Absurd Quotes - Page 35

• To use legal or financial constraint to compel either abstention or submission, is entirely horrible, unnatural and absurd.

  Aleister Crowley

  Use, Financial, Submission

  Aleister Crowley (1975). “The Commentaries of AL: Being the Equinox Volume V, No. 1”, Weiser Books

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• What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism.

  Eliphas Levi

  Names, Evil, Intellectual

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• One cricket said to another -
  come, let us be ridiculous, and say love!
  love love love love love
  let us be absurd, woman, and say hate!
  hate hate hate hate hate
  and then let us be angelic
  and say nothing.

  Conrad Aiken

  Love, Hate, Ridiculous

  Conrad Aiken (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.151, Oxford University Press

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• Another cause of confusion, and the resulting feelings of nervousness, hurry, and anxiety, is the absurd habit of trying to do many things at one time.

  Maxwell Maltz

  Confusion, Anxiety, Feelings

  Maxwell Maltz (2015). “Psycho-Cybernetics: Updated and Expanded”, p.58, Penguin

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• It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism - as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way.

  James Bovard

  Government, People, Political

  James Bovard (2015). “Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen”, p.222, Macmillan

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• To say that everything in the bible is to be believed , simply because it is found in that volume, is equally absurd and pernicious... To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth.

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Giving, May, His Love

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• I feel that I communicate best when I am not deliberately being linear. Along this same line, I feel some of the best sermons I've ever heard were in the theatre rather than the pulpit - as, for example, in the Theatre of the Absurd.

  Reverend Malcolm Boyd

  Theatre, Example, Lines

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• Not only does the psyche exist, but it is existence itself. It is an almost absurd prejudice to suppose that existence can only be physical...We might well say, on the contrary, that physical existence is a mere inference, since we know of matter only in so far as we perceive psychic images mediated by the senses.

  Carl Jung

  Psychics, Doe, Prejudice

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• And I have written three books on the soul, Proving absurd all written hitherto, And putting us to ignorance again.

  Robert Browning

  Book, Ignorance, Soul

  'Cleon' (1855) l. 57

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• It is usually a mistake to impose an individual's taste on a room that has its own....style. Conversely, to put very fine pieces of furniture in a room that is without architectural distinction is as absurd as wearing a tiara with a bathing suit.

  Nancy Lancaster

  Mistake, Design, Style

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• Now as to magic. It is surely absurd to hold me "weak" or otherwise because I choose to persist in a study which I decided deliberately four or five years ago to make, next to my poetry, the most important pursuit of my life...If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen have ever come to exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.

  William Butler Yeats

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• We almost always live outside ourselves, and life itself is a continual dispersion. But it's towards ourselves that we tend, as towards a centre around which, like planets, we trace absurd and distant ellipses.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Chaos, Planets, Centre

  Fernando Pessoa, Richard Zenith (1996). “Book of Disquietude”, Carcanet Press Limited

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• I like the unreality of your mind; the whole thing is very splendid and voluptuous and absurd.

  Virginia Woolf

  Mind, Chaos, Splendid

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• A sceptic finds Dallas absurd. A cynic thinks the public doesn't

  Clive James

  Thinking, Dallas, Classic

  Clive James (1983). “Glued to the box: television criticism from the Observer, 1979-82”, Jonathan Cape

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• Men of Oregon, I invite you to become students of your events. Running, one might say, is basically an absurd past-time upon which to be exhausting ourselves. But if you can find meaning, in the kind of running you have to do to stay on this team, chances are you will be able to find meaning in another absurd past-time: life.

  Bill Bowerman

  Running, Team, Men

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• The reason it is difficult is that we have been conditioned to laugh at conspiracy theories, and few people will risk public ridicule by advocating them. On the other hand, to endorse the accidental view is absurd. Almost all of history is an unbroken trail of one conspiracy after another. Conspiracies are the norm, not the exception.

  G. Edward Griffin

  Views, Hands, People

  "The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve". Book by G. Edward Griffin, 1995.

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• The way I portrayed the people is accurate. Because they're human beings and we have a kind of wonderful capacity to be absurd and ridiculous.

  Jon Ronson

  People, Way, Ridiculous

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• Al Bernstein has seen cable television sports grow up. In 30 Years/30 Undeniable Truths he looks at his time in the industry through a prism that is unique to him. This book gives the reader an insight into the sometimes absurd world of television sports. There is a 31st undeniable truth: Al Bernstein is a truly funny man.

  Barry Tompkins

  Sports, Growing Up, Book

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• What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.

  Joseph Addison

  Men, Attention, Valuable

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele (1853). “The Spectator”, p.243

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• The 'Rise, Rebel, Resist' video is a reflection of the outrage the American people are feeling at the absurd hypocrisy, and overwhelming nonsense and balderdash plaguing Washington D.C. It uses a bit of satire and a bit of wishful thinking to form this powerful amalgam of imagery that nourishes and empowers the living art of the song. Our message is clear: Either these elected officials do their job and protect the rights and lives of ALL Americans or be prepared to face the consequences.

  Otep Shamaya

  Song, Art, Jobs

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• She thought that this man was her savior, that he had come to her at a time in her life when her life demanded completion, an end, a permanent fixing of all that was troubled and shifting and deadly. And yet it was absurd to think this. No person could save another. So she drew back from him and released him.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Broken Heart, Men, Thinking

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• I believe because it is absurd.

  Tertullian

  Believe, I Believe

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• Idea-assassins rush forward to kill any new suggestion on the grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd.

  Alvin Toffler

  Ideas, Suggestions, Assassins

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• I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in creation born in the condition that requires immediate surgical correction is the human male.

  Thomas Szasz

  Believe, Practice, Mammals

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• How sad the world is, so beautiful yet so absurd.

  Irene Nemirovsky

  Beautiful, World

  Irène Némirovsky (2006). “Suite Francaise, a Novel”, Knopf Canada

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