122 Absurd Quotes

Life often surprises us with its absurdities, offering moments that can leave us scratching our heads or laughing out loud. To celebrate the whimsical, the nonsensical, and the downright quirky aspects of human experience, we've curated a list of the top 122 absurd quotes that capture the essence of this delightful strangeness. Whether these quotes make you chuckle, ponder, or inspire you to embrace a more lighthearted view of the world, they promise to add a touch of the eccentric to your day. Dive in and let the absurdity commence!

1. “It's a match made in heaven...by a retarded angel.” - Woody Allen

2. “To you, I'm an atheist.To God, I'm the loyal opposition.” - Woody Allen

3. “I should go to Paris and jump off of the Eiffel Tower. If I took the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier.” - Woody Allen

4. “Please forgive me. My pedicurist had a stroke. She fell forward onto the orange stick and plunged it into my toe. It required bandaging.” - Woody Allen

5. “Honey, you're the one who stopped sleeping with me, OK?It'll be a year come April 20th. I remember the date exactly, because it was Hitler's birthday” - Woody Allen

6. “I came home one night, some month ago, and I went to the closet in my bedroom...and a moth ate my sports jacket. He was laying on the floor, nauseous, y'know.” - Woody Allen

7. “[Waiting for Godot] has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.” - Vivian Mercier

8. “What have you been reading, The Gospel according to St. Bastard?!” - Eddie Izzard

9. “Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.” - Garrison Keillor

10. “Just because you're beautiful and perfect, it's made you conceited.” - William Goldman

11. “God is the supreme uncreated light of which Wisdom is born, but there was never a time when God's Wisdom did not exist.” - Merritt Y. Hughes

12. “Beauty is a whore, I like money better.” - Michael Cunningham

13. “A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.” - Franz Kafka

14. “It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” - George Orwell

15. “Everything not forbidden is compulsory” - T.H. White

16. “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.” - Woody Allen

17. “Never was a cornflake girl;Thought it was a good solution: hanging with the raisin girls.” - Tori Amos

18. “HOBBES:All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.” - Bill Watterson

19. “I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.” - Jon Stewart

20. “Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” - Niels Bohr

21. “Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.” - Jon Stewart

22. “If America leads a blessed life, then why did God put all of our oil under people who hate us?” - Jon Stewart

23. “They took a baseball batand whacked open his head.Mummy Boy fell to the ground;he finally was dead. Inside of his headwere no candy or prizes,just a few stray beetlesof various sizes.” - Tim Burton

24. “Children and dogs are the messengers of God some of us do not deserve them” - Ginnetta Correli

25. “They haven't left us much to believe in, have they?--even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home or vaguer than a human being.” - Graham Greene

26. “I took a puff of the wrong cigarette at a fraternity dance once, and the cops had to get me, y'know. I broke two teeth trying to give a hickie to the Statue of Liberty.” - Woody Allen

27. “I'm not a drinker, my body won't tolerate...eh...spirits, really. I had two martinis New Years Eve and I tried to hi-jack an elevator and fly it to Cuba.” - Woody Allen

28. “I can't fight. I was once run over by a car with a flat tire, being pushed by two guys.” - Woody Allen

29. “I was the captain of the latent paranoid softball team. We used to play all the neurotics on sunday morning. Nailbiters against the bedwetters, and if you've never seen neurotics play softball, it's really funny. I used to steal second base, and feel guilty and go back.” - Woody Allen

30. “Money can't buy you friends, but you do get a better class of enemy. ” - Spike Milligan

31. “You know, Maude . . . somebody meeting you for the first time -- not knowing you were cracked -- might get the wrong impression of you.” - Preston Sturges

32. “This is the story of two men who met in a banana republic. One of them never did anything dishonest in his life except for one crazy minute. The other never did anything honest in his life except for one crazy minute. ” - Preston Sturges

33. “THE POLITICIANIf it wasn't for graft, you'd get a very low type of people in politics. Men without ambition. Jellyfish!CATHERINEEspecially since you can't rob the people anyway.THE POLITICIANSure...How was that?CATHERINEWhat you rob, you spend. And what you spend goes back to the people. So where's the robbery? I read that in one of my father's books.THE POLITICIANThat book should be in every home!” - Preston Sturges

