Quotes & Sayings About Paranoid

They were as different as honesty and truth, but it takes experience to see the dissimilarities. Rocky was friendly, outgoing and boisterous; Charger was sullen, withdrawn and paranoid. Rocky liked people; Charger didn't. Rocky could trust; Charger didn't know the meaning of the word. — Joel M. McMains

If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia. — Margaret Atwood

You should be more paranoid — Lisa Scottoline

The Saint whose water can light lamps, the clairvoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering, to protect us from. The act of metaphor than was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe or outside, lost. — Thomas Pynchon

People worry more about girls, for a good reason: I don't think my parents thought I was going to be raped by a classmate or attacked when I was walking alone in some neighborhood. So it's not just paranoid parents. — Daniel Handler

You can have all the muskets you want! You can even have assault muskets! ... Their (the NRA's) paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present. We can't even begin to address 30,000 gun deaths that are actually, in reality, happening in this country every year because a few of us must remain vigilant against the rise of an imaginary Hitler. — Jon Stewart

I got a new dog. He's a paranoid retriever. He brings back everything because he's not sure what I threw him. — Steven Wright

Truth and justice are commonly found in the personality of the paranoid delusional — Russian, Unknown

For Feric Jaggar is essentially a monster: a narcissistic psychopath with paranoid obsessions. His total self-assurance and certainty is based on a total lack of introspective self-knowledge. In a sense, such a human being would be all surface and no interior. He would be able to manipulate the surface of social reality by projecting his own pathologies upon it, but he would never be able to share in the inner communion of interpersonal relationships. Such a creature could give a nation the iron leadership and sense of certainty to face a mortal crisis, but at what cost? Led by the likes of a Feric Jaggar, we might gain the world at the cost of our souls. No, — Norman Spinrad

Guerrilla leaders win wars by being paranoid and ruthless. Once they take power, they are expected to abandon those qualities and embrace opposite ones: tolerance, compromise and humility. Almost none manages to do so. — Stephen Kinzer

New York has made me so paranoid, too. Whenever I visit another city, I always act like I'm from there, so the cab driver doesn't rip me off. I'm always like, "Yeah, it's good to be back home. Back here where I grew up. Yeah. Here in Tokyo ... Uh, driver, I need to go to my old stomping grounds. That would be the Holiday Inn. And the address appears to be the pound sign." — Jim Gaffigan

He had black fingernails and drove a hearse. Everything about him cried out, 'Look at me, look at me,' and when you looked at him, he would snap, 'Who the fuck are you looking at?' If you subscribe to the idea that addiction is a disease, it is startling to see how many of these children- paranoid, anxious, bruised, tremulous, withered, in some cases psychotic - are seriously ill, slowly dying. We'd never allow such a scene if these kids had any other disease. They would be in a hospital, not on the streets. — David Sheff

Are you French?' I asked instead.

'Oui!'

Foreign. Foreign spy. French Communist Party acted on Stalin's instructions during part of World War II. French Communist spy.

Stop it stop it stop it

I turned to Art, a black kid who was a foot and a half taller than me and whose pecs were about to burst of his shirt and eat someone. I gave him a two on the delusion detector. I didn't trust those pecs.

'Hi,' he rumbled.

I waved weakly. — Francesca Zappia

I love conspiracy theories. I used to just live on it. You know it's all hype and garbage, but you're still really paranoid afterwards. It's fun entertainment. — Doug Stanhope

Paranoid isn't a bad thing to be when the whole world is out to get you! 03-24-2011 — Jan Thomas

Casey doesn't trust him."
"Casey doesn't trust anyone," I replied. "He's paranoid like that. I mean, come on, he's a werewolf who installed a nanny cam in his kids' room." I pointed my spoon at Ali for emphasis. "A nanny cam. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

