The idea that life is absurd has long been discussed by philosophers.
This concept is highlighted through various famous quotes and movements.
For example after living for about 25 years one might realize life is stranger than we’re taught and often laughter is the best response to its oddities.
Embracing life’s absurdity is key to enjoying it despite its odd and unexpected turns.
Here is a collection of quotes about life’s absurdity that covers topics from friendship to financial struggles offering relatable insights for everyone.
Absurdity Of Life Quotes
Some stories have to be written because no one would believe the absurdity of it all. ~ Shannon L. Alder.
The privilege of absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only. ~ Thomas Hobbes.
There’s so much absurdity. Poverty is so absurd. ~ Frank McCourt.
Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble. ~ Samuel Johnson.
Recognizing the absurdity of life is also a way of surviving. ~ Noa Ben Artzi-Pelossof.
This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. ~ Albert Camus.
That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in another. ~ Adlai Stevenson.
A king without power is an absurdity. ~ James Monroe.
Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure. ~ George Carlin.
The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary. ~ Benjamin Franklin.
If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. ~ Albert Einstein.
Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it. ~ Vaclav Havel.
Best Absurdity Of Life Quotes
Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood. ~ Alexander Herzen.
No amount of manifest absurdity… could deter those who wanted to believe from believing. ~ Bernard Levin.
Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making. ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
I’ve always felt that Donald Trump was a Dickensian character because he is so ridiculous. With his hair and his arrogance, he is certainly Dickensian in his absurdity. ~ Miriam Margolyes.
At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. ~ Albert Camus.
In any case, I would never make a film that was only one thing. Even if it’s my warmest, most romantic film, I still want it to have the more cynical view of things, showing the irony and absurdity of things that we consider normal. ~ Yorgos Lanthimos.
My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that West Berlin was surrounded by a wall that was more than 100 miles long – the absurdity and intensity of it really knocked me out. ~ Henry Rollins
Even though you can’t expect to defeat the absurdity of the world, you must make the attempt. That’s morality, that’s religion, that’s art, that’s life. ~ Phil Ochs
We all live inside the terrible engine of authority, and it grinds and shrieks and burns so that no one will say: lines on maps are silly. ~ Catherynne M. Valente.
To try to fix the future is a manifest absurdity. Iain Sinclair Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation. ~ Claude Levi-Strauss
Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer. ~ D. H. Lawrence.
Top Absurdity Of Life Quotes
The mind, placed before any kind of difficulty, can find an ideal outlet in the absurd. Accommodation to the absurd readmits adults to the mysterious realm inhabited by children. ~ Andre Breton
Because you are defined not by life’s imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. And because there is joy in embracing – rather than running from – the utter absurdity of life. ~ Jenny Lawson
In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning – in other words, of absurdity – the more energetically meaning is sought. Vaclav Havel Perhaps I’m particularly serious, because I’m not unaware of the potential absurdity of what I’m doing. ~ Daniel Day-Lewis
This Old Testament – containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality – is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy – if there were anyone to be blasphemed – blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker. ~ Annie Besant
It would be the height of absurdity to label ignorance tempered by humility “faith”! ~ John Calvin
To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can’t stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do ‘anything.’ If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it. ~ Zig Ziglar
My mother was the concert master of the symphony. Absurdity and eccentricity were not criticized. ~ Martin Short
Therefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun. ~ Nicolaus Copernicus
A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk. Oswald Mosley I always see the absurdity in most situations. It’s my experience of how life works. ~ Natasha Lyonne
All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way. ~ Patrick Warburton
Only by living absurdly is it possible to break out of this infinite absurdity. ~ Julio Cortazar
People who cannot recognize a palpable absurdity are very much in the way of civilization. ~ Agnes Repplier.
Quotes about Absurdity Of Life
It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be. ~ Archibald MacLeish
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
I really enjoy playing that everyman part because that part is us, the audience. And you need somebody inside a comedy to tether the absurdity to reality. ~ Jason Bateman
There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen. ~ Neil LaBute
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
All non-incumbent campaigns promise hope and change, but Obama took the promise to a new level of absurdity. He suggested that a vote for him would literally transform the Earth. ~ John Podhoretz
If one lives in a country where racism is held valid and practiced in all ways of life eventually, no matter whether one is a racist or a victim, one comes to feel the absurdity of life….Racism generated from whites is first of all absurd. Racism creates absurdity among blacks as a defense mechanism. ~ Chester Himes
The concept of absurdity is something I’m attracted to. ~ David Lynch
The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. ~ Carl Sagan
There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer.
Famous Absurdity Of Life Quotes
If you’re going to get into social criticism with absurdity and satire, you can’t be politically correct when you do that. ~ John Cusack
In a tradition second in wonderful absurdity only to 60-year-old baseball managers wearing uniforms and spikes in the dugout, golf spectators come dressed ready to play 18. ~ Willie Geist
The combination of landing the biggest interview of my career and having a drill in my back reminds me that God only gives us what we can handle and that it helps to have a good sense of humor when we run smack into the absurdity of life. ~ Robin Roberts
Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there’s humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd. ~ David Lynch
For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life. ~ Albert Camus
Absurdity is what I like most in life. ~ David Lynch
To reduce this claim of slavery to an absurdity, it is only necessary to add that there are only two states in which slaves are a majority, and not one in which the slaveholders are not a very disproportionate minority. ~ William H. Seward
I can’t go on, I’ll go on. ~ Samuel Beckett
Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. ~ Douglas Adams
I said that the world is absurd, but I was too hasty. 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
When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. ~ Anne Lamott
I Every absurdity has a champion to defend it. Oliver Goldsmith We’re going through a kind of ancient, barbaric war dance now – it’s almost an ultimate in absurdity. ~ Clark M. Clifford.
We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe. ~ Julio Cortázar.
I’ve always felt that comedy doesn’t just come from misery. It comes from an absurdity around that misery. ~ Simon Amstell.
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person. ~ Joseph Addison.
