Absurd Quotes - Page 37

• Nothing embitters my old age [like] the circulation of absurd stories that I retire as civilization advances, that I shun the white men and seek the Indians, and that now even when old, I seek to retire beyond the second Alleganies.

  Daniel Boone

  Men, White Man, Civilization

  "The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer". Book by John Mack Faragher, p. 302, 1993.

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• But yet they that have no Science , are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Fall, Men, Reason

  Thomas Hobbes, Richard Tuck (1996). “Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised Student Edition”, p.36, Cambridge University Press

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• In proportion as the machine is improved and performs man's work with an ever increasing rapidity and exactness, the labourer, instead of prolonging his former rest times, redoubles his ardour, as if he wished to rival the machine. O, absurd and murderous competition!

  Paul Lafargue

  Men, Competition, Machines

  Paul Lafargue (1984). “Selected Marxist Writings of Paul Lafargue”

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• Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mailbag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, College, Thinking

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2006). “Ralph Waldo Emerson: Selected Essays, Lectures and Poems”, p.325, Bantam Classics

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• What would I do without the absurd and the ephemeral?

  Frida Kahlo

  Ephemeral

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• If a club is winning, you never pay attention to a guy who's 0-for-10. If a club is losing, all of a sudden you'll find that he's the main reason why you're losing, which is absurd for me.

  Joe Torre

  Winning, Guy, Attention

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• It's horrifying and absurd to think that there are currently more slaves on earth than at any other time in human history.

  Louie Giglio

  Thinking, Earth, Slave

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• The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers ... is absurd.

  Robert Waterman McChesney

  Media, Fundamentals, Journalism

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• A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible.

  Victor Hugo

  Impossible, Translations, Verses

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• Real Men no longer drive Corvettes. Despite being able to squander gas with the best of them, even today's least enlightened Real Man finds the notion of a $17,000 plastic car with no trunk somewhat absurd.

  Bruce Feirstein

  Real, Men, Car

  Bruce Feirstein, Lionel Trippett (1982). “Real Men Don't Eat Quiche”, New English Library

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• Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator.

  Jeff Tweedy

  Thieves, Music Is, Audience

  "'Music Is Not A Loaf Of Bread'". Wired Interview, www.wired.com. November 15, 2004.

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• [Dr. Constain James] refuted so well the aberrations of Darwinism.... [A system] which is repugnant at once to history, to the tradition of all people, to exact science, to observed facts, and even to reason itself, would seem to need no refutation. But the corruption of this age, the machinations of the perverse, the danger of the simple, demand that such fancies, altogether absurd though they are, should - since they borrow the mask of science - be refuted by true science.

  Pope Pius IX

  Simple, People, Scary

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• The Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed because it is absurd. And he was buried and rose again; the fact is certain, because it is impossible.

  Tertullian

  Mean, Son, Rose

  Tertullian (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Tertullian (Annotated Edition)”, p.876, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I'm not making any absurd comparisons between myself and Bach, but I aspire to that, that my music will have the legs to survive whatever context it finds itself in.

  Steve Reich

  Legs, Aspire, Comparison

  Interview with Joshua Klein, pitchfork.com. November 22, 2006.

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• Absurd, irreducible; nothing--not even a profound and secret delirium of nature--could explain [a tree root].

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Nature, Roots, Profound

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• Whatever happens, every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as absurd to fancy that a philosophy can transcend its contemporary world as it is to fancy that an individual can overleap his own age, jump over Rhodes.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Time, Children, Philosophy

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1958). “Philosophy of right”

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• Today's child is growing up absurd, because he lives in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up. Growing up--thatis our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Education, Children, Growing Up

  Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel (1996). “The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects”, Hardwired

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• Faith prefers the absurd to the plausible.

  Mason Cooley

  Faith, Plausible

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• The absurd is sin without God.

  Albert Camus

  Sin, Absurdity, Without God

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.40, Vintage

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• I was thinking of the word Surrealistic . . . I don't think it should be used exclusively with my photographs. The meaning is close but I think my tendencies are more toward the whimsical or absurd. Surrealism is more connected with morbidity. From that I am very far away.

  Eva Fuka

  Thinking, Far Away, Whimsical

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• It is unheard-of, uncivilized barbarism that any woman should still be forced to bear such monstrous torture. It should be remedied. It should be stopped. It is simply absurd that, with our modern science, painless childbirth does not exist as a matter of course.... I tremble with indignation when I think ofthe unspeakable egotism and blindness of men of science who permit such atrocities when they can be remedied.

  Isadora Duncan

  Men, Thinking, Matter

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• To live and die amongst foreigners may seem less absurd than to live persecuted or tortured by one's fellow countrymen.... But toemigrate is always to dismantle the centre of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.

  John Berger

  Moving, World, May

  John Berger (2014). “And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos”, p.46, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at what they had not, they only proved absurd--for sense cannot be counterfeited.

  Horace Walpole

  Women, Sometimes, Enough

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• Critics are reprimanded when they get sarcastic. How absurd! Is the torch of criticism supposed to shine without burning?

  Franz Grillparzer

  Sarcastic, Sarcasm, Shining

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• What could be more absurd than the idea that genuine anti-Christian prejudice is a major force in American politics.

  Michael Kinsley

  Christian, Religious, Ideas

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