Absurd or The Absurd may refer to:
- Absurdity, general and technical usage - associated with extremely poor reasoning, the ridiculous, or nonsense.
- Absurdism, a philosophy born of existentialism, regarding the philosophical concept of "the Absurd," the clash between the human tendency to seek some inherent meaning in the universe and the human impossibility of finding meaning
- Absurd or surreal humour
- Absurdist fiction
- Absurd (band), a German metal band
- The Absurd (band), a German band formed in 1984
- Absurd (Fluke song)
- Theatre of the Absurd, an art form utilizing the philosophy of Absurdism
- Absurd, a term used in logic to describe a contradiction
- Reductio ad absurdum, a type of logical argument
- Absurd (film), an Italian film
Famous quotes containing the word absurd:
“I’m the end of the line; absurd and appalling as it may seem, serious New York theater has died in my lifetime.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“We agree fully that the mother and unborn child demand special consideration. But so does the soldier and the man maimed in industry. Industrial conditions that are suitable for a stalwart, young, unmarried woman are certainly not equally suitable to the pregnant woman or the mother of young children. Yet “welfare” laws apply to all women alike. Such blanket legislation is as absurd as fixing industrial conditions for men on a basis of their all being wounded soldiers would be.”
—National Woman’s Party, quoted in Everyone Was Brave. As, ch. 8, by William L. O’Neill (1969)
“Slavery is no scholar, no improver; it does not love the whistle of the railroad; it does not love the newspaper, the mail-bag, a college, a book or a preacher who has the absurd whim of saying what he thinks; it does not increase the white population; it does not improve the soil; everything goes to decay.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)