Absurdity Quotes

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Albert Camus

Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation.

Claude Levi-Strauss

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -- in other words, of absurdity --the more energetically meaning is sought.

Vaclav Havel

Presenting the cork is wine nonsense, a ritual invented by captains and sommeliers. The wine snob does not resent ritual. There is infinite ritual in the etiquette of serving wine. But most of it at least hints at style or purpose. Placing an unsightly cork on the tablecloth hints at absurdity.

Leonard S. Bernstein

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity -the more energetically meaning is sought.

Vaclav Havel

Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Ambrose Bierce

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.

Samuel Johnson

Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.

D. H. Lawrence

Many businessmen fail to understand Python principles--the ultimate absurdity was an offer from America to buy the 'format' of the Python shows, that is, Monty Python without the Pythons--corporate methods do not have the conceptual framework to deal with an anarchist collective, run by intelligent and arrogant comedians who have proved that their method works

Robert Hewison

But he had hardly felt the absurdity of those things, on the one hand, and the necessity of those others, on the other (for it is rare that the feeling of absurdity is not followed by the feeling of necessity), when he felt the absurdity of those things of which he had just felt the necessity (for it is rare that the feeling of necessity is not followed by the feeling of absurdity).

Samuel Beckett

We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. This involves us in a sort of official madness, in which, while following what seems to be a perfect logic of self-defense and detterence, we commit one absurdity after another: We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to "win the hearts and minds of the people" by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the "truth" of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.

Wendell Berry

In politics, an absurdity is not an impediment.

Napoleon Bonaparte
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