taken out of their usual context, is by far the most radical - in its effect comparable to a Japanese Zen koan - paradox to be witnessed, which modern art has produced, one of the most forceful impulses that generated from it.

  Antoni Tapies

  Art, Taken, Usual

  "Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 - 2003" by Antoni Tapies, Kunsthalle Emden, edited by Achim Sommer, Altana, (p. 28), 2004.

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• It's absurd. We would all like to see Cuba move toward civil society and free markets and greater respect for human rights. But the U.S. policy is exactly the wrong way to go about it.

  Wayne Smith

  Moving, Rights, Cuba

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• [Opera] does not call so much for an imaginative ear as for an imaginative eye, an eye which can see beyond little absurdities toward great truths.

  George Richard Marek

  Eye, Doe, Ears

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• The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that's how it should be.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Strong, Thinking, Practice

  Alexander McCall Smith (2007). “Love Over Scotland”, p.53, Anchor

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• The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.

  Martin Gardner

  Book, Heart, Turtles

  "The Annotated Alice". Book by Martin Gardner (Introduction), 1960.

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• The attempt to regulate relations between people too closely, by means of the law, in the name of an abstraction such as equality, leads to both absurdity and cruelty. The British are fast turning themselves into a nation of slaves, where even the slave-masters are not free.

  Anthony Daniels

  Mean, Law, Names

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• I've always been interested in the form itself, so I always feel like I've never been good at going ahead with the artifice and not acknowledging the self in the artistic process, and not acknowledging the absurdity of pretending that's required in fiction.

  Dave Eggers

  Self, Fiction, Artistic

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. February 23, 2005.

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• Mere absurdity has never prevented the triumph of bad ideas, if they accord with easily aroused fantasies of an existence freed of human limitations.

  Anthony Daniels

  Ideas, Triumph, Fantasy

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• So the absurdity of happiness is that it is embarrassing to discuss or even mention, impossible to define or measure, may not be achievable at all - or, at best, only intermittently and unconsciously - and may even turn into its opposite if directly pursued, but that it frequently turns up unexpectedly in the course of pursuing something else. There is no tease more infuriating...It is tempting to forget the whole thing and simply fall back on the couch with a remote control in one hand and a beer in the other.

  Michael Foley

  Fall, Beer, Hands

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• ... art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Healing, Saving

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.60, Modern Library

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• To measure prices by a currency that is called by the same names as gold, but that is really inferior in value to gold, and then - because those prices are nominally higher than gold prices - to say that they are inflated, relatively to gold, is a perfect absurdity.

  Lysander Spooner

  Names, Perfect, Gold

  Lysander Spooner (1971). “The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner: Economic writings”

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• Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Sports, Men, Hands

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “Jefferson on Freedom: Wisdom, Advice, and Hints on Freedom, Democracy, and the American Way”, p.39, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• I don't think it was pain that made [Vincent Van Gogh] great - I think his painting brought him whatever happiness he had.

  David Lynch

  Pain, Creativity, Thinking

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• Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.

  David Lynch

  Creativity, Thinking, Keys

  Interview with Andy Battaglia, film.avclub.com. January 23, 2007.

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• I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Believe, Our Actions, Sometimes

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• It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)

  John Calvin

  Faith, Ignorance, Humility

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