“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”

— Albert Camus , book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

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Albert Camus 209

French author and journalist 1913–1960

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, Economics As A Moral Science, 1969, p. 4 cited in: John B. Davis (2011)

“Conceptions are artificial. Perceptions are essential.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

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

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Righteous hatred' is in the same category as 'righteous cancer' or 'righteous tuberculosis'. All of them are absurd concepts.”

B. Alan Wallace (1950) American author, translator, teacher, researcher, interpreter, and Buddhist practitioner

Tibetan Buddhism from the Ground up, Wisdom (1993).

“I saw something even more beautiful than a sense of humor: an appreciation for life’s essential absurdity.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

Source: 11/22/63

“The category of class was at first indistinct from the concept of the human group; it is the rhythm of social life which is at the basis of the category of time; the territory occupied by the society furnished the material for the category of space; it is the collective force which was the prototype of the concept of efficient force, an essential element in the category of causality.”

Émile Durkheim book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Source: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, 1912, p. 488

“First is the conception of being or existing independent of anything else. Second is the conception of being relative to, the conception of reaction with, something else. Third is the conception of mediation, whereby a first and second are brought into relation.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The Architecture of Theories (1891)
Context: Three conceptions are perpetually turning up at every point in every theory of logic, and in the most rounded systems they occur in connection with one another. They are conceptions so very broad and consequently indefinite that they are hard to seize and may be easily overlooked. I call them the conceptions of First, Second, Third. First is the conception of being or existing independent of anything else. Second is the conception of being relative to, the conception of reaction with, something else. Third is the conception of mediation, whereby a first and second are brought into relation.

“Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.”

Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist

As quoted by his son Hans Bohr in "My Father", published in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work (1967), p. 328
Unsourced variant: The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
As quoted in Max Delbrück, Mind from Matter: An Essay on Evolutionary Epistemology, (1986) p. 167. It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth

“To think about reality we must use concepts, and certain truths about concepts may reveal, or reflect, truths about reality.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), pp. 223-224

“If at first an idea does not sound absurd, then there is no hope for it. —ALBERT EINSTEIN”

Michio Kaku (1947) American theoretical physicist, futurist and author

Source: Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”

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Albert Camus 209

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