Quotes & Sayings About Neurotics

What psycho-analysis reveals in the transference phenomena of neurotics can also be observed in the lives of some normal people. The impression they give is of being pursued by a malignant fate or possessed by some 'daemonic' power; but psycho-analysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most part arranged by themselves and determined by early infantile influences. — Sigmund Freud

In neurotics, worm phobias are usually found as well as snake phobias. — Karl Abraham

At night, neurotics may toil not, but oh how they spin! — Mignon McLaughlin

Jack Sprat could eat no fat,His wife could eat no lean. A real sweet pair of neurotics. — Jack Sharkey

He suggested I play golf, but finally agreed to give me something that, he said, "would really work"; and going to a cabinet, he produced a vial of violet-blue capsules banded with dark purple at one end, which, he said, had just been placed on the market and were intended not for neurotics whom a draft of water could calm if properly administered, but only for great sleepless artists who had to die for a few hours in order to live for centuries. — Vladimir Nabokov

Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces. — Marcel Proust

I hated Hollywood. It's a town without pity. Only success counts. I know of no other place in the world where so many people suffer from nervous breakdowns, where there are so many alcoholics, neurotics and so much unhappiness. — Grace Kelly

All the great things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they who have founded religions and created great works of art. — Marcel Proust

Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them. — Rita Rudner

Neurotics always feel as though they were going way up or way down, which is odd in people going sideways. — Mignon McLaughlin

Neurotics, who cause less distress to themselves and their neighbours than those in the other category, are at war with their own natures. Their right hands are in conflict with their left. Psychotics, and it is those who commit purposeless crimes and prefer death to life, are at war with their environment. Right and left hands strike against the womb that carries them. — Rebecca West

If you are happy, you are happy; nobody asks you why you are happy. Yes, if you are miserable, a question is relevant. If you are miserable, somebody can ask why you are miserable, and the question is relevant - because misery is against nature, something wrong is happening. When you are happy, nobody asks you why you are happy, except for a few neurotics. There are such people; I cannot deny the possibility. — Rajneesh

Half the world's work is done by hopeless neurotics. — Pat Barker

Half the world's work's done by hopeless neurotics. — Pat Barker

Neurotics complain of their illness, but they make the most of it, and when it comes to taking it away from them they will defend it like a lioness her young. — Sigmund Freud

A good sense of humour is the sign of a healthy perspective, which is why people who are uncomfortable around humour are either pompous (inflated) or neurotic (oversensitive). Pompous people mistrust humour because at some level they know their self-importance cannot survive very long in such an atmosphere, so they criticise it as "negative" or "subversive." Neurotics, sensing that humour is always ultimately critical, view it as therefore unkind and destructive, a reductio ad absurdum which leads to political correctness. Not that laughter can't be unkind and destructive. Like most manifestations of human behaviour it ranges from the loving to the hateful. The latter produces nasty racial jokes and savage teasing; the former, warm and affectionate banter, and the kind of inclusive humour that says, "Isn't the human condition absurd, but we're all in the same boat. — John Cleese

Neurotics, proceed with delusions of grandeur. Napoleon Bonaparte, take the lead. Jesus Christ, bring up the rear. Simulate severe depression. Non-communicative with repressed hostility. — Samuel R. Delany

There is nothing wrong with "women's studies" that studying the right women can't cure, but feminist literary scholars have a penchant for dragging the rivers of deserved obscurity for third-rate neurotics. — Florence King

Neurotics are sure that no one understands them, and they wouldn't have it any other way. — Mignon McLaughlin

I was the captain of the latent paranoid softball team. We used to play all the neurotics on sunday morning. Nailbiters against the bedwetters, and if you've never seen neurotics play softball, it's really funny.
I used to steal second base, and feel guilty and go back. — Woody Allen

When I asked my shrink if I was a control freak, he finished saying "Absolutely" before I finished saying "freak." I told him that I once worked with a woman who carried a remote control in her purse. Whenever she got worried or angry, she took it out and stroked it like a gerbil. My shrink said that if I keep comparing myself to severe neurotics, I'll think that anything is permissible. — Erika Krouse

We are a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk.We are the original displaced personalities, concentrated gatherings of neurotics, egomaniacs, emotional misfits and precocious children. — Herman J. Mankiewicz

The recognition, the diagnosis, and the preservation of psychopathic individuals account for the apparent increase of neurotics in civilized communities. — Boris Sidis

Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces. — Marcel Proust

Don't let yourself be victimized by the age you live in. It's not the
times that will bring us down, any more than it's society. When you
put the blame on society, then you end up turning to society for the
solution. Just like those poor neurotics at the Care Fest. There's a
tendency today to absolve individuals of moral responsiblity and treat
them as victims of social circumstance. You buy that, you pay with
your soul. It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit
gays, it's not whites who limit black. what limits people is lack of
character. What limites people is that they don't have the fucking
nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.
Yuck ... It's a wonderful time to be alive. As long as one has enough
dynamite.
pg. 116-117 — Tom Robbins

[Neurotics are] torn by inner conflicts ... Every neurotic ... is at war with himself. — Karen Horney

Intellectuals range through the finest gradations of kind and quality: from those who are merely educated neurotics, usually with strong hidden reactionary tendencies, through mediocrities of all kinds, to men of real brains and sensibility, more or less stiffened into various respectabilities or substitutes for respectability. The number of Ignorant Specialists is large. The number of hysterics and compulsives is also large. — Louise Bogan

He [Cassius Clay] became a Black Muslim, which is a pseudo-religion for unbright neurotics who feel the need to hate all white people. — William F. Buckley Jr.

