Absurd Quotes - Page 28

• Whatever happens, every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as absurd to fancy that a philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as it is to fancy that an individual can overleap his own age, jump over Rhodes.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Time, Children, Philosophy

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1958). “Philosophy of right”

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• Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up. Growing up--thatis our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Education, Children, Growing Up

  Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel (1996). “The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects”, Hardwired

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• Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible.

  Mason Cooley

  Faith, Plausible

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• The absurd is sin without God.

  Albert Camus

  Sin, Absurdity, Without God

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.40, Vintage

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• I was thinking of the word Surrealistic . . . I don't think it should be used exclusively with my photographs. The meaning is close but I think my tendencies are more toward the whimsical or absurd. Surrealism is more connected with morbidity. From that I am very far away.

  Eva Fuka

  Thinking, Far Away, Whimsical

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• It is unheard-of, uncivilized barbarism that any woman should still be forced to bear such monstrous torture. It should be remedied. It should be stopped. It is simply absurd that, with our modern science, painless childbirth does not exist as a matter of course.... I tremble with indignation when I think ofthe unspeakable egotism and blindness of men of science who permit such atrocities when they can be remedied.

  Isadora Duncan

  Men, Thinking, Matter

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• To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one's fellow countrymen.... But toemigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.

  John Berger

  Moving, World, May

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.46, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.

  Horace Walpole

  Women, Sometimes, Enough

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• One cricket said to another -
  come, let us be ridiculous, and say love!
  love love love love love
  let us be absurd, woman, and say hate!
  hate hate hate hate hate
  and then let us be angelic
  and say nothing.

  Conrad Aiken

  Love, Hate, Ridiculous

  Conrad Aiken (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.151, Oxford University Press

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• Another cause of confusion, and the resulting feelings of nervousness, hurry, and anxiety, is the absurd habit of trying to do many things at one time.

  Maxwell Maltz

  Confusion, Anxiety, Feelings

  Maxwell Maltz (2015). “Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded”, p.58, Penguin

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• It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism - as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way.

  James Bovard

  Government, People, Political

  James Bovard (2015). “Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen”, p.222, Macmillan

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• To say that everything in the bible is to be believed , simply because it is found in that volume, is equally absurd and pernicious... To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Giving, May, His Love

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• I feel that I communicate best when I am not deliberately being linear. Along this same line, I feel some of the best sermons I've ever heard were in the theatre rather than the pulpit - as, for example, in the Theatre of the Absurd.

  Reverend Malcolm Boyd

  Theatre, Example, Lines

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• Not only does the psyche exist, but it is existence itself. It is an almost absurd prejudice to suppose that existence can only be physical...We might well say, on the contrary, that physical existence is a mere inference, since we know of matter only in so far as we perceive psychic images mediated by the senses.

  Carl Jung

  Psychics, Doe, Prejudice

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• And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.

  Robert Browning

  Book, Ignorance, Soul

  'Cleon' (1855) l. 57

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• It is usually a mistake to impose an individual's taste on a room that has its own....style. Conversely, to put very fine pieces of furniture in a room that is without architectural distinction is as absurd as wearing a tiara with a bathing suit.

  Nancy Lancaster

  Mistake, Design, Style

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• Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

  William Butler Yeats

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• We almost always live outside ourselves, and life itself is a continual dispersion. But it's towards ourselves that we tend, as towards a centre around which, like planets, we trace absurd and distant ellipses.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Chaos, Planets, Centre

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (1996). “Book of Disquietude”, Carcanet Press Limited

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• I like the unreality of your mind; the whole thing is very splendid and voluptuous and absurd.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mind, Chaos, Splendid

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• A sceptic finds Dallas absurd. A cynic thinks the public doesn't

  Clive James

  Thinking, Dallas, Classic

  Clive James (1983). “Glued to the box: television criticism from the Observer, 1979-82”, Jonathan Cape

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• Men of Oregon, I invite you to become students of your events. Running, one might say, is basically an absurd past-time upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning, in the kind of running you have to do to stay on this team, chances are you will be able to find meaning in another absurd past-time: life.

  Bill Bowerman

  Running, Team, Men

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• The reason it is difficult is that we have been conditioned to laugh at conspiracy theories, and few people will risk public ridicule by advocating them. On the other hand, to endorse the accidental view is absurd. Almost all of history is an unbroken trail of one conspiracy after another. Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception.

  G. Edward Griffin

  Views, Hands, People

  "The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve". Book by G. Edward Griffin, 1995.

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• The way I portrayed the people is accurate. Because they're human beings and we have a kind of wonderful capacity to be absurd and ridiculous.

  Jon Ronson

  People, Way, Ridiculous

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• Al Bernstein has seen cable television sports grow up. In 30 Years/30 Undeniable Truths he looks at his time in the industry through a prism that is unique to him. This book gives the reader an insight into the sometimes absurd world of television sports. There is a 31st undeniable truth: Al Bernstein is a truly funny man.

  Barry Tompkins

  Sports, Growing Up, Book

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• What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Attention, Valuable

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.243

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