Quotes & Sayings About Insanity

Acid gave me a clinical, unblinking look at madness, and I discovered I wasn't brave enough to be insane. — Craig Ferguson

Insanity is starting over a million times, expecting to feel the spark you never did the first time. — Shannon L. Alder

We must leave Christmas to be what it is, for to reduce it to the stuff of myth and whimsy is take the single and sole hope of a dying humanity and obliterate it. And I would contend that such an action is insanity of the greatest sort. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I realize that I live on the bubble of insanity. I feel the weight of human suffering, loneliness and despair on me all the time. It's not getting easier; if anything, it's always right on the edge of my skin. — Erwin McManus

If we were to gain God's perspective, even for a moment, and were to look at the way we go through life accumulating and hoarding and displaying our things, we would have the same feelings of horror and pity that any sane person has when he views people in an asylum endlessly beating their heads against the wall. — Randy Alcorn

What you call poetry and passion are nothing but lies - with beautiful facades. Out of your hundred poets, ninety-nine are not really poets but only people in a state of turmoil, emotion, passion, heat, lust, sexuality, sensuality. Only one out of your hundred poets is a real poet. And the real poet may never compose any poetry, because his whole being is poetry. The way he walks, the way he sits, the way he eats, the way he sleeps - it is all poetry. He exists as poetry. He may create poetry, he may not create poetry, that is irrelevant. But what you call poetry is nothing but the expression of your fever, of your heated state of consciousness. It is a state of insanity. Passion is insane, blind, unconscious - because it gives you the feeling as if it is love. Love — Osho

I attributed the incidence to temporary insanity, and in my own defense, I'd like to say I haven't run over anyone since. — Janet Evanovich

Someday we will forget the hardship, and the pain its cause us; we will realise, hurt is not the end. lessons appear to teach us strength, we learn happiness is an inside job and to cure our insanity we must not fear what is to come, but believe in what we've been taught. — Nikki Rowe

Heaven knows insanity was disreputable enough, long ago; but now that the lawyers have got to cutting every gallows rope and picking every prison lock with it, it is become a sneaking villainy that ought to hang and keep on hanging its sudden possessors until evil-doers should conclude that the safest plan was to never claim to have it until they came by it legitimately. The very calibre of the people the lawyers most frequently try to save by the insanity subterfuge ought to laugh the plea out of the courts, one would think. — Mark Twain

17. To pursue the unattainable is insanity, yet the thoughtless can never refrain from doing so. — Marcus Aurelius

Haven't you offered up some part of your Self to someone (or something), and taken on a "narrative" in return? Haven't we entrusted some part of our personality to some greater System or Order? And if so, has not that System at some stage demanded of us some kind of "insanity"? Is the narrative you now possess really and truly your own? Are your dreams really your own dreams? Might not they be someone else's visions that could sooner or later turn into nightmares? — Haruki Murakami

That night I wrote in my journal: Trees are schizophrenic now and beginning to lose control, enraged with the shock of their fiery new colors. Someone
was it van Gogh?
said that orange is the color of insanity. _Beauty is terror._ We want to be devoured by it, to hide ourselves in that fire which refines us. — Donna Tartt

Unlike most I don't fear prison, never have, never will. Obviously I don't want it, I hate it, but it's the hate that drives me on to survive. — Stephen Richards

Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule. — Friedrich Nietzsche

She didn't know that there was more of me, she'd have to learn to love all four of me. — Alice Cooper

The only thing that I am concerned with in life is being an artist .. I had to suppress for so many years in high school because I was made fun of but now I'm completely insulated in my box of insanity and I can do whatever I like. — Lady Gaga

Well, 'They Live' was a primal scream against Reaganism of the '80s. And the '80s never went away. They're still with us. That's what makes 'They Live' look so fresh - it's a document of greed and insanity. It's about life in the United States then and now. If anything, things have gotten worse. — John Carpenter

By this time I was in a state of excitement bordering on insanity; but I also had the cunning of the insane. — Vladimir Nabokov

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

Horace's eyes get wide, and he glances between me and the house. "Every time I think I got a grip on this crazy shit going on in your head, I realize I don't know the half of it, do I?"
My eyes tracing the red trim of the house, I shake my head. "Not even close. — Erica Cameron

One day, you muster the courage and let go of the fear. In a brief moment of insanity, you give wings to the stories you had wanted to tell; some you didn't even know were in you. In that instant, something about you changes. You are born again.

