Absurd Quotes - page 21

Giving government aid to a bank basically transforms it into a utility. The huge salaries in this sector are only a symptom of a more profound misalignment. The profitability of the finance industry has been excessive. [...] That was absurd. (George Soros)
I'd speak of artistry you would roll your eyes skyward When I'd speak of spirituality you would label it absurd When I spoke of possibility you would frown and shake your head If I had stayed much longer, I'd have surely imploded. View quote
Alanis Morissette
The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves. View quote
Willem de Kooning
He was a master of humor. He believed that humor is the test of the natural, of the sensible, of the truth. To him most persons who have no sense of humor are generally absurd. View quote
Epifanio de los Santos
To say that you can't see echoes of the past in what I do would be absurd. Everything that has preceded me has affected me. View quote
James Frey
The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd. View quote
Zadie Smith
I always feel kind of absurd and presumptuous presenting a speech. View quote
Moby
I won't complain about touring, because I really do believe that a public-figure musician complaining about being a public-figure musician is just absurd. Like, 'Boo hoo hoo! I have to stand on stage and people pay attention to me!' View quote
Moby
The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. View quote
Herbert Spencer
This man, a veteran journalist, held a position of importance in one of the lie-factories operated by the Roosevelt regime to keep the boobs pepped up with enthusiasm for sending their sons or their husbands to a senseless slaughter. At one policy conference, this man objected to a proposed lie on the grounds that it was so absurd that it would destroy public confidence, with the result that Americans would soon cease to believe anything that the agency manufactured. There was a great deal of debate over that question in this policy conference until it was ended by the agency's great expert in such matters. He was a man who, by the way, for some reason or other, had left Germany a few years before and come to bless the United States with his presence. This expert, being a bit ruffled by the debate, finally took his elegant little cigar from his mouth and said decisively, "Ve spit in ze faces of the American schwine!" And that settled it. The master had spoken. View quote
Revilo P. Oliver
A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct. (Émile Durkheim)
The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children. View quote
André Breton
In my banjo show with the Steep Canyon Rangers, I do do comedy during that show. It'd be absurd just to stand there mute and play 25 banjo songs. View quote
Steve Martin
Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself and questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one's own cherished beliefs. View quote
Gore Vidal
If Atheism writes upon the blackboard of the Universe a question mark, it writes it for the purpose of stating that there is a question yet to be answered. Is it not better to place a question mark upon a problem while seeking an answer than to put the label "God" there and consider the matter solved? Does not the word "God" only confuse and make more difficult the solution by assuming a conclusion that is utterly groundless and palpably absurd? View quote
Joseph Lewis
Treating your audience like thieves is absurd. Anyone who chooses to listen to our music becomes a collaborator. View quote
Jeff Tweedy
I was solitary before, but now my solitariness becomes complete and awesome. Hence the dizziness, the vertigo. Like a statue on a plinth-that is how I live now. Jesus also was alone on the cross. I should not seek outside help to absolve me from my duty; my duty is too plain: decide, assume every responsibility for guiding others, even when it seems illogical and perhaps absurd. And to suffer alone... Me and God. The colloquy must be full and endless. View quote
Pope Paul VI
Imagine how asleep or utterly unperceptive and clueless you would have to be not to see yourself as absurd for the most part. View quote
John Malkovich
It is totally absurd, and I don't understand why more people aren't talking about how absurd it is. It is a really terrifying possibility. The fact that we have gotten this far, and with that close this being a reality is crazy. View quote
Matt Damon
There is no fashion so absurd, even grotesque, that it cannot be adopted, given two things: the authority of the fashion-setter (Dior, Jackie Onassis) and the vacuity or noughtness of the consumer. View quote
Walker Percy
Sacrifice has always been regarded as the most convincing proof of loyalty; and its most common form involves a foregoing of the use of some organic function, as in the case of celibacy or fasting. Of at least equal significance, however, is a sacrifice of the use of reason - credo quia impossibile - and the more incredible the assertion, the stronger the proof of the devotion manifested by its acceptance. The Catholic theologians are quite explicit about this, and openly say that by affirming what to the human reason appears absurd, a believer proves his love for God. Although they are never so frank about it, the secular sects make similar demands. (Stanislav Andreski)
We live in a time which has created the art of the absurd. It is our art. View quote
Norman Mailer
My husband does so many romantic things for me, it's absurd. View quote
Jennifer Beals
We have been told that all paths lead to truth - you have your path as a Hindu and someone else has his path as a Christian and another as a Muslim, and they all meet at the same door - which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd. Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to - then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are - your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. And you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears. View quote
Jiddu Krishnamurti
And the other Don Quixote remained here among us, fighting with desperation. And does he not fight out of despair? ...But "despair is the master of possibilities," as we learn from Salazar y Torres (Elegir al enemigo, Act I.), and it is despair and despair alone that begets heroic hope, absurd hope, mad hope. Spero quia absurdum [I hope because it is absurd], it ought to have been said, rather than credo. View quote
Miguel de Unamuno