Absurd Quotes - Page 13

• Depression: the healthy suspicion that modern life has no meaning and that modern society is absurd and alienating.

  Neel Burton

  Healthy, Modern Life, Suspicion

  Neel Burton (2017). “Growing from Depression, second edition”, p.61, Acheron Press

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• Faeries are not fantasy, but a connection to reality. Faeries are irrational, poetic, absurd, and very, very wise. Faeries say there is nonsense in dogma, and sense in nonsense. Faeries express themselves with high seriousness and low humour. Faeries are resistant to all definitions.

  Brian Froud

  Wise, Reality, Connections

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• Every professional golfer has a seperate coach for his drives, for approaches, for putting. In football we have one coach for 15 players. This is absurd.

  Johan Cruijff

  Change, Football, Player

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• There is nothing so absurd as knowledge spun too fine.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Knowledge, Fine, Spun

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• The gospel of a God found in broken flesh, humility, and measureless charity has defeated all the old lies, rendered the ancient order visibly insufficient and even slightly absurd, and instilled in us a longing for transcendent love so deep that-if once yielded to-it will never grant us rest anywhere but in Christ.

  David Bentley Hart

  Lying, Humility, Order

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• It is absurd to say in respect of any intelligence that it is infallible, but if you ask me what I believe, I believe the intelligence was correct, and I think in the end we will have an explanation.

  Tony Blair

  Believe, Thinking, Iraq

  "Powell admits weapons may not be found" by Duncan Campbell, Richard Norton-Taylor, www.theguardian.com. January 25, 2004.

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• Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation, And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had everything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

  W. H. Auden

  Teacher, Children, War

  "The Unknown Citizen" l. 22 (1939)

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• We must keep our freedom of mind, ... and must believe that in nature what is absurd, according to our theories, is not always impossible.

  Claude Bernard

  Nature, Believe, Science

  Claude Bernard (2012). “An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine”, p.66, Courier Corporation

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• I express many absurd opinions. But I am not the first man to do it; American freedom consists largely in talking nonsense.

  E. W. Howe

  Men, Talking, America

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• Most men are followers, and implicitly rely upon the judgment of others. They mistake solemnity for wisdom, and regard a grave countenance as the title page and Preface to a most learned volume. So they are easily imposed upon by forms, strange garments, and solemn ceremonies. And when the teaching of parents, the customs of neighbors, and the general tongue approve and justify a belief or creed, no matter how absurd, it is hard even for the strongest to hold the citadel of his soul. In each country, in defence of each religion, the same arguments would be urged.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Country, Wisdom, Mistake

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.773, Library of Alexandria

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• . . . I do think that deep down, a lot of my work is about people trying to make reasonable accommodations of situations that are insane or absurd. . . . At first I thought the events had power in themselves, that I would just present them. I really wasn't aware of the things that finally became central issues to me - the shifting alliances, the way people hardly even know they've shifted. That part of [A QUESTION OF MERCY] is very familiar to me in terms of my other plays.

  David Rabe

  Thinking, Play, Issues

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• It has become too easy to see that the luckless men of the past lived by mistakes, even absurd beliefs, so we may well fail in a decent respect for them, and forget that historians of the future will point out that we too lived by myths.

  Herbert J. Muller

  Mistake, Past, Men

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• The absurd, with its rupture of rationality-of conventional ways of seeing the world-is in fact an accurate and a productive way of understanding the world.

  William Kentridge

  Understanding, World, Rupture

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• The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him.

  Immanuel Kant

  Believe, Wish

  "A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources" by H. L. Mencken, (p. 955), 1946.

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• Life is not an orderly progression, self-contained like a musical scale or a quadratic equation... If one is to record one's life truthfully, one must aim at getting into the record of it something of the disorderly discontinuity which makes it so absurd, unpredictable, bearable.

  Leonard Woolf

  Self, Musical, Records

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• There is such an overvaluation of technology stocks that it is absurd. I would include our stock in that category. It is bad for the long-term worth of the economy.

  Steve Ballmer

  Technology, Long, Economy

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• The earlier, more analytic impulse was to use very rational but kind of absurd techniques or tendencies—mapping, charting, and architecture—to try and make sense of who I was in my time and space and political environment. But there’s only so much truth to a theoretical understanding of something.

  Julie Mehretu

  Space, Political, Understanding

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• Deep, dark unearthly black. I hadn't told anyone yet, but the color kept streaking across my mind at the oddest moments. When it did, my skin shivered pleasantly, and it was as if I could feel the color tracing a finger tenderly along my jaw, tipping my chin up to face it directly. I knew it was absurd to think a color would come to life, but once or twice, I was sure I'd caught a flash of something more substantial behind the color. A pair of eyes. The way they studied me cut to the heart.

  Becca Fitzpatrick

  Eye, Heart, Cutting

  Becca Fitzpatrick (2013). “The Complete Hush, Hush Saga: includes Hush, Hush; Crescendo; Silence and Finale”, p.578, Simon and Schuster

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• We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is absurd. If we do not look out we shall find our find schoolhouse standing in a cow-yard at last.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Yards, Looks

  Henry David Thoreau, Joseph O. Valentine, Thoreau Society (2001). “Thoreau on Land: Nature's Canvas”, p.88, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The main thing I don't like about myself is an absurd level of self-consciousness that makes any sort of social encounter an ordeal for me.

  Jarvis Cocker

  Self, Encounters, Levels

  "You can snort as much cocaine as you want and have as many beautiful women as you want ... but it doesn't make you happy" by Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. November 23, 2008.

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• They tried to say that being gay is a sin, and I said that adultery is a sin. Adultery is responsible for breaking up more marriages, but do we put that in the Constitution? It’s absurd.

  Al Sharpton

  Gay, Constitution, Adultery

  "Sharpton Pledges Fight Against Homophobia Among Blacks" by Jamal Watson, New York Sun, August 3, 2005.

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• Where joy in an old pencil is not absurd.

  May Sarton

  Joy, Pencils

  May Sarton (2014). “Collected Poems: 1930–1993”, p.98, Open Road Media

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• Idleness, indifference and irresponsibility are healthy responses to absurd work.

  Frederick Herzberg

  Healthy, Indifference, Response

  "Punished by Rewards: Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes". Book by Alfie Kohn, p. 205, 1999.

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• By one means or another, the swiftest method of rejection of the holy prophets has been to find a pretext, however false or absurd, to dismiss the man so that his message could also be dismissed.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Mean, Men, Holy Prophet

  Spencer W. Kimball (1982). “The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, Twelfth President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”

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• There is nothing more explosive than a skilled population condemned to inaction. Such a population is likely to become a hotbed of extremism and intolerance, and be receptive to any proselytizing ideology, however absurd and vicious, which promises vast action.

  Eric Hoffer

  Promise, Population, Action

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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