Quotes about Absurdity
Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work. Therefore, whenever I see a fly settling, in the decisive moment, on the nose of such a person of affairs; or if he is spattered with mud from a carriage which drives past him in still greater haste; or the drawbridge opens up before him; or a tile falls down and knocks him dead, then I laugh heartily.
— Soren Kierkegaard
My life is absolutely meaningless. When I consider the different periods into which it falls, it seems like the word Schnur in the dictionary, which means in the first place a string, in the second, a daughter-in-law. The only thing lacking is that the word Schnur should mean in the third place a camel, in the fourth, a dust-brush.
— Soren Kierkegaard
If Hegel had written the whole of his logic and then said, in the preface or some other place, that it was merely an experiment in thought in which he had even begged the question in many places, then he would certainly have been the greatest thinker who had ever lived. As it is, he is merely comic.
— Soren Kierkegaard
It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.
— Virginia Woolf
This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.
— Anonymous
He would flay the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, and turn the hogs to the hay. He would beat the dogs before the lion, put the plough before the oxen, and claw where it did not itch.
— Francois Rabelais
If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.
— Samuel Beckett
It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility "faith"! (Institutio III.2.3)
— John Calvin
...one may say anything about the history of the world - anything that might enter the most disordered imagination. The only thing one can't say is that it's rational.
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.
— Mark Twain
I stopped and I thought, 'What would Jesus do?' So I didn't exist.
— Bo Burnham
I am a confectionery-based existentialist.
— Bill Bailey