“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.”
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.
Original
Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. / Certum est, quia impossibile.
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Tertullian 41
Christian theologian 155–220Related quotes
“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
“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)
Peter C. Newman
(1929) Canadian journalist
Source: Here Be Dragons: Telling Tales Of People, Passion and Power
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
George Orwell
(1903–1950) English author and journalist
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.
Achille Starace
(1889–1945) Italian Fascist general
Quoted in "Believe, Obey, Fight" - Page 98 - by Tracy H. Koon - Political Science – 1985.
Anne Frank
(1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
15 July 1944; Variant translations:
It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.
I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery, and death...and yet...I think...this cruelty will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Context: It's difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It's utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I'll be able to realize them!
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
John Allen Paulos
(1945) American mathematician
Preface (p. xiii; quoting Voltaire)
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (2008)