That is not to say the fear and worry and second-guessing go away. They are there. But you learn to cope with them. You learn that they don't control you at all times. In those fleeting moments of freedom, you have the power. You know you are not perfect. You realize no one was born perfect. No one. Rome wasn't built in a day either.
A weird thing happens when you get a glimpse of that side of you. A child-like zeal possesses you. It is addictive. You discover your voice. You matter. Maybe not to the world, yet. You matter to yourself. You are worthy. You are alive. You can be. — K.J. Kilton

There's the old saying that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. There are few better places to apply that adage than the drug war. It's time to end it. It's time to restore peace and harmony to Latin America and the United States. It's time to end the failed war on drugs. It's time to legalize drugs. — Jacob G. Hornberger

Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

But what they find most amazing and despicable is the insanity of those who all but worship the rich, to whom they owe nothing and who can do them no harm; they do so for no other reason except that they are rich, knowing full well that they are so mean and tightfisted that they will certainly never give them one red cent during their whole lives. — Thomas More

If everyone could understand the working of a psychopath's mind, we undoubtedly would be closer to insanity ourselves. — Dan Simmons

Insanity is not a fit topic for high-school children. — Allan Dare Pearce

Love stories are only fit for the solace of people in the insanity of puberty. No healthy adult human being can really care whether so-and-so does or does not succeed in satisfying his physiological uneasiness by the aid of some particular person or not. — Aleister Crowley

The insanity of love, and that's why you're trying to drive away with the park brake on. — Helene Young

We don't need to be constantly reasonable in order to have good relationships; all we need to have mastered is the occasional capacity to acknowledge with good grace that we may, in one or two areas, be somewhat insane. — Alain De Botton

Sometimes people pick up pet worries that they'll entertain themselves with and that was my big one. So as far as thinking about what that means, one of the definitions of insanity is that you lose your ability to communicate to anybody because your frames of reference have become so different from the rest of the world that you can't communicate anymore. — Brad Warner

You might say he was one taco short of a combination platter. — Robin Williams

Insanity is to behave like someone that you are not. — Paulo Coelho

Anyhow, many people in the soft sciences are prone to be wrong because they're crazy*
* some are dumb, too, but that's another story. — Gregory Cochran

Who can estimate the misery that has been caused by this infamous doctrine of eternal punishment? Think of the lives it has blighted-of the tears it has caused-of the agony it has produced. Think of the millions who have been driven to insanity by this most terrible of dogmas. This doctrine renters God the basest and most cruel being in the universe ... There is nothing more degrading than to worship such a god. — Robert Green Ingersoll

You know what this is, I suppose. Religious melancholia. Stop while there is time. If you dive, you dive into insanity. — C.S. Lewis

He got a lovely pair of trainers given off his mum for Christmas, best pair he ever had, but it was the nylon laces that he couldn't take his eyes off. They found him hanging in his cell! — Stephen Richards

They want rational reasons and are unwilling to cross into the territory of insanity, which is where all the real answers lie. — Jacques Antoine

Killers seldom meet the legal standard for insanity, which is quite different from the way most people use the word every day. Killers may be disturbed, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't tell right from wrong or are compelled to maim or murder. — Park Dietz

Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world. — Charles Kettering

Except you cannot outrun insanity, anymore than you can outrun your own shadow. — Alyssa Reyans

If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them. — Christopher Moore

Man is the only animal who is prone to insanity. — Colin Wilson

I'm crazy for trying, crazy for crying, and I'm crazy for loving you. — Willie Nelson

Success is the bridge between insanity and credibility. — Stewart Stafford

Insanity destroys reason, but not wit. — Nathanael Emmons

It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane. — Philip Jose Farmer

I stared up at the black chiffon and tried to imagine my eternity. It looked very bleak. Hopefully, insanity would claim me quickly. — Abbi Glines

What the world calls sanity has led us to the present planetary crisis ... and insanity is the only viable alternative. — Robert Anton Wilson

It wasn't in the states best interest to let the jury know, they said it would raise doubt that John Gacy acted alone. The defence attorneys didn't bring it out because it didn't have..it didn't go along with their insanity defence, showing others were involved. — John Wayne Gacy

