The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

— Carl Sagan

The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and immediately practiced the contrary.

— Benjamin Franklin

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

The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.

— George Orwell

They floated for a while, two fleshed-shaped creatures and a giant worm in a cloud of spinning metal fragments, an absurd collection of imaginary debris, glinting by the light of the true stars.

— Greg Egan

They may take you for a fool, promise to shower you with the world, use their canny devastating tongue to manipulate and dominate your mind, but it's better to put them bulshit people at arms length rather than falling into the arms of infidelity.

— Michael Bassey Johnson

They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Things stayed peaceful in there, even as the crashing vehicles and the cries of the injured and dying reached a crescendo outside. "I fry mine in butter!" indeed.

— Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

This is a silly place. Half the world has no clean water. The other half has so much that they pooh in it.

— Larry Bird

Thus, I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death—and I refuse suicide.

— Albert Camus