#absurdity

To reduce this claim of slavery to an absurdity, it is only necessary to add that there are only two states in which slaves are a majority, and not one in which the slaveholders are not a very disproportionate minority. ↗

— William H. Seward

#add #claim #disproportionate #majority #minority

At my last birthday party I had fun and really let myself go. Literally. I opened the cages where I keep my clones and I let myself go, all 333 versions of myself. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#absurdity #birthday #clones #change

The quality you most admire in a man? Courage moral and physical: 'anima'—the ability to think like a woman. Also a sense of the absurd. The quality you most admire in a woman? Courage moral and physical: “anima”—the ability to visualize the mind and need of a man. Also a sense of the absurd. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#courage #empathy #men #sensitivity #women

Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide. ↗

— Albert Camus

#suicide #death

Things stayed peaceful in there, even as the crashing vehicles and the cries of the injured and dying reached a crescendo outside. "I fry mine in butter!" indeed. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#death #humor #life-and-death #vonnegut #death

They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff. ↗

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#alexandria #caliph #intolerance #library #men

The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary. ↗

— Benjamin Franklin

#contradiction #doctrines #paradox #practice #rules

He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a virulent space disease he'd picked up without knowing it in the Flargathon Gas Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would have killed off half the population of the Western Hemisphere, blinded the other half, and driven everyone else psychotic and sterile, so the Earth was lucky there. ↗

— Douglas Adams

#absurd

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person. ↗

— Joseph Addison

#blunder #committed #dear #debarred #his

I really enjoy playing that everyman part because that part is us, the audience. And you need somebody inside a comedy to tether the absurdity to reality. ↗

— Jason Bateman

#audience #because #comedy #enjoy #everyman