quotations about sanity
Sanity is a full-time job.
BAD RELIGION
"Vanity"
For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.
JEAN DEBUFFET
The New Yorker, June 16, 1973
Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
O' sanity, o' sanity
What am I to do with you?
Drink up, shoot up, anything you please
But she's always standing behind me like a devil in hell
JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO
"O'Sanity"
I am not merely spinning senseless paradoxes when I say that we, the sane ones, are out of our minds. The mind is what the ego is unconscious of. We are unconscious of our minds. Our minds are not unconscious. Our minds are conscious of us. Ask yourself who and what it is that dreams our dreams. Our unconscious minds? The Dreamer who dreams our dreams knows far more of us than we know of it. It is only from a remarkable position of alienation that the source of life, the Fountain of Life, is experienced as the It. The mind of which we are unaware, is aware of us. It is we who are out of our minds. We need not be unaware of the inner world.
R. D. LAING
"Transcendental Experience in Relation to Religion and Psychosis", The Psychedelic Review, 1964
Of all the things I've lost, it's my mind I miss the most.
OZZY OSBOURNE
attributed, Foolish Words: The Most Stupid Words Ever Spoken
It's only sane to be insane
Psychotic builds a castle
And neurotic lives in it
I don't know what to do with my sanity
When the world's at the verge of calamity
JOHN LENNON & YOKO ONO
"O'Sanity"
Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.
ALVIN TOFFLER
Future Shock
Sanity brings pain
but madness is a vile thing.
EURIPIDES
Hippolytus
Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.
MARK TWAIN
"The Mysterious Stranger", The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories
If all sane men were marked with chalk, and the insane with charcoal, there would soon be a scarcity of chalk.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
I feel the need to scream, and even if the scream is not answered, I find my sanity in the echo.
LEWIS BLACK
Nothing's Sacred
Sanity means the wholeness of the consciousness.
And our society is only part conscious, like an idiot.
D. H. LAWRENCE
"Nemesis"
No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Sanity is not statistical.
GEORGE ORWELL
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Too much truth overshadows the lime lies
And what lies beneath the clouds is an
Altered perception and I'll pay for sanity
But sanity don't come cheap
SILVERCHAIR
"Luv Your Life"
Sanity is a sliding scale ... for we all hold beliefs that may not correspond to reality.
JULIAN GOLD
Life is Simple
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
letter to George W. Eveleth, January 4, 1848
If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them.
CHRISTOPHER MOORE
Practical Demonkeeping
There is an area of the mind that could be called unsane, beyond sanity, and yet not insane. Think of a circle with a fine split in it. At one end there's insanity. You go around the circle to sanity, and on the other end of the circle, close to insanity, but not insanity, is unsanity.
HALLUCINOGEN
"Demention"