INSANITY QUOTES III
quotations about insanity
If we lose our sanity ...
We can but howl the lugubrious howl of idiots,
the howl of the utterly lost
howling their nowhereness.
D.H. LAWRENCE
"At Last"
I am quite sure that a good number of "cures" of psychotics consist in the fact that the patient has decided, for one reason or other, once more to play at being sane.
R. D. LAING
The Divided Self
If he is this good at acting crazy, it's because he is.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Simulacra and Simulation
There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
OSCAR LEVANT
attributed, Celebrity Register
The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than the razor's edge, sharper than a hound's tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
The figures gathered from all countries prove conclusively that the more insane people are known to be in existence proportionately to the population from year to year. The question naturally arises, Is insanity increasing as fast as appears at first sight to be the case, or is the increase apparent rather than real?
CHARLES F. FOLSOM
"The Prevalence and Causes of Insanity", Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, July 29, 1880
Dispute not with her: she is lunatic.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard III
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
attributed, Return of the Portable Curmudgeon
The real difference between men is not sanity and insantiy, but more or less insanity.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
If everyone could understand the working of a psychopath's mind, we undoubtedly would be closer to insanity ourselves.
DAN SIMMONS
Carrion Comfort
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul", The Varieties of Religious Experience
The specialists aver that most men have a streak of insanity in them. A thoroughly sane mind is as rare as a thoroughly healthy body. To keep the mind well balanced, to preserve it in good order, to enable it to work clearly, quickly, efficiently, regularly, requires a knowledge of the mind and of the conditions of mental health. The ministers assure us that all men are diseased morally. Life abundantly bears out their assertion. No man is perfectly healthy, morally; for perfect health is a perfect balance of all the moral powers. Every faculty has its own disease. The conscience may become cruel--witness the Inquisition. Religion may become superstition--witness the history of all pagan and some forms of the Christian religion. Love may become sentiment--witness the story of many a child ruined by the false love of a doting mother. And observe that every man's body, mind, and spirit is distinct from every other man's. Its conditions of health are peculiar. What is one man's meat is another man's poison. One man needs cereals, another meat; one man needs to read more fiction, another needs to abandon it altogether. One man needs to cultivate his reverence, another his conscience, a third his sympathy. To produce, to cultivate, to maintain health of body, mind, and spirit, every man has need to know his own nature, the laws of his own being, the condition of his own health.
LYMAN ABBOTT
A Study in Human Nature
A person who has an insane delusion is insane, even if it be a single delusion.
E. C. SPITZKA
attributed, Day's Collacon
If you think you've gone insane ... you're nuts.
STEPHEN KING
The Drawing of the Three
Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of "unadjusted" individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself.
ERICH FROMM
The Sane Society
Insanity is only a complication of symptoms of various morbid states of the brain.
WILHELM GREISINGER
attributed, The Assassination of William McKinley: Anarchism, Insanity, and the Birth of the Social Sciences
Much madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'Tis the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur--you're straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.
EMILY DICKINSON
"Much madness is divinest sense"
If the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.
RAY BRADBURY
Fahrenheit 451
It's hard to guess what a lunatic will do next.
CASSANDRA CLARE
City of Ashes