What a thing it is to have music that plays your terrible thoughts. I imagined that one piece could drive more delicate women than myself to insanity. — Jackie Kay

What insanity causes a king abandon the comforts of his kingdom and willfully discard the privileges of royalty in order to save an ornery and rebellious people who have spent a lifetime rejecting him? We have yet to understand that such an action is nothing of insanity. Rather, it is everything of love. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I'm doing all I can to stay afloat in a sea of insanity, but I'm drowning more and more each day. — Courtney Cole

Sanity and sense becomes a prison. — Darnell Lamont Walker

SEX
Pussy, pussy, pussy.
Cock, cock, cock.
Ass, ass, ass.
The games we play.
No, no, no, makes us obsessed to the point of insanity.
Yes, yes, yes, makes us superior to the point of cruelty.
It's just a fuck, after all. — Robert Black

Out of his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species. — Rafael Sabatini

No, it didn't hurt. He didn't want to lose any black hair, and he was careful to pull out the white hairs one by one. But when he had finished, the skin was drawn and shriveled. It hurt when you ran your hand over it, the doctor said. It didn't bleed, but it was raw and red. Finally he was put in a mental hospital ... He didn't want to be old, he wanted to be young again. No one seems to know whether he started pulling it out because he had lost his mind, or he lost his mind because he pulled out too much. — Yasunari Kawabata

Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky. — Lauren DeStefano

The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts. — G.K. Chesterton

Is this the happiness you seek?" he whispered hoarsely. "Tell me now, and I will give it to you." He
moved down her body, his mouth on her bosom, his breath hot on her skin, and his hand freeing her
breast. Phoebe ran her fingers through his hair, thrusting her breast forward as he took the peak into his
mouth.
This was insanity!"Only a profligate would confuse happiness with desire - Oh!" The swell of pleasure
his mouth on her breast gave her was startling, and she cried out.
"And only a fool would try and separate the two," he responded hotly before he closed his mouth
around her other breast — Julia London

The world dotes on its lunatics, whether saintly or sadistic, and commemorates their careers. Psychopaths make terrific material for news agencies and movie studios; their exploits always draw a crowd. But the moment a discouraging word is spoken, some depressing knowledge, that crowd either disperses or goes on the attack. It is depression not madness that cows us, demoralization not insanity that we dread, disillusionment of the mind not its derangement that imperils our culture of hope. — Thomas Ligotti

Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times. — Mort Sahl

To understand the essence and workings of insanity, Gallus Vibius strained his mind so that he tore his judgment from its seat and could never get it back again: he could boast he became mad through wisdom.1 — Michel De Montaigne

Dean 'Ruckus' Cole was a different kind of asshole to Baron 'Vicious' Spencer. He fucked you over with a polite smile on his face. In that sense, he was the Joker. In his mix of confidence, cockiness, good looks, and money, there was a dash of insanity thrown in. Enough to let you know that he meant every word he said. — L.J. Shen

It's funny how quickly you adjust to insanity. — Danielle Paige

Insanity is a requirement to live in our house. You know that. — M. Leighton

Once I Knew A Lovely Psychiatrist.
I Always Thought She Had The Worst Patients.

P. Hermans — Petra Hermans

Science, unlike theology, never leads to insanity. — Luther Burbank

A civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights, are the aims of Scientology. — L. Ron Hubbard

We're going off the rails on a crazy train. — Ozzy Osbourne

When you begin to believe you have license because you are a special person breathing special oxygen, that's when you're in big trouble. That's the road to insanity. And a lot of people in the studios are like that. They believe that they are special. I do think actors are blessed, or cursed, with maybe a slightly heightened awareness, which you have to use. — Anthony Hopkins

Some wounds; never reflects on the skin, but kills us slowly from inside. — Durgesh Satpathy

We realize we can't go around saying and doing what we're actually thinking and feeling. If we all did that, life would be a lunatic asylum. Indeed, that's how you know you're talking to a lunatic. Lunatics are those poor souls who have lost their inner communication and so they allow themselves to say and do exactly what they are thinking and feeling and that's why they're mad. — Robert McKee

Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off. — Rohinton Mistry

[...] nobody anywhere seemed to be willing to ponder for a moment the possibility that a human being who refused to participate, who refused to speak or listen, who failed to 'interact with his peer group', might not be all that crazy, and might even have arrived at an understandable response to the world in which we lived. — Craig Harrison

