Quotes About Absurdities

Because you have no memory for things that happened ten or twenty years ago, you're still mouthing the same nonsense as two thousand years ago. Worse, you cling with might and main to such absurdities as 'race,' 'class,' 'nation,' and the obligation to observe a religion and repress your love.

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh!

Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities.

Deism, therefore, or a Religion of Nature, pretending to make Man good and happy without Christ, or the Son of God entering into Union with the human Nature, is the greatest of all Absurdities.

When men are most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have then giver views to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.

When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.

There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence.

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken, giving views to passion without that proper deliberation which alone can secure them from the grossest absurdities.

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.

all religions seem alike to me, one mass of absurdities and lies - I know that there is a God, but I know no more of him; and I believe that all those are liars who pretend to know more than I do.

History is a jangle of accidents, blunders, surprises and absurdities, and so is our knowledge of it, but if we are to report it at all we must impose some order upon it.

A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those worth committing.

Am I bad?" He puffed angrily on his pipe. "Why does the law create such absurdities?" He snorted. "The law. The law is an ass. Someone famous said that, once. Dickens, I think." He looked up to Goodrich. "And it is. It doesn't respond anymore. It's a straitjacket. What kind of coercion is it when your alternatives are to kill or to go to jail?

This socialism will develop in all its phases until it reaches its own extremes and absurdities. Then once again a cry of denial will break from the titanic chest of the revolutionary minority and again a mortal struggle will begin, in which socialism will play the role of contemporary conservatism and will be overwhelmed in the subsequent revolution, as yet unknown to us.

tragic elements in present history are not as significant as the ironic ones. Pure tragedy elicits tears of admiration and pity for the hero who is willing to brave death or incur guilt for the sake of some great good. Irony however prompts some laughter and a nod of comprehension beyond the laughter; for irony involves comic absurdities which cease to be altogether absurd when fully understood.

The take-home message is that we should blame religion itself, not religious extremism - as though that were some kind of terrible perversion of real, decent religion. Voltaire got it right long ago: 'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.' So did Bertrand Russell: 'Many people would sooner die than think. In fact they do.

I hate wars and revoloutions and these dramas of redemptive violence that turn upon themselves like endlessly long screws and haul entire generations through the same murderous absurdities, apparently without ERROR signals going off in anybody's head.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .

The work of the poet has always been to shine a bright light on the absurdities of society, challenging hypocrisy and greed, and presenting the tools of change. (Donovan)

It is for Irishmen to criticize the absurdities of Irish nationalism, Welshmen those of Welsh nationalism, Englishmen those of their own brand – which are harder to detect than the others, at any rate for themselves. Nobody else can do it for them. This may be difficult, unpopular, and at times even hopeless, but the nation which lacks internal critics is lost, like Germany in Hitler's days.

As a fat body is more subject to diseases, so are rich men to absurdities and fooleries, to many casualties and cross inconveniences.

Seymour, we do not dignify absurdities with coverage. This is still America, god damnit! Who wants a cowboy actor in the White House?

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.