ABSURDISM QUOTES II
quotations about absurdism
Absurdism is the philosophy suggesting that all human existence in the universe is purely meaningless, and therefore that the human attempt to seek any meaning for it is ultimately futile and absurd. In this context, "absurd" does not refer to that which is "logically impossible", but rather the "humanly impossible."
JAY WINTER
Behold the Frozen Sun
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.
VACLAV HAVEL
attributed, "From Prisoner to President: A Tribute"
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
VOLTAIRE
attributed, The Philosophers of the Enlightenment and Modern Democracy
Life is absurd; and that is strange because it seems to promise us a lot more but it always runs short. We are made for much more than life can offer. In all men, is a yearning for the eternal, a longing for the infinite. The eyes of men are raised towards the mountains, yet, we only can annex the plains. What can this life, even in its best, ever give to sate the insatiable human desire and its craving for transcendence? This is the conflict: we cannot get what we want -- so, we settle for what there is.
HENRY ANUMUDU
"Henry Anumudu: Life & Its Complexities", Bella Naija, January 16, 2017
Whereas modern cynicism brought despair about the ability of the human species to realize laudable ideals, postmodern cynicism doesn't -- not because it's optimistic, but because it can't take ideals seriously in the first place. The prevailing attitude is Absurdism. A postmodern magazine may be irreverent, but not bitterly irreverent, for it's not purposefully irreverent; its aim is indiscriminate, because everyone is equally ridiculous. And anyway, there's no moral basis for passing judgment. Just sit back and enjoy the show.
ROBERT WRIGHT
The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are
They are young and well built, they have another thirty years ahead of them. So they don't hurry, they take their time, and they are quite right. Once they have been to bed together, they will have to find something else to conceal the enormous absurdity of their existence.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Nausea
Absurdism is not merely an idea about the way things are, it is the way in which that idea smacks against our lives.
DANIEL KLEIN
Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life, They Change It
But what is absurd, or rather what is unusual, is first and foremost what exists, reality.
EUGENE IONESCO
Conversations with Eugene Ionesco
To work and create 'for nothing', to sculpture in clay, to know that one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries -- this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on one hand and magnifying on the other, is the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
If Beckett the absurdist is actually Beckett a post-absurdist, where did Beckett the absurdist go?
WILLIAM M. DEMASTES
Theatre of Chaos
Absurdism is like MadLibs for the whole of an audience member's experience: one's brain fills in gaps and makes a kind of sense where none exists.
J. SCOTT HILL
"Strauss at Midnight -- REVIEW", Chicago Stage Review, June 19, 2009
Two strongly influential movements--naturalism and absurdism--have polarized western theatre, arguing respectively for a tidy global perspective of human behavior or for an idiosyncratic local vision, in which ultimately no human behavioral patterns can be abstracted. One is left to choose between existence represented as strict linear determinism or as utter randomness.
WILLIAM DEMASTES
Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition
The absurd is eternal, but absurdism is not.
ANDREW HORTON
Inside Soviet Film Satire
Many people are bored with life, irritated by the human condition, exhausted from suffering, tired of living. For those for whom life is too long, a longer life would be worse and, quite possibly, more absurd. For some, however, life seems too long because it's too short, meaning life is rendered so absurd by being short that even a short absurd life feels too long because it is pointless. A life made absurd because it is too short would be rendered less absurd if it were significantly longer.
RIVKA WEINBERG
"Why Life Is Absurd", New York Times, January 11, 2015
Absurdism sheds light on our preconceptions of "what should be" and forces us to unpack our reactions to something that seems out of place.
DUSTIN HURT
"It's a Sound Machine! It's a Sculpture! It's...Super Zwei-Mann-Orchester!", WRTI, May 17, 2018
If at first an idea isn't absurd, there is no hope for it.
ANONYMOUS
The absurdist is not guided by morality, but rather, by their own integrity. The absurdist is, in fact, amoral (though not necessarily immoral). The Absurdist's view of morality implies an unwavering sense of definite right and wrong at all times, while integrity implies honesty with one's self and consistency in the motivations of one's actions and decisions.
ARTHUR MORIUS FRANCIS
Nihilism: Philosophy of Nothingness
This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
The echo is the product of reciprocal insanity. Reinforced absurdism is no less absurd.
DAVID CARY HART
"ADF's Jordan Lorence and the Federalist's Mollie Hemingway have a fun idea", The Slowly Boiled Frog, June 11, 2016
To embrace the absurd, even if only in a kind of inchoate reasoning, is to begin to consciously forego the falsities of deceitful constructs that seductively lure the weary into the belief that this world, and our interaction with it, within it, must be more reasonable, more amiable than currently presented. It is this false belief, according to thinkers like Camus, that causes us so much existential dread, so much cosmic anxiety. In turn, It is the taking charge of action which grants man freedom. It is by his own hand that he will endure.
BLAKE JON MYCAL SMITH
"Coping with Tragedy Through Philosophy: Camus, Absurdism, and the Weeks Following the Orlando Shooting", Oxford Exchange, July 25, 2016