34. “The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.” - John Cleese

35. “All right, You Great Git, You've asked for it. I'll cover the world in Tastee-Freez and Wimpy Burgers. I'll fill it with concrete runways, motorways, aircraft, television, automobiles, advertising, plastic flowers, frozen food and supersonic bangs. I'll make it so noisy and disgusting that even You'll be ashamed of Yourself! No wonder You've so few friends. You're unbelievable!” - Peter Cook

36. “Job was what you'd technically describe as a loony.” - Peter Cook

37. “When I was a kid we had a sandbox. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child...eventually.” - Steven Wright

38. “Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.” - Albert Camus

39. “Why, look at me. I've worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.” - Groucho Marx

40. “I have nothing but respect for you -- and not much of that.” - Groucho Marx

41. “We're the new power, come to replace the old. Cameras in the head, children with microchips, spin doctors rewriting reality as it happens. ” - Grant Morrison

42. “Maruman does not loll.” - Isobelle Carmody

43. “That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics.” - Alan Moore

44. “It has always seemed absurd to suppose that a god would choose for his companions, during all eternity, the dear souls whose highest and only ambition is to obey.” - Robert Green Ingersoll

45. “Hello, I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. By true I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies and in the end, isn't that the truth?The answer is no.” - Leonard Nimoy

46. “Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff?” - Steven Wright

47. “Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.” - Yogi Berra

48. “Applaud my idiocy.” - Conan O'Brien

49. “When all else fails, there's always delusion.” - Conan O'Brien

50. “The humans are dead (I'm glad they are dead)The humans are dead (I noticed, they're dead)We used poisonous gases (With traces of lead)And we poisoned their asses (Actually, their lungs)Binary solo!0000001, 00000011000000111, 00001111!” - Flight of the Conchords

51. “2 minutes in heaven is better than 1 minute in heaven.” - Flight of the Conchords

52. “Your self esteem is like a notch below Kafka's.” - Woody Allen

53. “You keep seeing your picture on posters that you are missing but you're not. That'd be weird, right? Or say you look down at the sidewalk and earthworms are spelling your name. Or you open a peanut bag and the 'hello' is written in your writing on the inside of the shell. Would that weird ya?” - Lynda Barry

54. “When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.” - Steven Wright

55. “I smell blood and an era of prominent madmen.” - W.H. Auden

56. “If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.” - Steven Wright

57. “How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark.""A whale isn't a fish, Thursday.""A whale shark is--sort of.""All right, it's as fishy as a crayfish.""A crayfish isn't a fish.""A starfish, then.""Still not a fish.""This is a very odd conversation, Thursday.” - Jasper Fforde

58. “What a nice night for an evening.” - Steven Wright

59. “Take from the church the miraculous, the supernatural, the incomprehensible, the unreasonable, the impossible, the unknowable, the absurd, and nothing but a vacuum remains.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

60. “If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?” - Steven Wright

61. “In my house there's this light switch that doesn't do anything. Every so often I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Madagascar. She said, 'Cut it out.'” - Steven Wright

62. “Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.” - Steven Wright

63. “If warm air rises, Heaven could be hotter than Hell.” - Steven Wright

64. “If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” - Albert Einstein

65. “Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics. ” - Thomas Nagel

66. “TEACHERNext. I am afraid --STUDENTI em afred --TEACHERWe are out --STUDENTWee are out --TEACHEROf badgers.STUDENTOf badjurs.TEACHERWould you accept --STUDENTWud you accept --TEACHERA wolverine --STUDENTA wolver-eene --TEACHERIn its place?” - Michael O'Donoghue

67. “TEACHERNext. Hey, Ned exclaimed --STUDENTEy, Ned asclaimed --TEACHERLet's boil --STUDENTLet's boil --TEACHERThe wolverines.” - Michael O'Donoghue

68. “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.” - André Breton

69. “I’m beginning to sense a theme,” Mircea said, tossing his suit coat over a buckskin-covered chair. A moose head with huge, outspread antlers loomed over it, its bright glass eyes looking oddly lifelike in the low light. Mircea took in the room, his expression slightly repulsed yet fascinated. “I believe there is only one thing to say at this point.”What’s that?”Yee haw,” he said gravely, and took me down like a rodeo calf.” - Karen Chance

70. “I call my wife and tell her I’m going to sleep at the lab. She reminds me that she left me a week ago. Louis tries to crack me up by pantomiming humping a chimp through the cage.” - Noah Baumbach

