
“We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.”
Source: Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
Sebban Balwer
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos
“We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.”
Source: Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
“It is to be believed because it is absurd.”
Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. / Certum est, quia impossibile.
Variant translations
It is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd.
It is is entirely credible, because it is inept.
It is certain because it is impossible.
De Carne Christi 5.4
Often paraphrased or misquoted as "Credo quia absurdum."
Also paraphrased as "It is so extraordinary that it must be true."
Two lines from De Carne Christi have often become conflated into the statement: "Credo quia impossibile" (I believe it because it is impossible), which can be perceived as a distortion of the actual arguments that Tertullian was making.
“Do not believe in an absurdity
no matter who says it.”
"The Three Fish" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 196
Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)
Source: Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales Of People, Passion and Power
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
Possibly a paraphrase of Bertrand Russell in My Philosophical Development (1959): "This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them." It is similar in meaning to Orwell's line from Notes on Nationalism (1945): "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool." However, Russell was commenting not on politics, as Orwell was, but on some philosophers and their ideas about language.
Misattributed
Variant: Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.
Quoted in "Believe, Obey, Fight" - Page 98 - by Tracy H. Koon - Political Science – 1985.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Preface (p. xiii; quoting Voltaire)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)