My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the…

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