Absurd Quotes - Page 22

• I had to fight to be me and get respect, and to carry that stigma, for me, is pride. Carrying the tag of lesbian. I'm not bragging, I'm not preaching, but I don't deny it . I had to face society, the Church, which says damn gay people ... it's absurd. How do you judge someone who has been born that way. I did not study to be a lesbian. Neither was it taught to me. I was born this way. Since I opened my eyes to the world. I've never slept with a man. Never. I'm pure, I don't have to be ashamed ... My Gods made me so.

  Chavela Vargas

  Eye, Fighting, Pride

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• Christ . . . said that a man who had looked after a woman lustfully had sinned as much as the man who had seduced her. How absurd!

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Christ, He Man

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• God could not have chosen anyone less qualified, or more of a sinner, than myself. And so, for this wonderful work He intends to perform through us, He selected me- for God always chooses the weak and the absurd, and those who count for nothing.

  Francis of Assisi

  Wonderful, Weak, Chosen

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• What an absurd notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficent for anything else but domestic concerns!

  Susan B. Anthony

  Intellectual, Moral, Faculty

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• I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts.

  Erica Jong

  Believe, Self, Laughing

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• Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms. Well then, think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affect us more or less intensely.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Thinking, Circles

  "Letters of the Great Artists - From Blake to Pollock". Book by Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, pp. 257-258, 1963.

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• Exactly! It is absurd - improbable - it cannot be. So I myself have said. And yet, my friend, there it is! One cannot escape from the facts.

  Agatha Christie

  Facts, Said, Improbable

  Agatha Christie (1984). “Five complete Hercule Poirot novels”, Random House Value Pub

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• Also bear in mind, when you're choosing your words and stringing them together, how they sound. This may seem absurd: readers read with their eyes. But in fact they hear what they are reading far more than you realize.

  William Zinsser

  Reading, Eye, Mind

  William Zinsser (2012). “On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction”, p.35, Harper Collins

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• You can't come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say 'Oh it's torture, and therefore it's no good.' Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the constitution? It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that. And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game.

  Antonin Scalia

  Blow, Self, Games

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• The self identity of Man is transcultural, and thus cannot have any single point of reference. Pluralism is not synonymous with tolerance of a variety of opinions. Pluralism amounts to the recognition of the unthinkable, the absurd, and up to a limit, intolerable. Reality in itself does not need to be transparent intelligible.

  Raimon Panikkar

  Reality, Men, Self

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• This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated.

  Antonin Scalia

  Antonin Scalia, Paul I. Weizer (2004). “The Opinions of Justice Antonin Scalia: The Caustic Conservative”, Peter Lang Pub Incorporated

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• The avarice of the old: it's absurd to increase one's luggage as one nears the journey's end.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Journey, Increase, Ends

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• What's funny is that people think, "Well there has to be something more than wrestling, because wrestling has such an absurd quality to it." But if you tell a love story, people don't ask what else is in there. They say, "Oh, it's just a love story." All stories have many levels, but these ones show their hand and say, "You might want to look a little deeper."

  John Darnielle

  Wrestling, Thinking, Hands

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I know how absurd things can get. I've had years where I've had questionable things going on in my life.

  Geoff Rickly

  Years, Questionable, Know How

  "United Nations". Interview with Ian Cohen, pitchfork.com. July 2, 2014.

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• Absurd- that is the light mind that establishes its own borders.

  Albert Camus

  Light, Mind, Borders

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• What is absurd is not the teachings of the founders of religion, it's what followers subsequently make of it.

  John Cleese

  Teaching, Followers, Founders

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• Subsidies for the oil, gas and coal industries are projected to cost taxpayers more than $135 billion in the coming decade. At a time when scientists tell us we need to reduce carbon pollution to prevent catastrophic climate change, it is absurd to provide massive subsidies that pad fossil-fuel companies' already enormous profits.

  Bernie Sanders

  Oil, Climate, Needs

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• Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Important, Tragedy

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• Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

  Orson Scott Card

  Sports, Lines, Dutch

  Orson Scott Card (2003). “Shadow Puppets”, p.165, Macmillan

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• Nothing is too absurd to be said by some of the philosophers.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Philosopher, Said

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• In the years since The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, Voinovich has sharpened his satire, and Monumental Propaganda is a novel that slashes and rips -- but not on every page. He expands his narrative to accommodate shrewd philosophy and inventive portraiture, a very amusing disquisition on Soviet latrines and a number of outlandish plot developments. In his translation, Andrew Bromfield deftly shifts his tone and tools as required, remaining true to Voinovich's Vonnegut-like playfulness and appreciation of the absurd.

  Ken Kalfus

  Appreciation, Rip, Philosophy

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• [The huge success of Curse of the Black Pearl] made perfect sense to me on the one hand, and at the same time, it made no sense at all, which I kind of enjoyed. Even now, with the dolls and the cereal boxes and snacks and fruit juices, it all just feels fun to me, in a Warholian way. It's absurd. It doesn't get more absurd.

  Johnny Depp

  Fun, Hands, Snacks

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• There is no necessity for going to the church and hearing the same story forever. Let the minister write what he wishes to say. Let him publish it. If it is worth buying, people will read it. It is hardly fair to get them in a church in the name of duty and there inflict upon them a sermon that under no circumstances they would read...the idea of going fifty-two days in a year to hear anybody on the same subject is absurd.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Writing, Years, Names

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• What the object of senile avarice may be I cannot conceive. For can there be anything more absurd than to seek more journey money, the less there remains of the journey?

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Journey, May, Remains

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Cicero (Illustrated)”, p.3016, Delphi Classics

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• In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

  Albert Camus

  Attitude, Character, Passion

  "The Myth of Sisyphus". Book by Albert Camus, 1942.

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