Absurd Quotes - Page 19

• It is absurd to suppose we can think of nature as a system apart from knowledge, for it is knowledge that is increasingly determining the course of nature.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Thinking, Courses

  "Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics" by Kenneth E. Boulding (p. 141), as quoted in "Evolutionary Economics and Human Nature" by John Laurent, (p. 175), 2003.

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• The concept of a value-free science is absurd.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Concepts, Values

  "Economics As A Moral Science". American Economic Review, 59 (1), p. 4, March 1969.

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• The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seemsas absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.

  Mary Blakely

  Mother, War, Writing

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• Finally, the illusions of validity and skill are supported by a powerful professional culture. We know that people can maintain an unshakeable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers. Given the professional culture of the financial community, it is not surprising that large numbers of individuals in that world believe themselves to be among the chosen few who can do what they believe others cannot.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Powerful, Believe, Skills

  Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.247, Macmillan

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• Grace is in a great measure a natural gift; elegance implies cultivation; or something of more artificial character. A rustic, uneducated girl may be graceful, but an elegant woman must be accomplished and well trained. It is the same with things as with persons; we talk of a graceful tree, but of an elegant house or other building. Animals may be graceful, but they cannot be elegant. The movements of a kitten or a young fawn are full of grace; but to call them "elegant" animals would be absurd.

  Richard Whately

  Girl, Character, Animal

  Elizabeth Jane Whately, Richard Whately (1860). “A Selection of English Synonyms”, p.59

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• The material which a scientist actually has at his disposal, his laws, his experimental results, his mathematical techniques, his epistemological prejudices, his attitude towards the absurd consequences of the theories which he accepts, is indeterminate in many ways, ambiguous, and never fully separated from the historical background . This material is always contaminated by principles which he does not know and which, if known, would be extremely hard to test.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Attitude, Law, Historical

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.51, Verso

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• Success is an absurd, erratic thing. She arrives when one least expects her and after she has come may depart again almost because of a whim.

  Alice Foote MacDougall

  Success, Erratic, May

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• The first cause of Absurd conclusions I ascribe to the want of Method.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Want, Firsts, Causes

  Thomas Hobbes (1750). “The Moral and Political Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury: Never Before Collected Together : To which is Prefixed, the Author's Life, Extracted from that Said to be Written by Himself, ...”, p.114

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• Most of the time it is a good job and a good honour to fight against people's values, because most of the time people's values are irrational and absurd!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Jobs, Fighting, People

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• I felt puny and absurd, a ludicrous midget. Easy enough to talk of soul and spirit and existential worth, but not when you're three feet tall.

  Richard Matheson

  Feet, Soul, Essentials

  "Fictional character: Scott Carey". "The Incredible Shrinking Man", www.imdb.com. February 22, 1957.

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• It strikes me as being morally repulsive and intellectually absurd that people die of want in a world of surplus.

  Bob Geldof

  People, Environmental, World

  "U2, Coldplay among bands to play in Live 8". www.today.com. May 31, 2005.

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• My objection to Christianity is that it is infinitely cruel, infinitely selfish, and, I might add, infinitely absurd.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Religious, Selfish, Religion

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.2591, Library of Alexandria

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• It is absurd to think that the general public can ever make money out of market forecasts.

  Benjamin Graham

  Thinking, Investing, Making Money

  Benjamin Graham (1959). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”

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• So man's insanity is heaven's sense, and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.

  Moby

  Men, Heaven, Insanity

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• Children, 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 Mirbeau

  Teacher, Children, Intellectual

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• There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.

  Thomas Piketty

  Discipline, Political, Intellectual

  Thomas Piketty (2017). “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, p.41, Harvard University Press

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• I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true.

  Leslie Charteris

  Laughter, Believe, Fighting

  "The Last Hero".

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• There’s no need to glamorize one body type and slam another. We need to stop this absurd hatred towards bodies for being different sizes. It doesn’t help anyone and it’s getting old.

  Jennie Runk

  Hatred, Being Different, Body Types

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• The Theatre of the Absurd is a theatrical embodiment and manifestation of existentialism. It is part reality and part nightmare

  Martin Esslin

  Reality, Theatre, Embodiment

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• Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd… The operation of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin of the immense biological order required for the origin of life.

  Duane Gish

  Origin Of Life, Order, Law

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• With an absurd oversimplification, the 'invention' of the calculus is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz. In reality, the calculus is the product of a long evolution that was neither initiated nor terminated by Newton and Leibniz, but in which both played a decisive part.

  Richard Courant

  Education, Reality, Men

  Richard Courant, Herbert Robbins (1979). “What is mathematics?: an elementary approach to ideas and methods”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Can the difficulty of an exam be measured by how many bits of information a student would need to pass it? This may not be so absurd in the encyclopedic subjects but in mathematics it doesn't make any sense since things follow from each other and, in principle, whoever knows the bases knows everything. All of the results of a mathematical theorem are in the axioms of mathematics in embryonic form, aren't they?

  Alfred Renyi

  Information, Principles, Needs

  Alfréd Rényi (1984). “A diary on information theory”

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• The other thing I like, in fact, several months ago I introduced a bill to end the absurd catch and release policy where our government has been giving tickets, essentially, to people who enter illegally and then letting them go and show up of their own volition.

  John Doolittle

  Letting Go, Government, People

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• I keep moving through time and time keeps moving through me. And through that process, life takes shape. The question is what shape it is. I'm not the first person to ask that question, or to see how absurd it is to think there's a real answer. Maybe life's a circle.

  Questlove

  Real, Moving, Thinking

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• Mr. Scott Fitzgerald deserves a good shaking. Here is an unmistakable talent unashamed of making itself a motley to the view. The Great Gatsby is an absurd story, whether considered as romance, melodrama, or plain record of New York high life.

  L.P. Hartley

  New York, Views, Romance

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