Absurd Quotes - Page 14

• When somebody asks, 'Whats the answer to all of these questions?' that's absurd. There is no answer, there are answers, along the way.

  Jacque Fresco

  Answers, Way, Asks

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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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• To persuade thinking persons in Eastern Europe that Central American Marxists - the Sandinistas, the guerillas in El Salvador - are in absurd and tragic error is not difficult. Poles and Czechs and Hungarians can hardly believe, after what they experienced under socialism, that other human beings would fall for the same bundle of lies, half-truths, and distortions. Sadly, however, illusion is often sweeter to human taste than reality. The last marxist in the world will probably be an American nun.

  Michael Novak

  Lying, War, Fall

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• Ladies playing cricket? Absurd. Just like a man trying to knit

  Len Hutton

  Men, Trying, Cricket

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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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• He has given ample evidence of qualities hardly any other living statesman has demonstrated to the same degree: the courage to look facts in the face and to seek flexible solutions, respect for others, give-and-take in dialog situations, absence of hypocrisy, a complete absence of grandeur in the conduct of his personal life. He has never been driven by blind self-assertion to make absurd decisions.

  Alice Miller

  Self, Hypocrisy, Giving

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• I'm a national security liberal, which I tell people because it's meant to sound absurd.

  Rachel Maddow

  People, Sound, National Security

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• To crush out fanaticism and revere the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to falling prostrate beneath the tree of creation and contemplating its vast ramifications full of stars. We have a duty to perform, to cultivate the human soul, to defend mystery against miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and to reject the absurd; to admit nothing that is inexplicable excepting what is necessary, to purify faith and obliterate superstition from the face of religion, to remove the vermin from the garden of God.

  Victor Hugo

  Crush, Stars, Fall

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• I remember when the idea of living to be 40 seemed absurd.

  Bruce Cockburn

  Ideas, Remember, Remember When

  "Gavin's Woodpile". www.brucecockburn.org. December 15, 2012.

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• For some high-profile men in trouble, women, especially feminist women, became the all-purpose scapegoats-charged with crimes that often descended into the absurd.

  Susan Faludi

  Men, Feminist, Purpose

  Susan Faludi (1991). “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women”

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• Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture; and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush.

  William Morris Hunt

  Blue, Eyelashes, Long

  William Morris Hunt (1878). “W.M. Hunt's Talks about Art: With a Letter from J.E. Millais”

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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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• I got to play with ZZ Top and introduce Bryan Adams and George Michael. And to have it all topped off by me winning 'American Idol?!' It's pretty absurd.

  David Cook

  Winning, Idols, Play

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• On Being John Malkovich and the cinema of the absurd, I do enjoy it. I wish there were more like it. The very fact that there can't be more like it is one of the reasons it's admirable.

  Carter Burwell

  Wish, Cinema, Facts

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• I'm often called an old-fashioned modernist. But the modernists had the absurd idea that architecture could heal the world. That's impossible. And today nobody expects architects to have these grand visions any more.

  Thom Mayne

  Ideas, Vision, World

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• The last person to stand still and repeat himself was Walt Disney. He refused to repeat himself. So to think that he'd be making the same kind of film in the year 2001 that he made in 1941 is absurd.

  Leonard Maltin

  Thinking, Years, Lasts

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• I 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. Edison

  Science, Talking, Machines

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• The central ideas of Christianity, an angry God and vicarious atonement, are contrary to every fact in nature, as also to the better aspirations of the human heart; they are, in our present stage of enlightenment, absurd, preposterous, and blasphemous propositions.

  Virchand Gandhi

  Heart, Ideas, Enlightenment

  "Christian Missions: A Triangular Debate, Before the Nineteenth Century Club of New York". The Monist: A Quarterly Magazine 5 (2), pp. 268-273, 1895.

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• Witchcraft is one of the most baseless, absurd, disgusting and silly of all the humbugs.

  P. T. Barnum

  Silly, Witchcraft, Disgusting

  P.T. BARNUM (1866). “THE HUMBUGS OF THE WORLD”, p.307

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• The absurd . . . the fact that with God all things are possible. The absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Understanding, Facts, Unexpected

  Fear and Trembling "Problemata: Preliminary Expectoration" (1843)

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• Imagine 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 Liu

  College, Class, Creating

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• I have seen people who practice yoga and Buddhism who are scared to death of the sorcery powers of others. This is absurd.

  Frederick Lenz

  Yoga, Buddhism, Practice

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