#absurdity

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#humor #reason #sagan #war #humor

I can't go on, I'll go on. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#drama #existentialism #fiction #humor #nihilism

The past--the wild charge at the head of his men up San Juan Hill; the first years of his marriage when he worked late into the summer dusk down in the busy city for young Hildegarde whom he loved; the days before that when he sat smoking far into the night in the gloomy old Button house on Monroe Street with his grandfather-all these had faded like unsubstantial dreams from his mind as though they had never been. He did not remember. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#life #business

Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of its own inspiration, is a trick worthy of humna perverseness which, after inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of distinguished ancestors... ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#imagination #literary-theories #imagination

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

There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen. ↗

— Neil LaBute

#bad #care #church #does #happen

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making. ↗

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#absurdity #audience #climbs #constantly #death

When a person is determined to believe something, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms them in their faith. ↗

— Junius

#believe #confirms #determined #doctrine #faith

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#brief #dominion #masters #only #periods