{"quotes":[{"text":"If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd than an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?","author":"Robert G. Ingersoll","tags":["absurdity","action","creation","creationism","eternity","force","genesis","god","imagine","infinite","intelligence","nothing","remember","science","think","universe","yahweh"],"id":8541,"author_id":"Robert+G.+Ingersoll"},{"text":"I am confident of my ability to demonstrate that one can sometimes believe in something and yet not believe in it. Nothing is less fathomable than the systems that motivate our actions.","author":"Georg Christoph Lichtenberg","tags":["absurdity","belief","life"],"id":12269,"author_id":"Georg+Christoph+Lichtenberg"},{"text":"A step lower and strangeness creeps in: perceiving that the world is 'dense', sensing to what a degree a stone is foreign and irreducible to us, with what intensity nature or a landscape can negate us. At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise. The primitive hostility of the world rises up to face us across millenia.","author":"Albert Camus","tags":["absurdity","hostility","strangeness","world"],"id":18363,"author_id":"Albert+Camus"},{"text":"We humans are like squirrels who spend all summer gathering and hoarding nuts and when winter comes can't remember where they are.","author":"Marty Rubin","tags":["absurdity","futility","humanity","memory","possessions"],"id":18741,"author_id":"Marty+Rubin"},{"text":"My joy is that there is no such world at all, but that the substance of life is in everyone! There is no reason to be troubled because we are absurd, is there? For we really are: we are absurd, frivolous, we have bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look around ourselves, we don't know how to understand, we are all like this, all of us, you, and I, and everyone! And you aren't offended by my telling you straight to your faces that you are absurd? There is the basic stuff of life in your, isn't there? You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, we can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection! To reach perfection there must first be much we do not understand. And if we understand too quickly we will probably not understand very well. I tell this to you who have been able to understand so much and - do not understand.'p. 577.","author":"Fyodor Dostoyevsky","tags":["absurd","absurdity","meaning-of-life","ridiculousness","understanding-life"],"id":34785,"author_id":"Fyodor+Dostoyevsky"},{"text":"A pleasant morning. Saw my classmates Gardner, and Wheeler. Wheeler dined, spent the afternoon, and drank Tea with me. Supped at Major Gardiners, and engag'd to keep School at Bristol, provided Worcester People, at their ensuing March meeting, should change this into a moving School, not otherwise. Major Greene this Evening fell into some conversation with me about the Divinity and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ. All the Argument he advanced was, 'that a mere creature, or finite Being, could not make Satisfaction to infinite justice, for any Crimes,' and that 'these things are very mysterious.'(Thus mystery is made a convenient Cover for absur.","author":"John Adams","tags":["absurdity","argument","cover","divinity-of-jesus","excuse","hell","infinite","mystery"],"id":48121,"author_id":"John+Adams"},{"text":"But if one doesn't really exist, one wonders why...' she hesitated.'Why one makes such a fuss about things,' Anthony suggested. 'All that howling and hurrahing and gnashing of teeth. About the adventures of a self that isn't really a self—just the result of a lot of accidents. And of course,' he went on, 'once you start wondering, you see at once that there is no reason for making such a fuss. And then you don't make a fuss—that is, if you're sensible. Like me,' he added, smiling.","author":"Aldous Huxley","tags":["absurdism","absurdity","aldous","aldous-huxley","brave-new-world","existentialism","eyeless-in-gaza","huxley","nihilism"],"id":55757,"author_id":"Aldous+Huxley"},{"text":"The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.","author":"George Orwell","tags":["absurdity","mystical","truth","words"],"id":67863,"author_id":"George+Orwell"},{"text":"When a mere girl, my mother offered me a dollar if I would read the Bible through; . . . . Despairing of reconciling many of its absurd statements with even my childish philosophy, . . . I became a sceptic, doubter, and unbeliever, long ere the 'Good Book' was ended.","author":"Elmina Drake Slenker","tags":["absurdity","atheism","atheist","bible-absurdities","bible-study","doubter","girl","philosophy","sceptic","unbeliever","young","youth"],"id":74070,"author_id":"Elmina+Drake+Slenker"},{"text":"Everything is possible, but where can I find everything?!","author":"Ljupka Cvetanova","tags":["absurd","absurdity","aphorism","aphorisms","but","can","everything","existence","find","i","ironical","irony","is","possibility","possible","quest","question","question-everything","questions-and-answers","quote","quotes","sarcasam","where"],"id":90476,"author_id":"Ljupka+Cvetanova"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":79,"pages":8,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}