Absurdity Quotes - Page 18

• Yes, when you see for the first time, a great laughter arises in you - the laughter about the whole ridiculousness of your misery, the laughter about the whole foolishness of your problems, the laughter about the whole absurdity of your suffering.

  Rajneesh

  Inspirational, Laughter, Suffering

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• But whatever you do, take neither yourselves nor your fellow-creatures too seriously. There is tragedy enough in our daily routine, but there is room too for a keen sense of the absurdities and incongruities of life, and in the shifting panorama no one sees better than the doctor the perennial sameness of men’s ways.

  William Osler

  Men, Doctors, Tragedy

  Sir William Osler, Mark E. Silverman, T. J. Murray, Charles S. Bryan, American College of Physicians--American Society of Internal Medicine (2003). “The Quotable Osler”, p.49, ACP Press

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• I'm sure that someday children in schools will study the history of the men who made war as you study an absurdity. They'll be shocked, just as today we're shocked with cannibalism.

  Golda Meir

  Children, War, School

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• The phrase ‘popular science’ has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.

  Maria Mitchell

  Science, Phrases

  Maria Mitchell (1896). “Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals”

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• For any truth, if “overdone” (as Dietzgen Senior put it), if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its actual applicability, can be reduced to an absurdity, and is even bound to become an absurdity under these conditions.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Limits, Exaggerated, Ifs

  "'Left-Wing' Communism: an Infantile Disorder". Article by Vladimir Lenin, www.marxists.org. 1920.

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• There's something very sinister about a woman who is predatory but has an absurd voice working as a disservice to her.

  Claudia Black

  Voice, Absurd, Sinister

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• In politics, an absurdity in public business is going into it.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Politics, Politician

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• It's absurd to accuse Serbia and the Serbs for the armed secession of Croatia,.

  Slobodan Milosević

  Croatia, Absurd, Secession

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• False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Swings, Giving, Reason

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.57

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• Do you know what punishments I've endured for my crimes, my sins? None. I am proof of the absurdity of men's most treasured abstractions. A just universe wouldn't tolerate my existence.

  Brent Weeks

  Men, Nihilism, Sin

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• Granted that every war is madness-civil war, fratricide, is the worst of all; it reaches deeper into ugliness, cruelty and absurdity.

  Elie Wiesel

  War, Madness, Granted

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• Another strange notion pervading whole peoples is that the State has money of its own; and nowhere is this absurdity more firmly fixed than in America. The State has no money. It produces nothing. It existence is purely parasitic, maintained by taxation; that is to say, by forced levies on the production of others. 'Government money,' of which one hears so much nowadays, does not exist; there is no such thing.

  Albert J. Nock

  Government, America, Doe

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• The emancipation of today displays itself mainly in cigarettes and shorts... painted lips and nails, and the return of trailing skirts and other absurdities of dress which betoken the slave-woman's intelligent companionship.

  Sylvia Pankhurst

  Intelligent, Today, Return

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• Southerners take no issue with absurdity. We don’t pretend the world is logical or fair. If there were a signature regional gesture it would be a shrug. For us, crazy happens. Better to sit back, enjoy the show, and drink the tea

  Allison Glock

  Crazy, Issues, Tea

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• The idealist's program of political or economic reform may be impracticable, absurd, demonstrably ridiculous; but it can never be successfully opposed merely by pointing out that this is the case. A negative opposition cannot be wholly effectual: there must be a competing idealism; something must be offered that is not only less objectionable but more desirable.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Political, Reform, Negative

  Charles Horton Cooley (1909). “Two Major Works: Social Organization. Human Nature and the Social Order”, Glencoe, Ill., Free P

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• I hold all idea of regulating the currency to be an absurdity; the very terms of regulating the currency and managing the currency I look upon to be an absurdity; the currency should regulate itself; it must be regulated by the trade and commerce of the world; I would neither allow the Bank of England nor any private banks to have what is called the management of the currency.

  Richard Cobden

  Ideas, Looks, World

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• How important the concept of God is, and how instead of valuing what has been given us, we with light hearts spurn it because of absurdities that have been attached to it.

  Leo Tolstoy

  God, Heart, Light

  Leo Tolstoy (graf), Leon Stilman (1979). “Last diaries”, Ayer Co Pub

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• They gutted the book, making an action movie for 15-25 year olds. Tolkien became...devoured by his popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of the time. The gap widened between the beauty, the seriousness of the work, and what it has become is beyond me. This level of marketing reduces to nothing the aesthetic and philosophical significance of this work.

  Christopher Tolkien

  Book, Philosophical, Years

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• Without denying the value of scientific endeavor, there is a striking absurdity in committing billions to reach the moon where no people live, while only a fraction of that amount is appropriated to service the densely populated slums.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Moon, People, Fractions

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• I've always been literally a lover of the absurd. I think the absurd gives a new dimension to reality and even to common sense. And life, you know, on an everyday basis, is absurd, or may turn out to be absurd. There's no reality without absurdity.

  Tomi Ungerer

  Reality, Thinking, Common Sense

  Interview with Burgin Streetman, www.vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com. July 1, 2013.

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• The notion that any one person can describe 'what really happened' is an absurdity. If ten - or a hundred - people witness an event, there will be ten - or a hundred - different versions of what took place. What we see and how we interpret it depends entirely upon our individual past experience.

  David Eddings

  Wisdom, Past, People

  David Eddings, Leigh Eddings (1997). “Polgara the Sorceress”, Del Rey

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• Fobbit is fast, razor sharp, and seven kinds of hilarious. Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for the much needed salve--it feels good to finally laugh about Iraq. Fobbit deserves a place alongside Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 as one of our great comic novels about the absurdity of war.

  Jonathan Evison

  War, Iraq, Laughing

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• I was always fascinated by the absurdities and luxuries and the snobbism of the world that fashion magazines showed. Of course, it’s not for everyone...But I lived in that world, not only during my years in the magazines business but for years before, because I was always of that world-- at least in my imagination.

  Diana Vreeland

  Fashion, Years, Luxury

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• In our search for more, we have blinded ourselves to our personal responsibility for challenging these absurdities. A resource-based society considers us all equal shareholders of Earth. We are responsible both for the planet and for our relationship with each other.

  Jacque Fresco

  Responsibility, Challenges, Earth

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• Meanwhile, some people are dying of sad laughter at the absurdity of man, who kills so easily and so violently, and once a year sends out cards praying for "Peace on Earth."

  David C. Coates

  Laughter, Men, Animal

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