71. “End production today. Wrap party as usual a little sad. Slow danced with Scarlett. Broke her toe. Not my fault. When she dipped me back, I stepped on it.Penélope and Javier anxious to work with me again. Said if I ever come up with another screenplay to try and find them.Goodbye drink with Rebecca. Sentimental moment.Everyone in cast and crew chipped in and bought me a ballpoint pen.” - Woody Allen

72. “Raining. Oh, brother, a scratch on the fender. Damn rabbi on his unicycle.Wait a minute, where are my car keys? Could have sworn I left them in this pocket. No, just some loose change and ticket stubs from the all-black version of Elaine Stritch’ s one-woman show.Did I check my desk? Better go back inside. What’s in the top drawer here? Hmm. Envelopes, my paper clips, a loaded revolver in case the tenant in 2A begins yodelling again.” - Woody Allen

73. “Remember the Hottentots?" asked James. "They've become the Khoi now, which means that the Germans will have to retire that wonderful word of theirs, Hottentotenpotentatenstantenattentater, which means, as you know, one who attacks the aunt of a Hottentot potentate.” - Alexander McCall Smith

74. “Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.” - Karl Lagerfeld

75. “Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?” - Norton Juster

76. “A partir do momento em que é reconhecido, o absurdo é uma paixão, a mais dilacerante de todas.” - Albert Camus

77. “- A pan czy wierzy w duchy - spytał prelegenta jeden ze słuchaczy.- Oczywiście, że nie - odparł prelegent, po czym z wolna rozpłynąłsię w powietrzu.” - Arkady Strugatsky

78. “I'm freestylin just on the microphoneOn the BBC, on the BBCI'm just freestylin on the BBCUm British Broadcasting Companyi'm just basically making this shit up as I go alongBasically just freeJust basically from the top of my domeSometimes it's not so goodMy rhymes are so potent that in this small segmentI made all the lady listeners pregnant” - Flight of the Conchords

79. “It is a Bush administration official on the moment when torture breaks a victim:The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.From Neil Gaiman's account of a torturer in hell:We will hurt you. And we are not sorry. But we do not do it to punish you. We do it to redeem you. Because afterward, you'll be a better person ... and because we love you. One day you'll thank us for it.War is peace. Torture is freedom. In the end, you love Big Brother. ” - Andrew Sullivan

80. “What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.” - Albert Camus

81. “I am a personal optimist but a skeptic about all else. What may sound to some like anger is really nothing more than sympathetic contempt. I view my species with a combination of wonder and pity, and I root for its destruction. And please don't confuse my point of view with cynicism; the real cynics are the ones who tell you everything's gonna be all right.” - George Carlin

82. “The teacher took two long strides and stood beside Parker’s desk. Before the boy could speak, Mr. Earl threw the desktop open. For a second, he stared into it. A white glow reflected off his face.“What is this?” he said, as he reached toward the brightness. “Careful, Mr. Earl,” Parker started to say, but it was too late.The teacher screeched before lurching against the desk. He went down quickly, his feet vanishing into the desk last.” - James van Pelt

83. “You need to be clever to best him. Are you clever, Rachel?”Oh God. She wants to know if I’m clever. I glanced at Al, and he stared at me, then shrugged. Licking my lips, I said, “It’s the shiny pot that puts a hole in the sky.”Al’s mouth dropped open, but Newt thought about it, her expression thoughtful and her fingers finally leaving her knife. “Very true,” she said as she eased back into the cushions.With a soft click of his teeth, Al’s mouth shut. His eyes were cross, and he seemed peeved that I’d found a way to satisfy her without compromising myself at all.” - Kim Harrison

84. “No novelists any good except me. Sovietski -- yah! Nastikoff -- bah! I spit me of zem all. No novelists anywhere any good except me. P. G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelists any good except me.” - P.G. Wodehouse

85. “The phrase ‘popular science’ has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.” - Maria Mitchell

86. “Naked guy think Hulk stupid?” - Mark Millar

87. “Voodoo GirlHer skin is white cloth,and she's all sewn apartand she has many colored pinssticking out of her heart.She has many different zombieswho are deeply in her trance.She even has a zombiewho was originally from France.But she knows she has a curse on her,a curse she cannot win.For if someone getstoo close to her,the pins stick farther in.” - Tim Burton