No one prepared me for the stress and insanity of a week leading up to a movie. Years and years of work come down to three days. — Evan Daugherty

The definition of insanity in Texas is so insane that it's impossible to be insane in Texas. — Malcolm McDowell

Was it possible that perhaps the most plausible explanation was being offered by someone who anyone with an ounce of sanity would have long ago consigned to the realm of the insane? — Tim Horvath

The ultimate insanity is to so organize society that power, wealth, and information are concentrated in the hands of so few people that they have the power, for whatever reason, to put to death our species and the living earth as well. But so we have. — Dee Hock

People seem to overlook an old man losing his mind if he occasionally made light of it. — Marissa Meyer

The fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don't believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage ... the sutras say, "Mind is the teaching." But people of no understanding don't believe in their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha-images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity. — Bodhidharma

Madness was all very well if you were Alma and in a profession where insanity was a desirable accessory, a kind of psycho-bling. You couldn't get away with it down Martin's Yard, though. In the reconditioning business there was no real concept of delightful eccentricity. You'd find yourself as the recipient of a pharmaceutical lobotomy provided on the National Health, as a result of which your waistband would expand as your abilities to think, talk and respond to stimuli contracted. This — Alan Moore

So this is insanity. How interesting. What happens next? — Jerzy Kosinski

See what I mean? You gotta be crazy. Ain't no time to be sane. — Robin McLaurin Williams

Once upon a time there was a
Once upon a time there was a
Once upon a time there was a
Stop this. It's undignified. — N.K. Jemisin

In a neurotic society, insane ideas can become 'normal', the current triumph of tribalism is the result of rabid global anti-intellectualism. — Martijn Benders

I think the hardest thing about making music now is being a great dad at the same time. There's an insanity that goes with writing - a mad scientist thing that you have to go through - and sacrificing a kid's upbringing to do that is not an option. — Eddie Vedder

Youth is not an excuse for insanity. — Chris Colfer

Yet mad I am not...and very surely do I not dream. — Edgar Allan Poe

Fantasy is not antirational, but pararational; not realistic but surrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud's terminology, it employs primary not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The realization had brought with it a sudden stark insight into another kind of glamour. It was quite a long time ago now, but he saw it quite clearly: how the media and the advertisers had created their own kind of glamour to seduce whole populations into a kind of insanity. Food that was bad for people, drink that turned them into mindless thugs, countless tons of useless rubbish, all dressed up by advertising glamour to appear like things people couldn't live without. And the human race had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker, becoming....[c]onsumers of limitless glamour, all of it ultimately worthless. — Kate Thompson

The reason I talk to myself is because I'm the only one whose answers I accept. — George Carlin

There are institutions filled with people who talk to god. we've labeled and drugged them. — Darnell Lamont Walker

"A minority of one" ... the definition of insanity. — George Orwell

Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity? — Jon Ronson

Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love - from my heart, from the tender nucleus of a personal matter- to monstrously remote points of the universe. Something impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behaviour of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helplessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. — Vladimir Nabokov

And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest.
Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?
The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: "You are under arrest"
If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

For men to focus on controlling women's reproduction to solve a society's problems seems nothing short of mad or, at best, superstitious. But men's superstition or insanity has real and dire consequences for the women who are its object. And states, too, home in on women's bodies, perhaps to create the illusion that men are in control of uncontrollable forces. Indeed, almost all governments try to control women's bodies and regulate their appearance in some way. — Marilyn French

I think present-day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it youre presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics. Theres a very close analogue there. — Robert M. Pirsig

There is no such thing as closure for soldiers who have survived a war. They have an obligation, a sacred duty, to remember those who fell in battle beside them all their days and to bear witness to the insanity that is war. — Harold G. Moore

He wasn't going to send her to any hospital. He knew that now. At a hospital they'd just start shooting her full of drugs and tell her to adjust. What they wouldn't see is that she is adjusting. That's what the insanity is. She's adjusting to something. The insanity is the adjustment. Insanity isn't necessarily a step in the wrong direction, it can be an intermediate step in a right direction. It wasn't necessarily a disease. It could be part of a cure. — Robert M. Pirsig