No amount of manifest absurdity... could deter those who wanted to believe from believing.

Once, when a British Prime Minister sneezed, men half a world away would blow their noses. Now when a British Prime Minister sneezes nobody else will even say 'Bless You'.

Ask a man which way he is going to vote, and he will probably tell you. Ask him, however, why, and vagueness is all.

No amount of manifest absurdity... could deter those who wanted to believe from believing.

Because tobacco is responsible for an impressive one-third of cancers, prevention efforts naturally begin with it.

What has happened to architecture since the second world war that the only passers-by who can contemplate it without pain are those equipped with a white stick and a dog?

Because tobacco is responsible for an impressive one third of cancers, prevention efforts naturally begin with it.

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

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.

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

There's so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd.

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

There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

If you're going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can't be politically correct when you do that.

Despite all the lunacy of the last century, all the absurdity of war and genocide, we believe that humans being are rational and are made to seek the truth.

People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization.

A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk.

Annihilation is an absurdity in terms.

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.

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.

Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.

The concept of absurdity is something I'm attracted to.

Even though you can't expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make that attempt. That's morality, that's religion. That's art. That's life.

Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

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

No amount of manifest absurdity... could deter those who wanted to believe from believing.

Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity.

My mother was the concert master of the symphony. Absurdity and eccentricity were not criticized.

That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another.

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

Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.

The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.

The system of idolatry, invented by modern christianity, far surpasses in absurdity anything that we have ever heard of.

As you know it is a comedy so everything is a little bit pushed. That's what's funny about this kind of movie is you can laugh about the absurdity, and the bad side of life.

The proposition that we should encourage wickedness and violence by exposing one side of the face to blows because we have been beaten on the other is too great an absurdity.

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

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.

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way.

We're going through a kind of ancient, barbaric war dance now - it's almost an ultimate in absurdity.

Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of generations, peoples, of entire planets, has no importance in relation to the general development.

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

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.

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.

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

Ecstatic absurdity: it's the confrontation with meaninglessness.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

There is no more respected or influential forum in the field of journalism than the New York Times. I look forward, with great anticipation, to contributing to its op-ed page.