No, that's not the style of these people,' explained Maxy. 'You shouldn't think of these Bolsheviks as modern politicians. They were religious fanatics. Their Marxism was fanatical; their fervour was semi-Islamic; and they saw themselves as members of a secret military-religious order like the medieval Crusaders or the Knights Templar. They were ruthless, amoral and paranoid. They believed that millions would have to die to create their perfect world. Family, love and friendship were nothing compared to the holy grail. People died of gossip at Stalin's court. For a man like Satinov, secrecy was everything. — Simon Sebag Montefiore

we see that the enlightened monopolist can occasionally prove a delusional paranoid. — Tim Wu

During the lifetime of Japan I became very neurotic, very paranoid. — David Sylvian

There's an overwhelming sense of paranoia in the suburbs. People there seem so much more paranoid to me than people in the city about their kids being kidnapped or their parties being raided or their drinks being spiked. There's a kind of hysteria about that. — Meg Rosoff

The vision of the left, full of envy and resentment, takes its worst toll on those at the bottom - whether black or white - who find in that paranoid vision an excuse for counterproductive and ultimately self-destructive attitudes and behavior. — Thomas Sowell

All the time. A few months ago I came really close to losing it, I was getting really paranoid. And then I started a new job, things fixed themselves. I can't turn my back on the situation and ignore it. If tomorrow I say: "Okay, I've had enough, we're stopping everything" it won't change anything. Might as well try to accept it and stay zen as I have no control over it. — Robert Pattinson

I was back to being polite, the well-tempered paranoid. I didn't have much of a choice. If I wasn't polite, they could stick me with those needles or put me back in that little room or take away my visitor privileges or any number of other things. Besides, there didn't seem to be any urgency or anything to be gained by not being polite, the way there had been before. So I was polite. There was time. — Mark Vonnegut

Paranoid Android, — Douglas Adams

Bob Weir calls me a saint, but I'm 'Saint Misbehavin'.' They're making a documentary about my life, and that's the current shooting title. I can roll with that, but otherwise the s-word makes me really paranoid. — Wavy Gravy

Macbeth as a whole is awash with questions, sometimes questions responded to by another question, which helps to generate an atmosphere of uncertainty, anxiety and paranoid suspicion. — Terry Eagleton

Only the Paranoid Survive... — Andrew Grove

The people trying to change others can conveniently be termed the angry, while the people trying to change themselves might be called the guilty, although it would be just as descriptive to speak of the controlling and the dependent, or the paranoid and the repressive, or, inelegantly, the screamers and the criers. In some circles, attaching labels to people rates only a little higher than chicken stealing, because ... a label immediately ends attempts to understand the individual. — Jo Coudert

She was doing that thing some people do when they act nice and chipper and interested, while just below the surface they're thinking really mean thoughts, and you can never call them on it because they'd just accuse you of being paranoid. — Cecily Von Ziegesar

The dark moppets of dread played their paranoid hopscotch across Moist's inner eyeballs. — Terry Pratchett

Even a paranoid clock is being followed twice a day. — Dan Wells

I suppose I'll always be over-vulnerable, slightly paranoid. — Sylvia Plath

Just because we don't understand why they'd cover up something doesn't mean they aren't," Bobby said, and we both turned to look at him.
"Now you just sound paranoid," I said.
"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you," Bobby said with an expression so serious that I couldn't help but laugh. — Amanda Hocking

The reason I do not wear a watch is because I am always on a watch. I just need to ask the person how long they have been watching me.
- the irony of paranoia — Reshma Valliappan

State censorship presents itself as a bulwark between society and forces of subversion or moral corruption. To dismiss this account of its own motives by the state as insincere would be a mistake: it is a feature of the paranoid logic of the censoring mentality that virtue ... must be innocent, and therefore, unless protected, vulnerable to the wiles of vice. — J.M. Coetzee

I'm paranoid. On my stationary bike, I have a rear view mirror. — Richard Lewis

Paul R. Linde in his 1994 book, Of Spirits and Madness: An American Psychiatrist in Africa. "Major mental illness cuts across all cultures," Linde writes. "Amazingly enough, or maybe not, acutely psychotic people in Zimbabwe appear very similar to those in San Francisco. . . . They suffer from disorganized thoughts, delusions, and hallucinations. The content of the symptoms, however, is very much different . . . Zimbabweans do not report hearing auditory hallucinations of Jesus Christ, rather they report hearing those of their ancestor spirits. They are not paranoid about the FBI, rather they are paranoid about witches and sorcerers."1 — Dick Russell

grandiose paranoid schizophrenia. — Nancy Kress

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe nothing's wrong and I'm just paranoid. I'll know when they come in. I'll see it in their faces. — Carla Speed McNeil

