#futility

Na początku Bóg stworzył Ziemię i oglądał ją z wyżyn swojej kosmicznej samotności. I rzekł Pan: Ulepmy z gliny żywe stworzenia, aby glina mogła zobaczyć, co uczyniliśmy. I ulepił Bóg wszelkie zwierzęta, jakie żyją na Ziemi, a pośród nich i człowieka. Jedynie glina w postaci człowieka potrafiła mówić. Bóg pochylił się nisko, kiedy glina w postaci człowieka powstała, rozejrzała się dokoła i przemówiła. Człowiek zamrugał i grzecznie spytał: Jaki jest sens tego wszystkiego? - Czy wszystko musi mieć jakiś sens? - spytał Bóg. - Oczywiście - odpowiedział człowiek. - W takim razie pozostawiam tobie znalezienie sensu tego wszystkiego - powiedział Bóg. I odszedł. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#niche

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. ↗

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

#futility #hate #i #lived #only

If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#futility #shakespeare #shakespeare

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all. ↗

— Emile M. Cioran

#exist #futility #irrational #life #most

Dusting is a good example of the futility of trying to put things right. As soon as you dust, the fact of your next dusting has already been established. ↗

— George Carlin

#been #dust #established #example #fact

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility. ↗

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

#because #cannot #catharsis #defeat #emotional

I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor? ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#electricity #energy #exhaustion #futility #sherlock-holmes

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#life

Man makes plans . . . and God laughs. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#futility #humor

Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin. ↗

— P.D. James

#pessimism #posterity #the-future #men