Absurd Quotes - Page 33

• Human beings are under the control of a strange force that bends them in absurd ways, forcing them to play a role in a bizarre game of deception.

  Jacques Vallee

  Games, Play, Deception

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• There once was an old man of Lyme who married three wives at a time when asked, 'Why a third?' he replied 'One's absurd! and bigamy, sir, is a crime!'

  William Cosmo Monkhouse

  Men, Wife, Funny Marriage

  "There Once Was an Old Man of Lyme" l. 1 (date unknown)

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• What monster have we here? A great Deed at this hour of day? A great just deed - and not for pay? Absurd - or insincere?

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Monsters, Deeds, Pay

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Illustrated)”, p.1198, Delphi Classics

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• He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Wish, Energy, May

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• Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it; perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Ideas, Judgement, Connections

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• It is sweet to surve one country by deeds, and it is not absurd to surve her by words.

  Sallust

  Country, Sweet, 4th Of July

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• The implied threat of using nuclear weapons to curb guerrillas was as absurd as to talk of using a sledge hammer to ward off a swarm of mosquitoes.

  B. H. Liddell Hart

  Military, Hammers, Mosquitoes

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• I try and remind our viewers that climate is always in a state of flux and yes, the world has warmed over the last 25 years but claiming that Katrina is a product of global warming is absurd. We have had much stronger hurricanes hit the United States in the past, the Labor Day or Keys hurricane of 1935 and Camille in 1969 to name just two. There is much more development now on our shores.

  Topper Shutt

  Past, Keys, Years

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• I’m actually trying to make sense of the world. There’s nothing cynical or absurd in what I do.

  Yue Minjun

  Meaningful, Cynical, Chinese

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• Nothing can be more absurd than the practice that prevails in our country of men and women not following the same pursuits with all their strengths and with one mind, for thus, the state instead of being whole is reduced to half.

  Plato

  Country, Men, Practice

  Plato (2008). “Laws”, p.162, Cosimo, Inc.

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• According to the celestial multiplication table, once one is three, and three times one is one, and according to heavenly subtraction if we take two from three, three are left. The addition is equally peculiar, if we add two to one we have but one. Each one is equal to himself and the other two.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Two, Religion, Peculiar

  "The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll: Lectures".

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• The events inspired characters that truly existed, as well as fictitious people I had to invent. Sometimes the harsh reality was too much, too absurd. This was the case with the story of the cat who roamed from one trench to another and in the film ended up being imprisoned. In reality, the tom cat was accused of spying and was arrested by the French army, and then shot according to regulations.

  Christian Carion

  Character, Cat, Army

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• The idea of trying able to explain why you do what you do is absurd.

  Milton Glaser

  Ideas, Design, Trying

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• It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer (banker), and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Country, Men, Issues

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• "Helena Bonham Carter and Jeff Bridges waved at me. And, of course, it would be absurd if they were waving at me, so I just stared at them. I stared at both of them. And they were like, 'Alright, fine.'

  Jennifer Lawrence

  Life, Bridges, Would Be

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• Life is made up of desires that seem big and vital one minute, and little and absurd the next. I guess we get what's best for us in the end.

  Alice Hegan Rice

  Desire, Littles, Next

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• The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off

  Rex Stout

  Alarms, Trouble, Clock

  Rex Stout (2010). “Three at Wolfe's Door”, p.177, Crimeline

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• Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!

  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

  Pride, Despair, World

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• Yes, I read. I have that absurd habit. I like beautiful poems, moving poetry, and all the beyond of that poetry. I am extraordinarily sensitive to those poor, marvelous words left in our dark night by a few men I never knew.

  Louis Aragon

  Beautiful, Moving, Dark

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• Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books and a total ignorance of men.

  Henry Mackenzie

  Book, Ignorance, Mean

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• The crisis [the Great Depression] discovered a great man in Franklin Roosevelt...None too soon he has carried America forward to the second stage of democratic realization. His New Deal involves such collective controls of the national business that it would be absurd to call it anything but socialism, were it not for a prejudice lingering on from the old individualist days against that word...Both Roosevelt and Stalin were attempting to produce a huge, modern, scientifically organized, socialist state, the one out of a warning crisis and the other out of a chaos.

  H. G. Wells

  Men, America, Prejudice

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• It is the great business of every Christian to save souls. People complain that they do not know how to take hold of this matter. Why, the reason is plain enough; they have never studied it. They have never taken the proper pains to qualify themselves for the work. If you do not make it a matter of study, how you may successfully act in building up the kingdom of Christ, you are acting a very wicked and absurd part as a Christian.

  Charles Grandison Finney

  Christian, Pain, Taken

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• The gun control mentality is ruthlessly absurd. It suggests that you pass a law which will bind law-abiding citizens — they won't have access to weapons. Now, we know that criminals, by definition, are people who don't obey laws. Therefore, you can pass all the laws that you want, they will still have access to these weapons, just as they have access to illegal drugs and other things right now. That means you end up with a situation in which the law-abiding folks can't defend themselves, and the crooks have all the guns.

  Alan Keyes

  Mean, Gun, Law

  Alan Keyes during U.S. Senate debate sponsored by the League of Women Voters in Illinois, www.keyesarchives.com. October 21, 2004.

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• Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default. ... The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.

  Thomas Sowell

  Government, Should Have, Careers

  "Bailout Politics" by Thomas Sowell, www.realclearpolitics.com. September 30, 2008.

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• I think people perceive my creatures as absurd because they look different, but at the same time, they are a little bit familiar. I want people to feel a kind of empathy with them. When you think about it, all nature is kind of strange looking.. in fact, I'm a strange a looking creature.

  Patricia Piccinini

  Nature, Thinking, Differences

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