Absurd Quotes - Page 18

• [The UN should remain in New York] because every country needs a cesspool. And the UN is always interesting as a theater of the absurd.

  Ed Koch

  Country, New York, Government

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• As soon as an American man loves a girl he wants to marry her. This is not only a blunder but it is rather absurd. It is so typical of American men, always wanting to do the noble thing.

  Helen Lawrenson

  Girl, Sex, Men

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• One of society's absurd delusions is that the spending of money can cure something.

  Vernon Howard

  Money, Cures, Spending

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• Should the poor be flattered? No; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, and crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning.

  William Shakespeare

  Crooks, May, Knees

  William Shakespeare (1833). “The plays and poems of William Shakspeare”, p.846

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• It would be absurd for me or any other editor to review the authenticity or accuracy of stories that are nominated for prizes.

  Bob Woodward

  Editors, Would Be, Stories

  "It Wasn't a Game" by Bill Green, www.washingtonpost.com. April 19, 1981.

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• Sometimes the cultures phobia of religion borders on the absurd.

  Ralph E. Reed, Jr.

  Christian, Religious, Borders

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• If you ask a Saudi Imam why women in Saudi Arabia can't drive, he'll say, 'Because Islam demands it.' But that's absurd, because - first of all - Islam demands no such thing; and secondly, the only country in the world in which women can't drive is Saudi Arabia. The inability to understand the difference between a cultural practice and religious belief is shocking among self-described intellectuals.

  Reza Aslan

  Leadership, Wisdom, Country

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• I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly.

  Rainn Wilson

  Real, Thinking, Play

  Interview with David Hirschman, bigthink.com. November 11, 2010.

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• Evil is a really tough concept for me. The idea of a villain that is bad for bad's sake seems kind of absurd.

  Christopher McQuarrie

  Ideas, Evil, Sake

  Source: screenrant.com

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• It is absurd to imagine that any child will be able to earn a living, let alone contribute to resolving our world's complex problems, without knowing how to read and write. My foundation supports the National Writing Project so that teachers can be more effective in their efforts to improve literacy for all students.

  Isabel Allende

  Teacher, Children, Writing

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• The wit, wisdom and insights of a different person are often unpalatable, weird and absurd to the senses of many ordinary people.

  Anuj

  People, Ordinary, Different

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• Men are not philosophers, but are rather very foolish children, who, by reason of their partiality, see everything in the most absurd manner, and are the victims at all times of the nearest object. There is even no philosopher who is a philosopher at all times. Our experience, our perception is conditioned by the need to acquire in parts and in succession, that is, with every truth a certain falsehood.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Philosophy, Knowledge

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.164, Рипол Классик

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• Marriage is tough, because it is woven of all these various elements, the weak and the strong. "In love-ness" is fragile for it is woven only with the gossamer threads of beauty. It seems to me absurd to talk about "happy" and "unhappy" marriages.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Strong, Unhappy, Woven

  "War Within and Without". Book by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1980.

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• In politics nothing is so absurd as rancor.

  Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour

  Politics, Rancor

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• Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes that they have done for some time past they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers... I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, Taken, Past

  "Utopia of Usurers". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, pp. 15-17, 1917.

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• The theory that the man who raises corn does a more important piece of work than the woman who makes it into bread is absurd. The inference is that the men alone render useful service. But neither man nor woman eats these things until the woman has prepared it.

  Ida Tarbell

  Equality, Men, Important

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• Whoever considers the number of absurd and ridiculous oaths necessary to be taken at present in most countries, on being admitted into any society or profession whatever, will be less surprised to find prevarication still prevailing, where perjury has led the way.

  Guillaume Thomas Francois Raynal

  Country, Taken, Numbers

  Guillaume Thomas François RAYNAL, John Obadiah JUSTAMOND (1783). “A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies. Translated ... by J. Justamond, M. A. The third edition: revised and corrected. With maps adapted to the work and a copious index”, p.349

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• There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular governments as to abolish all the restraints in a school or to unite all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Country, School, Government

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• I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Fire, Poetry, Forgiving

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.316, OUP Oxford

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• 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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• We are expected, somehow, not to offend anyone on our way to liberation. There's an absurd expectation that the women's movement must be the first revolution in history to accomplish its goals without hurting anyone's feelings.

  Mary Blakely

  Hurt, Goal, Expectations

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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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• I should like to suggest that at least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story of a copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken's wing.

  William H. Gass

  Wings, Stories, Faces

  William H. Gass (2014). “On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry”, p.20, New York Review of Books

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