Patently Absurd Quotes & Sayings

Music is expression of harmony in sound. Love is the expression of harmony in life ... — Stephen Gaskin

If you've ever had that feeling of loneliness, of being an outsider, it never quite leaves you. You can be happy or successful or whatever, but that thing still stays within you. — Tim Burton

The first two sentences are hard to understand, but make some kind of sense. The last sentence is merely rearranged but makes no natural sense at all. (This is all assuming it makes some sort of sense for an old lady to be swallowing cats in the first place, which is patently absurd, but it turns out she swallowed a goat too, not to mention a horse, so we'll let the cat pass without additional comment.) — Tom Stafford

Also, the technologically high-risk Apollo aerospace programme is considered a classic success story of megaproject planning and implementation. The cost overrun on this US$21 billion project was only 5 per cent. Few know, however, that the original budget estimate included US$8 billion of contingencies.18 By allowing for risk with foresight, the programme avoided ending up in the type of large cost overrun that destabilises many major projects during implementation. The Apollo approach, with its realistic view of risks, costs and contingencies, should be adopted in more major projects. — Bent Flyvbjerg

I know well that many of my readers do not think as I do. This also is most natural and confirms the theorem. For although my opinion turn out erroneous, there will always remain the fact that many of those dissentient readers have never given five minutes' thought to this complex matter. How are they going to think as I do? But by believing that they have a right to an opinion on the matter without previous effort to work one out for themselves, they prove patently that they belong to that absurd type of human being which I have called the "rebel mass." It is precisely what I mean by having one's soul obliterated, hermetically closed. Here it would be the special case of intellectual hermetism. The individual finds himself already with a stock of ideas. He decides to content himself with them and to consider himself intellectually complete. — Ortega Y Gasset

In America, there's no idea so patently absurd that it can't catch on. — Bill Maher

Sometimes leadership is planting trees under whose shade you'll never sit. It may not happen fully till after I'm gone. But I know that the steps we're taking are the right steps. — Jennifer Granholm

Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten. — Terry Pratchett

But she wasn't a little girl, she was a beautiful woman, tall and lovely, with tresses of black hair that curved like cupped hands around her face. — Justin Cronin

We have to slow down the emissions of carbon dioxide and methane from coal burning, oil and eventually natural gas ... And the best ways to do that are energy efficiency and a switch to renewables. — Ramez Naam

Wait. Far be it for me to say this" - Hamish looked around the compartment - "and if anyone tells Uncle Eddie I suggested being an upstanding citizen I'll kill 'em, but aren't there ... laws and stuff? I mean, can't you ... you know ... sue him or something?" asked the boy who had once stolen an entire circus, all three rings. — Ally Carter

I believe the earth gets warmer and I also believe the earth gets cooler. And I think history points out that it does that and that the idea that man, through the production of CO2 - which is a trace gas in the atmosphere, and the man-made part of that trace gas is itself a trace gas - is somehow responsible for climate change is, I think, just patently absurd when you consider all the other factors. — Rick Santorum

Drug addiction was a disease, and just as I wouldn't judge a cancer patient for a tumor, so I shouldn't judge a narcotics addict for her behavior. At thirteen, I found this patently absurd, and Mom and I often argued over whether her newfound wisdom was scientific truth or an excuse for people whose decisions destroyed a family. Oddly enough, it's probably both: Research does reveal a genetic disposition to substance abuse, but those who believe their addiction is a disease show less of an inclination to resist it. Mom was telling herself the truth, but the truth was not setting her free. I — J.D. Vance

Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power. — Murray Rothbard

The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without first-expierience is a fool and a fraud. — Hunter S. Thompson

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library — Carl Sagan

People are part of my music. A lot of my songs are the result of emotional experiences, sadness, pain, joy, and exultation in nature and sunshine and so on ... like 'California Girls' which was a hymn to youth. — Brian Wilson

What am I to call it? Diffidence? The fear of ridicule? Inverted vanity? What matters names, if it has brought me to this? I could never bear to be bustling about nothing; I was ashamed of this toy kingdom from the first; I could not tolerate that people should fancy I believed in a thing so patently absurd! I would do nothing that cannot be done smiling. I have a sense of humour, forsooth! I must know better than my Maker. And it was the same thing in my marriage," he added more hoarsely. "I did not believe this girl could care for me; I must not intrude; I must preserve the foppery of my indifference. What an impotent picture!"
"Ay, we have the same blood," moralised Gotthold. "You are drawing, with fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic."
"Sceptic? - coward!" cried Otto. "Coward is the word. A springless, putty-hearted, cowering coward! — Robert Louis Stevenson

As they say around the Texas Legislature, if you can't drink their whiskey, screw their women, take their money, and vote against 'em anyway, you don't belong in office. — Molly Ivins