 |
 | "... There can be no doubt about faith and not reason being the
ultima ratio. Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the
charge of credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this.
He has no demonstrable first premise. He requires postulates and axioms
which transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing. His
superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground his faith. Nor
again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool if he persists in
differing from him. He says "which is absurd," and declines to discuss the
matter further. Faith and authority, therefore, prove to be as necessary
for him as for anyone else." | |
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Samuel Butler, the Younger
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| "Ab absurdo - From the absurd." | |
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Proverb
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| "Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with
one"s own opinion." | |
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Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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| "Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those
whom we cannot resemble." | |
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Dr. Samuel Johnson
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| "Brutes find out where their talents lie; A bear will not attempt to
fly, A foundered horse will oft debate Before he tries a five barred gate.
A dog by instinct turns aside Who sees the ditch too deep and wide, But man
we find the only creature Who, led by folly, combats nature; Who, when she
loudly cries?Forbear! With obstinacy fixes there; And where the genius
least inclines, Absurdly bends his whole designs." | |
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Jonathan Swift
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| "Life is a jest, and all things show it; I thought so once, but now I
know it." | |
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John Gay
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| "Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible." | |
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Unknown
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| "Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I
think it"s in my basement... let me go upstairs and check." | |
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M. C. Escher
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| "People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in
the way of civilization." | |
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Agnes Repplier
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| "The absurd ... the fact that with God all things are possible. The
absurd is not one of the factors which can be discriminated within the
proper compass of the understanding: it is not identical with the
improbable, the unexpected, the unforeseen." | |
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Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
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| "The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth." | |
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Albert Camus
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| "The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject
but man only." | |
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Thomas Hobbes
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| "There is nothing so absurd (or ridiculous) but some philosopher has
said it." | |
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Marcus Tullius Cicero
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| "To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we condemn in others,
is neither better nor worse than to be more willing to be fools ourselves
than to have others so." | |
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Alexander Pope
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| "What shall I do with this absurdity? O heart, O troubled heart?this
caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog"s tail?
Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear
and eye That more expected the impossible." | |
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William Butler Yeats
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