Absurdity Quotes - Page 9

• What do dancers think of Fred Astaire? It's no secret. We hate him. He gives us a complex because he's too perfect. His perfection is an absurdity. It's too hard to face.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Hate, Thinking, Giving

  "Astaire, the biography". Book by Tim Satchell, 1987.

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• My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the love of natural beauty and the fear of natural meaninglessness or absurdity.

  Hayden Carruth

  Thinking, Natural, States

  "Hayden Carruth, Poet and Critic, Dies at 87" by William Grimes, www.nytimes.com. September 30, 2008.

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• You've just got to focus on excellence and try not to be distracted by the news and the rumors and the absurdities of the stories that were coming out.

  James Daly

  Focus, Excellence, Rumor

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• If you want to change from sex towards love, try to understand your sexuality. Watch it, watch the mechanicalness of it. See the futility, see the whole absurdity of it - it is not leading you anywhere. Become a little more refined, become a little more subtle. Look not for the body, but somebody's being. Watch, explore. Sooner or later you will find somebody who fits with you.

  Rajneesh

  Sex, Trying, Watches

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• Atheism leads to numerous absurdities promoted by otherwise intelligent people.

  Dave Hunt

  Atheist, Intelligent, People

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• As for democracy, the men of sense among us knew what it was, and I perhaps as well as any, as I have more cause to complain of it; but there is nothing new to be said of a patent absurdity-meanwhile we did not think it safe to alter it under the pressure of your hostility.

  Thucydides

  Men, Thinking, Democracy

  Thucydides, Victor Davis Hanson, Robert B. Strassler (2008). “The Landmark Thucydides”, p.413, Simon and Schuster

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• We are living in an interminable succession of absurdities imposed by the myopic logic of short-term thinking.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Thinking, Myopic, Logic

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• When we examine the opinions of men, we find that nothing is more uncommon, than common sense; or, in other words, they lack judgment to discover plain truths, or to reject absurdities, and palpable contradictions.

  Baron d'Holbach

  Men, Common Sense, Opinion

  "Good Sense without God, or, Freethoughts Opposed to Supernatural Ideas". Book by Baron d'Holbach, 1900.

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• Religion is a belief in invisible beings, inaudible voices, intangible entities, undetectable forces, and events and judgments that happen after we die. It therefore has no reality check. And it is therefore uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self-correction. It is uniquely armored against anything that might stop it from spinning into extreme absurdity, extreme denial of reality… and extreme, grotesque immorality.

  Greta Christina

  Reality, Voice, Self

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• ... art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these nauseous thoughts about the horror or absurdity of existence into notions with which one can live.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Art, Healing, Saving

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.60, Modern Library

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• This clash is an absurdity because on one hand there is much scientific proof in favor of evolution, which appears as a reality that we must see and which enriches our understanding of life and being as such.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Reality, Hands, Understanding

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• Part of being a comedian is that it's your job to look at life and regurgitate it in a funny way, to point out its absurdities.

  Greg Behrendt

  Jobs, Comedian, Looks

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• I really enjoy playing that everyman part because that part is us, the audience. And you need somebody inside a comedy to tether the absurdity to reality.

  Jason Bateman

  Reality, Needs, Comedy

  "Career Watch: Jason Bateman Gets Down with his ‘Bad’ Self" by Susan Wloszczyna, www.indiewire.com. March 17, 2014.

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• I feel completely at home in the absurdities of India.

  Upamanyu Chatterjee

  Home, India, Feels

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• My space chums think reality was once a primitive method of crowd control that got out of hand. In my view, it’s absurdity dressed up in a three-piece business suit.

  Jane Wagner

  Reality, Thinking, Views

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• An opinion, right or wrong, can never constitute a moral offense, nor be in itself a moral obligation. It may be mistaken; it may involve an absurdity, or a contradiction. It is a truth; or it is an error: it can never be a crime or a virtue.

  Frances Wright

  Errors, May, Opinion

  Frances Wright (1850). “A few days in Athens: being the translation of a Greek manuscript discovered in Herculaneum”, p.166

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• Born to an age where horror has become commonplace, where tragedy has, by its monotonous repetition, become a parody of sorrow, we need to fence off a few parks where humans try to be fair, where skill has some hope of reward, where absurdity has a harder time than usual getting a ticket.

  Thomas Boswell

  Skills, Sorrow, Tragedy

  Thomas Boswell (1984). “Why Time Begins on Opening Day”, Doubleday Books

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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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• The idea that the bumps or depressions on a man's head indicate the presence or absence of certain moral characteristics in his mental equipment is one of the absurdities developed from studies in this field that has long since been discarded by science. The ideas of the phrenologist Gall, however ridiculous they may now seem in the light of a century's progress, were nevertheless destined to become metamorphosed into the modern principles of cerebral localization.

  Edward Anthony Spitzka

  Science, Men, Light

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• No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Believe, Book, Writing

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• The absurdity of public-choice theory is captured by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen in the following little scenario: "Can you direct me to the railway station?" asks the stranger. "Certainly," says the local, pointing in the opposite direction, towards the post office, "and would you post this letter for me on your way?" "Certainly," says the stranger, resolving to open it to see if it contains anything worth stealing.

  Linda McQuaig

  Winning, Opposites, Office

  Linda McQuaig (2001). “All you can eat: greed, lust, and the new capitalism”, Viking

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• Leaps of innovation require a bravery that borders on absurdity.

  Astro Teller

  Bravery, Innovation, Borders

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• Poor human reason, when it trusts in itself, substitutes the strangest absurdities for the highest divine concepts

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Saint, Poverty, Reason

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• But shall gravity be therefore called an occult cause, and thrown out of philosophy, because the cause of gravity is occult and not yet discovered? Those who affirm this, should be careful not to fall into an absurdity that may overturn the foundations of all philosophy. For causes usually proceed in a continued chain from those that are more compounded to those that are more simple; when we are arrived at the most simple cause we can go no farther ... These most simple causes will you then call occult and reject them? Then you must reject those that immediately depend on them.

  Roger Cotes

  Philosophy, Fall, Science

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• Manlius ... took care in his invitations, actively sought to exclude from his circle crude and vulgar men like Caius Valerius. But they were all around; it was Manlius who lived in a dream world, and his bubble of civility was becoming smaller and smaller. Caius Valerius, powerful member of a powerful family, had never even heard of Plato. A hundred, even fifty years before, such an absurdity would have been inconceivable. Now it was surprising if such a man did know anything of philosophy, and even if it was explained, he would not wish to understand.

  Iain Pears

  Dream, Powerful, Plato

  Iain Pears (2003). “Dream of Scipio”, p.18, Penguin

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