“What is too absurd to believe is believed because it is too absurd to be a lie.”
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
Last update March 21, 2023.
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Julio Cortázar 29
Argentinian writer 1914–1984Related quotes
“It is to be believed because it is absurd.”
Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. / Certum est, quia impossibile.
Tertullian
(155–220) Christian theologian
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.
Achille Starace
(1889–1945) Italian Fascist general
Quoted in "Believe, Obey, Fight" - Page 98 - by Tracy H. Koon - Political Science – 1985.
Lyndon B. Johnson
(1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)
1960s, Inaugural address (1965)
Context: In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again. If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored. If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe. For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves.
“Do not believe in an absurdity
no matter who says it.”
Rumi
(1207–1273) Iranian poet
"The Three Fish" Ch. 18 : The Three Fish, p. 196
Disputed, The Essential Rumi (1995)
Immanuel Kant
(1724–1804) German philosopher
A lecture at Königsberg (1775), as quoted in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1946) by H. L. Mencken, p. 955
Context: The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.
Peter C. Newman
(1929) Canadian journalist
Source: Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales Of People, Passion and Power
Albert Camus
book
The Rebel
Source: The Rebel (1951), pp. 8 - 10 as quoted in Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd';(2002) by Avi Sagi, p. 44
Context: The absurd … is an experience to be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence of Descartes' methodical doubt. Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest. The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion … Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition.