Absurdity Quotes - Page 15

• Jurists say that a capital crime submerges all lesser crimes; and so it is with faith. Its absurdity makes all petty difficultiesvanish.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Faith, Crime, Petty

  Soren Kierkegaard (2017). “Philosophical Fragments”, p.67, Jovian Press

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• What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man. How full of inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities it is. I declare that taking the average of many minds that have recently come before me ... I should prefer the obedience, affections and instinct of a dog before it.

  Michael Faraday

  Dog, Men, Average

  Michael Faraday, F. James (1999). “The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, Volume 4: 1849-1855”, p.542, IET

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• I know not whether it would be too bold an assertion to say that candor makes capacity.... But in order to try the truth of any observation relating to the mind, the easiest method is to illustrate it by outward objects. If, for instance, a man was to sweat and labor all the days of his life to fill a chest which was already full, the absurdity of his vain endeavor would be glaring. In the same manner, when the human mind is filled and stuffed with notions brought thither by fallacious inclinations, there is no room for truth to enter: candor being banished, passions alone bear the sway.

  Sarah Fielding

  Education, Passion, Men

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• When two terms belong to the same category, it is proper to construct conjunctive propositions embodying them. Thus a purchaser may say that he bought a left-hand glove and a right- hand glove, but not that he bought a left-hand glove, a right- hand glove, and a pair of gloves. 'She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair' is a well known joke based on the absurdity of conjoining terms of different types. Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this. It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds.

  Gilbert Ryle

  Home, Hands, Two

  Gilbert Ryle (2015). “The Concept of Mind”, p.15, Lulu Press, Inc

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• I think that his [Kurt Vonnegut's] appeal, though, will always be chiefly to adolescents. His sense of the world matches that of young people, who feel deeply life's absurdity.

  Michael Dirda

  Thinking, People, World

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I can't imagine a life without humor. Especially if you have an existential understanding of life, you must acknowledge the absurdity of it all.

  David Cronenberg

  Understanding, Existential, Imagine

  "David Cronenberg on his incest-heavy Hollywood satire, Maps To The Stars". Interview with Kiva Reardon, www.avclub.com. February 24, 2015.

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• A horror novel should reveal to you that you are falling apart. That there are ways your imagination can be made different. Can threaten what you think is. You should be holding onto that tree or rock screaming. Or laughing. Not at absurdity, either: absurdism is just a bourgeois and reactionary nostalgia for good, stable meaning.

  Tony Burgess

  Fall, Thinking, Rocks

  "The book should be something you protect yourself from by returning to your life". The Believer interview, logger.believermag.com. August 31, 2015.

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• With a character like a Captain Jack, who can essentially set up these verbal land mines around him, and just keep passing the "absurdity ball" around and the "irreverence ball" around, and keep people guessing and keep people confused, there's great safety in that. Me, myself, personally, I learn from it. It's a real pleasure, and I do need him.

  Johnny Depp

  Confused, Real, Character

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• Those who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.

  Voltaire

  Death, Atheist, Believe

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• Perhaps the sad and empty language that today's flabby humanity pours forth, will, in all its horror, in all its boundless absurdity, re-echo in the heart of a solitary man who is awake, and then perhaps that man, suddenly realizing that he does not understand, will begin to understand.

  Arthur Adamov

  Heart, Men, Echoes

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• I want the Brahmins to realize that the Dravidian people today are very much hating those who cunningly cheated them with absurdities. They are now aware of the particular community making a living by spreading the foolishness. People have begun to hate god, religion, caste, mythologies (puranas) and so on.

  Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

  Hate, People, Community

  Collected works of Periyar E.V.R., p. 517, 2005.

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• The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into the magic aura are not dealt with rationally but by a specific type of pseudo-reasoning. Absurdities and contradictions are made acceptable by specious rationalizations.

  Arthur Koestler

  Mind, Magic, Atheism

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• Religion can no longer rest its claims on a dogmatic supernaturalism, because any dogma that is irreconcilable with tested knowledge must be rejected... One sentence ... sums up the dark and deadly pages of Chistian history: "If we believe absurdities, we shall commit atrocities."

  Herbert J. Muller

  Believe, Dark, Atheism

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• One thing I'm a big fan of is the theater of the absurd. That's what I come from, that's what I love to do more than anything. What I love about absurdity is the words "comedy" and "drama" get thrown out the window and it's just life, which is absurd.

  Michael Shannon

  Drama, Fans, Comedy

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The greatness of a popular character is less according to the ratio of his genius than the sympathy he shows with the prejudices and even the absurdities of his time. Fanatics do not select the cleverest but the most fanatical leaders as was evidenced in the choice of Robespierre by the French Jacobins, and in that of Cromwell by the English Puritans.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Character, Greatness, Choices

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1854). “Memoirs of celebrated characters”, p.157

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• All systems of morality are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Bible, Prayer, Sublime

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 419), 1895.

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• Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Beautiful, Simple, Reality

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• Trees and flowers were often more meaningful to me than people. They always helped me, consoled me, giving the soul a chance to believe once more than the world was beautiful and sensible, that the mad absurdities and cruelties of men were against the laws of Nature and the Universal Mind; that sooner or later violence would suffer utter defeat on this Earth. No words collected in books were more effectively convincing to me than foliage, clouds, rippling waters, rain.

  Svetlana Alliluyeva

  Beautiful, Meaningful, Nature

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• There is a gentle absurdity about Washington, D.C., and it is easy to develop affection for the place, if you can forget that the consequences of what goes on there are real, whereas what goes on there may not be.

  Linda Ellerbee

  Real, Goes On, May

  Linda Ellerbee (1987). “"And so it goes": adventures in television”, Berkley Pub Group

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• It is quite easy to remark the absurdities and contradictions of a country's social system from outside its borders, but very difficult if one has been brought up in it.

  Doris Lessing

  Country, Borders, Easy

  Doris May Lessing (1991). “Martha Quest”, Plume

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• Wit is a pleasure-giving thing, largely because it eludes reason; but in the apprehension of an absurdity through the working of the comic spirit there is a foundation of reason, and an impetus to human companionship.

  Agnes Repplier

  Giving, Foundation, Elude

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• The first step in the elevation of women under all systems of religion is to convince them that the great Spirit of the Universe is in no way responsible for any of these absurdities.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  Way, Firsts, Steps

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• Chance never writ a legible book; chance never built a fair house; chance never drew a neat picture; it never did any of these things, nor ever will; nor can it be without absurdity supposed able to do them; which yet are works very gross and rude, very easy and feasible, as it were, in comparison to the production of a flower or a tree.

  Isaac Barrow

  Flower, Book, House

  Isaac Barrow (1859). “The theological works: In 9 vols. Ed. ... by Alexander Napier”, p.185

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• Absurdity is the one thing love can't stand; it can overlook anything else, -- coldness, or weakness, or viciousness, -- but just be ridiculous and that's the end of it!

  Margaret Deland

  Weakness, Ridiculous, Ends

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• The marriage vow is an absurdity imposed by society.

  George Sand

  Vow, Marriage Vows

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