88. “Robot BoyMr. an Mrs. Smith had a wonderful life.They were a normal, happy husband and wife.One day they got news that made Mr. Smith glad.Mrs. Smith would would be a momwhich would make him the dad!But something was wrong with their bundle of joy.It wasn't human at all,it was a robot boy!He wasn't warm and cuddlyand he didn't have skin.Instead there was a cold, thin layer of tin.There were wires and tubes sticking out of his head.He just lay there and stared,not living or dead.The only time he seemed alive at allwas with a long extension cordplugged into the wall.Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor,"What have you done to my boy?He's not flesh and blood,he's aluminum alloy!"The doctor said gently,"What I'm going to saywill sound pretty wild.But you're not the father of this strange looking child.You see, there still is some questionabout the child's gender,but we think that its fatheris a microwave blender."The Smith's lives were now filledwith misery and strife.Mrs. Smith hated her husband,and he hated his wife.He never forgave her unholy alliance:a sexual encounterwith a kitchen appliance.And Robot Boygrew to be a young man.Though he was often mistakenfor a garbage can.” - Tim Burton

89. “BRETShe looked like a Parisian river..JEMAINEWhat, dirty?BRETShe looked like a chocolate eclair..JEMAINEThat's rare.BRETHer eyes were reflections of eyes..JEMAINEOhh, nice.BRETAnd the rainbows danced in her hair..JEMAINEOh yea.BRETShe reminded me of a winter's morning..JEMAINEWhat, frigid?BRETHer perfume was Eau De Toilette..JEMAINEWhat's that mean?BRETShe was comparable to Cleopatra..JEMAINEQuite old?BRETShe was like Shakespeare's Juliet..JEMAINEWhat? 13?” - Flight of the Conchords

90. “Some Christian lawyers—some eminent and stupid judges—have said and still say, that the Ten Commandments are the foundation of all law.Nothing could be more absurd. Long before these commandments were given there were codes of laws in India and Egypt—laws against murder, perjury, larceny, adultery and fraud. Such laws are as old as human society; as old as the love of life; as old as industry; as the idea of prosperity; as old as human love.All of the Ten Commandments that are good were old; all that were new are foolish. If Jehovah had been civilized he would have left out the commandment about keeping the Sabbath, and in its place would have said: 'Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow-men.' He would have omitted the one about swearing, and said: 'The man shall have but one wife, and the woman but one husband.' He would have left out the one about graven images, and in its stead would have said: 'Thou shalt not wage wars of extermination, and thou shalt not unsheathe the sword except in self-defence.'If Jehovah had been civilized, how much grander the Ten Commandments would have been.All that we call progress—the enfranchisement of man, of labor, the substitution of imprisonment for death, of fine for imprisonment, the destruction of polygamy, the establishing of free speech, of the rights of conscience; in short, all that has tended to the development and civilization of man; all the results of investigation, observation, experience and free thought; all that man has accomplished for the benefit of man since the close of the Dark Ages—has been done in spite of the Old Testament.” - Robert G. Ingersoll

91. “BERENGER: And you consider all this natural? 

DUDARD: What could be more natural than a rhinoceros? 

BERENGER: Yes, but for a man to turn into a rhinoceros is abnormal beyond question. 

DUDARD: Well, of course, that's a matter of opinion ... 

BERENGER: It is beyond question, absolutely beyond question! 
DUDARD: You seem very sure of yourself. Who can say where the normal stops and the abnormal begins? Can you personally define these conceptions of normality and abnormality? Nobody has solved this problem yet, either medically or philosophically. You ought to know that. 

BERENGER: The problem may not be resolved philosophically -- but in practice it's simple. They may prove there's no such thing as movement ... and then you start walking ... [he starts walking up and down the room] ... and you go on walking, and you say to yourself, like Galileo, 'E pur si muove' ... 

DUDARD: You're getting things all mixed up! Don't confuse the issue. In Galileo's case it was the opposite: theoretic and scientific thought proving itself superior to mass opinion and dogmatism. 

BERENGER: [quite lost] What does all that mean? Mass opinion, dogmatism -- they're just words! I may be mixing everything up in my head but you're losing yours. You don't know what's normal and what isn't any more. I couldn't care less about Galileo ... I don't give a damn about Galileo. 

DUDARD: You brought him up in the first place and raised the whole question, saying that practice always had the last word. Maybe it does, but only when it proceeds from theory! The history of thought and science proves that. BERENGER: [more and more furious] It doesn't prove anything of the sort! It's all gibberish, utter lunacy! 

DUDARD: There again we need to define exactly what we mean by lunacy ... 

