Absurd Quotes - Page 20

• 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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• However absurd it may seem, I do in all seriousness hereby declare that I am animated mainly by philanthropic motives. I desire to do good to my fellow creatures, even to the Cui bonos.

  Oliver Heaviside

  Science, Desire, May

  "Electrical Papers". Book by Oliver Heaviside, Vol. I; Preface, p. vii, 1892.

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• If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life....Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism.

  Chester Himes

  Life, Country, White

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• He may not see the King's antique apparel on kids in the Hall, but he does feel a tinge of nostalgia. The amount of teens wearing the Led Zeppelin '77 tour T-shirts walking around the Rock Hall is absurd. Absurd, ... I saw them on that tour and didn't even buy a shirt. It tells you what these kids feel about music. People take music very seriously.

  Howard Kremer

  Kings, Kids, Rocks

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• You might sit at your computer, thinking you own and control your own ideas but it doesn't take long before you realize that you're part of a bigger network. You're fully wrapped up in relationships out of which you come and in which you participate. To look at yourself as a single being is absurd. The new way to look at it is, 'I'm connected, therefore I am.'

  Kenneth J Gergen

  Thinking, Ideas, Long

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• Because 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 Bonta

  Friendship, Enemy, Reason

  "Shades of the World". Book by Vanna Bonta, 1985.

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• To know only artificial night is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.

  Henry Beston

  Night, Evil, Artificial

  Henry Beston, Elizabeth Jane Coatsworth (2001). “The Best of Beston: A Selection from the Natural World of Henry Beston from Cape Cod to the St. Lawrence”, p.28, David R. Godine Publisher

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• I'm on the verge of a total breakdown. Sciatica. Taxes. Cars. Fleas, possibly. It's an absurd existence.

  Jonathan Ames

  Car, Fleas, Sciatica

  Jonathan Ames (2012). “The Extra Man”, p.218, Simon and Schuster

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• Albert Camus, a great humanist and existentialist voice, pointed out that to commit to a just cause with no hope of success is absurd. But then, he also noted that not committing to a just cause is equally absurd. But only one choice offers the possibility for dignity. And dignity matters. Dignity matters.

  David Simon

  Voice, Choices, Matter

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• I have advocated postal reform for many years. The parliament said it was an absurd argument. The people have said it was the right thing.

  Junichiro Koizumi

  Years, People, Reform

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• Privatization of the postal system has long been characterized as absurd, but I have always said it is only logical.

  Junichiro Koizumi

  Long, Logical, Privatization

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• Although as a rule the absurd culminates, and it seems impossible for the voice of the individual ever to penetrate through the chorus of foolers and fooled, still there is left to the genuine works of all times a quite peculiar, silent, slow, and powerful influence; and as if by a miracle, we see them rise at last out of the turmoil like a balloon that floats up out of the thick atmosphere of this globe into purer regions. Having once arrived there, it remains at rest, and no one can any longer draw it down again.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Powerful, Voice, Miracle

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• The First Amendment reads more like a dream than a law, and no other nation, so far as I know, has been crazy enough to include such a dream among its fundamental legal documents. I defend it because it has been so successful for two centuries in preserving our freedom and increasing our vitality, knowing that all arguments in support of it are certain to sound absurd.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Dream, Crazy, Successful

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• In the best farce today we start with some absurd premise as to character or situation, but if the premises be once granted we move logically enough to the ending.

  George P. Baker

  Moving, Character, Today

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• Nothing can be proposed so wild or so absurd as not to find a party, and often a very large party to espouse it.

  Richard Cecil

  Party

  Richard Cecil (1825). “The works of the Rev. Richard Cecil ... with a memoir of his life: Arranged and rev., with a view of the author's character”, p.416

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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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• There is no such way to gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd Doctrines, as to guard them round about with Legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefin'd Words.

  John Locke

  Giving, Doctrine, Way

  John Locke (1714). “The Works of John Locke Esq: In Three Volumes. The Contents of which Follow in the Next Leaf. With Alphabetical Tables. ...”, p.228

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• Constitutions 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 Taylor

  America, Government, Judging

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• To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.

  Adam Smith

  Utopia, Should, Britain

  Adam Smith, David Buchanan (1817). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: With Notes, and an Additional Volume”, p.213

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• A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd except for purposes of punishment, and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally wrong, and when the World is at an end, what moral or warning purpose can eternal tortures answer?

  Lord Byron

  Revenge, Punishment, Atheism

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.2725, Delphi Classics

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• When I was a kid, I read comics. But when I saw how funny it was, and how wonderfully absurd, I said, "You know, I gotta do this."

  Adam West

  Kids, Saws, Said

  Interview with Noel Murray, tv.avclub.com. July 28, 2008.

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