Old Zen was the reduction of concepts to absurdity.

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…

— Phil Ochs

The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into…

— Arthur Koestler

For it is an absurdity to call a country civilized in which a decent and industrious man, laboriously mastering a trade which is valuble…

— H. L. Mencken

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror." "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion…

— Voltaire

One would think that a system loaded with such gross and vulgar absurdities as Scripture religion is could never have obtained credit; yet we…

— Thomas Paine

Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.

— Jane Austen

Thought of the incomprehensible sequence of changes and chances that make up a life, all the beauties and horrors and absurdities whose conjunctions create…

— Aldous Huxley

We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on…

— Catherynne M. Valente

Desire is this absurdity that holds open the infinity of possibility. Ever optimistic, ever resourceful, desire tells us what it sees as it speeds…

— Wendy Farley

I've always felt that comedy doesn't just come from misery. It comes from an absurdity around that misery.

— Simon Amstell

Unaware of the absurdity of it, we introduce our own petty household rules into the economy of the universe for which the life of…

— Alexander Herzen

“Christianity would be helpless without the idea of free will and the idea of free will would be helpless without incongruity.”

— Kedar Joshi

Sensible Catholics have for generations been ignoring the views on contraception held by reactionary old men in the Vatican, but alas, since it is…

— A.C. Grayling

The tales of our exploits will survive as long as the human voice itself,' he said. 'And even after that, when the robots recall…

— John Green

Life packed a clever one-two punch: cruelty and absurdity.

— Dean Koontz