BERENGER: Lunacy is lunacy and that's all there is to it! Everybody knows what lunacy is. And what about the rhinoceroses -- are they practice or are they theory?” - Eugene Ionesco

92. “I, Larry Vail, do hereby confessTo murdering Merry in her little dress.To strangling and raping and making a mess.To all of these charges the answer is yes.” - Rosalyn Drexler

93. “I've knitted myself a hat, it's plum red with an appealing lace pattern, I figured that a few air holes would be nice now that it's spring. I put it on and feel like a cranberry in the snow, and I wonder if they can see me from the moon. Me and the Great Wall.” - Kjersti A. Skomsvold

94. “Absurdity is the ecstasy of intellectualism.” - Criss Jami

95. “Humans are creatures, who spent their lifes trying to convince themselves, that their existence is not absurd” - Albert Camus

96. “This book (Jarod Kintz's book) is trash. I mean, I assume it is, because that's where I found it while scrounging for lunch. However, I must admit that I haven't read it. I would have, but I am homeless, mainly due to my illiteracy (though Big Government, Keynesian monetary policy, and my struggle with alcoholism certainly played a large role).” - Dora J. Arod

97. “Snarling an oath from an Icelandic saga, I reclaimed my place at the head of the queue. "Oy!" yelled a punk rocker, with studs in his cranium. "There's a fackin' queue!"Never apologize, advises Lloyd George. Say it again, only this time, ruder. "I know there's a 'fackin' queue'! I already queued in it once and I am not going to queue in it again just because Nina Simone over there won't sell me a ruddy ticket!"A colored yeti in a clip-on uniform swooped. "Wassa bovver?""This old man here reckons his colostomy bag entitles him to jump the queue," said the skinhead, "and make racist slurs about the lady of Afro-Caribbean extraction in the advance-travel window."I couldn't believe I was hearing this.” - David Mitchell

98. “Is my paranoia getting completely out of hand, or are you mongoloids really talking about me?” - John Kennedy Toole

99. “Don Severo dropped his fork, Doña Remedios nearly chocked, but Jesús carried on playing with his food. He’d never really liked broccoli.” - Olga Núñez Miret

100. “Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.” - Thomas Mann

101. “Flying is simple. Hitting the ground is hard” - Josh Stern

102. “... the more I learned, the more conscious did I become of the fact that I was ridiculous. So that for me my years of hard work at the university seem in the end to have existed for the sole purpose of demonstrating and proving to me, the more deeply engrossed I became in my studies, that I was an utterly absurd person.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

103. “A man from the Land of Fools wanted to pull down the clouds.'Why?' someone asked him.'To squeeze out the rain.” - Idries Shah

104. “What can you do with a person who says that he is absolutely uncertain about everything, and that he is absolutely certain about that?” - Idries Shah

105. “The only threesome I've ever experienced is with Pantene 2 in 1” - Josh Stern

106. “You see, I’ve heard of a man whose friend had been imprisoned and who slept on the floor of his room every night in order not to enjoy a comfort of which his friend had been deprived.” - Albert Camus

107. “A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?” - Albert Camus

108. “You can sit on a brick, and milk a cow with a blanket.” - Nicole McKay

109. “A brick and a blanket together create a blick. That’s it. That’s all I got.” - Amy Riekhof

110. “A watched pot never boils.... but it does develop paranoia” - Josh Stern

111. “Death is life's way of telling you, you've been recalled” - Josh Stern

112. “Everything is a drive-thru. You just have to aim really fast” - Josh Stern

113. “It's one thing if your hobby is to put ships inside a bottle, but a deer in the headlights!... That's a real talent” - Josh Stern

114. “Date rape is just plain moronic when you consider how slutty figs are” - Josh Stern

115. “Never send a Man in to do a Donkey's job” - Josh Stern

116. “Long before the Theater of the Absurd, Woolrich discovered that an incomprehensible universe is best reflected in an incomprehensible story.("Introduction")” - Francis M. Nevins

117. “You'll never know what psychopathic heights you're capable of, just lying there on the sofa” - Josh Stern

118. “I love full on, like 65 mph in a handicapped parking spot.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

119. “Love isn't two matching unicycles. Love is a bicycle—and mine just got stolen.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

120. “To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.” - Albert Camus

121. “Dave? This is John. Your pimp says bring the heroin shipment tonight, or he'll be forced to stick you. meet him where we buried the Korean whore. The one without the goatee."That was code. It meant "Come to my place as soon as you can, it's important.” - David Wong

122. “We call love what binds us to certain creatures only by reference to a collective way of seeing for which books and legends are responsible.” - Albert Camus