Absurd Quotes - Page 20

• There may be something universal about idealizing the past, but I think it's taken to an absurd degree in New York, which is what I'm poking fun at. The hole-in-the-wall bars I went to in the 90s that smelled like sewage now enjoy legendary status, as if times were had there that could never be had anywhere else.

  Vestal McIntyre

  New York, Wall, Fun

  Source: roosterweathervane.tumblr.com

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• We have to understand ourselves as a part of the narrative of evolution. And evolution never stops. The notion that human evolution at some point stopped and "history" took over is absurd, though it is widespread among various social scientists and humanists.

  Robert Neelly Bellah

  Narrative, Evolution, Scientist

  Source: blogs.ssrc.org

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• Name me the final number, the highest, the greatest. But that's absurd! If the number of numbers is infinite, how can there be a final number? Then how can you speak of a final revolution? There is no final one. Revolutions are infinite.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Inspirational, Art, Names

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• Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.

  Voltaire

  Atheist, Religion, Atheism

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• Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason.

  Voltaire

  Destiny, Law, People

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• The Jews are of all peoples the grosses, the most ferocious, the most fanatical, and the most absurd.

  Voltaire

  Religious, Jew

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• It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.

  Richard Steele

  Pain, Giving, Quota

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1826). “The Spectator: With Notes, and a General Index”, p.132

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• It is absurd to think that anything in us could have the least influence upon our election. Some say that God did foresee that such persons would believe, and therefore did choose them; so they would make the business of salvation to depend upon something in us. Whereas God does not choose us FOR faith, but TO faith. "He hath chosen us, that we should be holy" (Eph. 1:4), not because we would be holy, but that we might be holy. We are elected to boldness, not for it.

  Thomas Watson

  Believe, Thinking, Doe

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• A single assembly is liable to all the vices, follies, and frailties of an individual; subject to fits of humor, starts of passion, flights of enthusiasm, partialities, or prejudice, and consequently productive of hasty results and absurd judgments. And all these errors ought to be corrected and defects supplied by some controlling power.

  John Adams

  Passion, Errors, Prejudice

  John Adams, George A. Peek, Jr. (2003). “The Political Writings of John Adams: Representative Selections”, p.87, Hackett Publishing

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• Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce.

  Adam Smith

  Self, Purpose, May

  Adam Smith (1827). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.274

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• Once your faith persuades you to believe what your intelligence declares absurd, beware, lest you likewise sacrifice your reason in the conduct of your life.

  Voltaire

  Wisdom, Believe, Sacrifice

  "Questions sur les Miracles". Publication by Voltaire, 1765.

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• George Bush says he speaks to god every day, & Christians love him for it. If George Bush said he spoke to god through his hair dryer, they would think he was mad. I fail to see how the addition of a hair dryer makes it any more absurd.

  Sam Harris

  Christian, Thinking, Hair

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• You are to think of yourself as only existing in this world to do God's will. To think that you are your own is as absurd as to think you are self-created. It is an obvious first principle that you belong completely to God.

  William Law

  Christian, Religious, Thinking

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• The supposed right of intolerance is absurd and barbaric. It is the right of the tiger; nay, it is far worse, for tigers do but tear in order to have food, while we rend each other for paragraphs.

  Voltaire

  Order, Tears, Intolerance

  Voltaire (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of Voltaire (Illustrated)”, p.4769, Delphi Classics

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• There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

  Frank McCourt

  Poverty, Absurdity

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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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• A power to dispose of estates for ever is manifestly absurd. The earth and the fulness of it belongs to every generation, and the preceding one can have no right to bind it up from posterity. Such extension of property is quite unnatural.

  Adam Smith

  Earth, Generations, Estates

  Adam Smith (1964). “Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms”

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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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• The whole idea of interviews is in itself absurd - one cannot answer deep questions about what one's life was like - one writes novels about it.

  Anthony Powell

  Writing, Ideas, Answers

  The Times, May 15, 1986.

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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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• I never approved either the errors of his book, or the trivial truths he so vigorously laid down. I have, however, stoutly taken his side when absurd men have condemned him for these same truths.

  Voltaire

  Taken, Book, Men

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