We might likewise say that humans are the neurotics of the animal world, in that they are the only animals who must choose to be instead of just instinctively being. — Nancy Hale

Neurotics would like to sleep all the time, and to be awakened only when there is good news. — Mignon McLaughlin

Neurotics expect you to remember all the things that they tell you, and many that they don't. — Mignon McLaughlin

A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossed with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality. — Cyril Connolly

The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition. — Sigmund Freud

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it. — Marcel Proust

My heart seemed to drop down and back, the thing it always does right before I start to spin and spin. I refuse to call it a panic attack. Panic attacks are for nervous fliers, hipster neurotics. Their demons, whatever they are, can't even compare to the terror of knowing it's about to happen, the something bad I've been waiting for ever — Jessica Knoll

When spiritual seeking becomes too complicated, its exercies too elaborated, its doctrines too esoteric, it becomes also too artificial and the resulting achievements too fabricated. It is the beginners and intermediates who carry this heavy and unnecessary burden, who involve themselves to the point of becoming neurotics. — Paul Brunton

Moses freed the Jews. Lincoln freed the slaves. I freed the neurotics. — Larry Flynt

The quality of American life is an insult to the possibilities of human growth ... the pollution of American space, with gadgetry and cars and TV and box architecture, brutalizes the senses, making gray neurotics of most of us, and perverse spiritual athletes and strident self-transcenders of the best of us. — Susan Sontag

Neurotics have plenty of non-neurotic friends, but not for long. — Mignon McLaughlin

The freeing of an individual, as he grows up, from the authority of his parents is one of the most necessary though one of the most painful results brought about by the course of his development. It is quite essential that that liberation should occur and it may be presumed that it has been to some extent achieved by everyone who has reached a normal state. Indeed, the whole progress of society rests upon the opposition between successive generations. On the other hand, there is a class of neurotics whose condition is recognizably determined by their having failed in this task. — Sigmund Freud

We're all controlled neurotics. — Harry Reasoner

While writing is like a joyful release, editing is a prison where the bars are my former intentions and the abusive warden my own neuroticism. — Tiffany Madison

Neurotics think of the past with resentment, and the future with dread; the present just doesn't exist. — Mignon McLaughlin

Neurotics dream of a good life, or a great suicide note. — Mignon McLaughlin

Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor they know. — Vladimir Nabokov

All neurotics seek the religious — Carl Jung

Neurotics are anxiety prone, accident prone, and often just prone. — Mignon McLaughlin

But the cinephile is ... a neurotic! (That's not a pejorative term.) The Bronte sisters were neurotic, and it's because they were neurotic that they read all those books and became writers. The famous French advertising slogan that says, "When you love life, you go to the movies," it's false! It's exactly the opposite: when you don't love life, or when life doesn't give you satisfaction, you go to the movies. — Francois Truffaut

It is said that "neurotics make themselves miserable; those with character disorders make everyone else miserable." Chief among the people character-disordered parents make miserable are their children. As in other areas of their lives, they fail to assume adequate responsibility for their parenting. They tend to brush off their children in thousands of little ways rather than provide them with needed attention. — M. Scott Peck

Neurotics are always looking for something new to overdo. — Mignon McLaughlin

Neurotics are awfully quick to notice other people's mentalities ... — Muriel Spark

History has to move in a certain direction, even if it has to be pushed that way by neurotics. — George Orwell

All failures - neurotics, psychotics, criminals, drunkards, problem children, suicides, perverts, and prostitutes - are failures because they are lacking in social interest — Alfred Adler

Religion's power to console doesn't make it true. Even if we make a huge concession; even if it were conclusively demonstrated that belief in God's existence is completely essential to human psychological and emotional well-being; even if all atheists were despairing neurotics driven to suicide by relentless cosmic angst - none of this would contribute the tiniest jot or tittle of evidence that religious belief is true. It — Richard Dawkins

What mature believer does not delight in seeing new converts talk with Christ? As we get older, we sometimes hurry past the ardor we knew as younger Christians. Hurried Christians beget hurried disciples. Hurried disciples become a hurried church - a hassled fellowship of disciples who serve the clock and call it God. But this subnormal Christianity has become so normal we don't see anything abnormal about it. In fact, we've come to believe that the most sincere Christians are supposed to be shallow neurotics. Yet the church holds only one possibility of relevance: Time itself must be surrendered to the pursuit of the depths of God. — Calvin Miller

Neurotics make poor patriots; if you're ashamed of something as big as yourself, it's hard to be proud of something as small as your country. — Mignon McLaughlin

It was the funeral of a woman who had henpecked her husband, driven her kids half nuts, scrapped with the neighbors at the slightest opportunity, and even made neurotics of their cat and dog with her explosive temper. As the casket was lowered into the grave, a violent thunderstorm broke, and the pastor's benediction was drowned out by a blinding flash of lightning, followed by terrific thunder. "Well, at least we know she got there all right," commented her husband. — Various

All neurotics, and many others besides, take exception to the fact that 'inter urinas et faeces nascimur. — Sigmund Freud

I have treated many artists. There are among them many neurotics, so many that one finally comes to believe that one cannot be an artist without being neurotic. Again I found in them that inner conflict which is characteristic of modern man: the conflict between a right intuition (namely, that their vocation has fundamental importance for the destiny of humanity) and a false idea (namely, that art is superfluous luxury). — Paul Tournier

Of all second-class citizens, neurotics are the only ones who are so by choice. — Mignon McLaughlin

The so-called sensitivity of neurotics develops along with their egotism; they cannot bear for other people to flaunt the sufferings with which they are increasingly preoccupied themselves. — Marcel Proust