You see, the difference is the Republicans' hatred of Obama is based on a paranoid feeling about what he might do, what he's thinking, what he secretly wants to change. Anger with Bush was based on what he actually did. What Bush was thinking didn't matter. Because he wasn't. — Bill Maher

Maybe the life I think I'm living is a paranoid delusion ... Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough, when the time comes. — Margaret Atwood

If you're paranoid long enough, sooner or later you're gonna be right. — Kinky Friedman

I wonder if I'm being paranoid. I tell myself I'm not, and then ask myself how I can be so sure? I don't know the answer, so I go back to wondering if I am. — Craig Stone

Being a pop star is something I don't think I'm very good at. I'm worried it's making me too paranoid, because all of a sudden, life has become this constant assessment. When you put something out there and people get to hear it, then those people react to it, socially, culturally. — Laura Mvula

Happy, you really are a first-class gloomy bugger," JC said affectionately. "You could gloom for the Olympics, and still take a Bronze in existential paranoia."
Everyone has to be good at something," said Happy smiling in spite of himself. — Simon R. Green

When I was a teenager, if anyone recognized me for anything I did, it would ruin my day. I couldn't handle it. It was some sort of neurotic phobia. I guess I was paranoid that people would treat me differently, or in an unfair way, because of my job. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

If you start becoming withdrawn and looking over your shoulder, being careful about what you say, that's being paranoid. This is an open, accessible team. That's been my trademark for years. — Art Modell

All I saw was one black cat, an insultingly paranoid type who shrank off as I drew near. — Anne Tyler

These are touchy times. National sensitivities are on permanent alert and it's getting harder by the moment to say boo to a goose, lest the goose in question belong to the paranoid majority (goosism under threat), the thin-skinned minority (victims of goosophobia), the militant fringe (Goose Sena), the separatists (Goosistan Liberation Front), the increasingly well organised cohorts of society's historical outcasts (the ungoosables, or Scheduled Geese), or the the devout followers of of that ultimate guru duck, the sainted Mother Goose. Why, after all, would any sensible person wish to say boo in the first place? By constantly throwing dirt, such boxers disqualify themselves from serious consideration (they cook their own goose). — Graham Greene

The video of 'Paranoid Android' has been censored by MTV. They took all nipples out of the cartoon, but they had no problem with the scene in which a man cuts off his own arms and legs. — Thom Yorke

This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world. — Salman Rushdie

Let me say this: I'm paranoid of the government. They've lost my trust. They've lied to me so many times that I don't know what to believe from them anymore. — Jesse Ventura

I've often entertained paranoid suspicions about my fridge and what it's been doing to my poetry when I'm not looking, but I never even considered that my fan was thinking about me. — George Murray

Yes, I'm paranoid - but am I paranoid enough? — David Foster Wallace

It may be hard to hear, but victim thinking is actually self-centered. If you're stuck in a victim mindset, you feel one down, helpless, and at the mercy of others. From this place you perceive yourself as the target of unfortunate events and other people. You may interpret random events as being about your exceptionally bad luck or as a sign that other people are out to get you. You become "terminally unique" in your outlook and you may even become paranoid. When you take on the role of victim as an identity or a badge of honor, you are actively participating in your victimization and disowning your authentic personal power. "You are only a victim for a nanosecond." - Pia Mellody — Vicki Tidwell Palmer

I consider myself to be an inverse paranoid. I always operate as if everything is part of a universal plot to enhance my well-being. — Jack Canfield

Every rep that you take off, somebody else gets another look. That's just how I am. It's not a matter of being paranoid, it's a matter of being confident and not taking anything for granted. — Derrick Brooks

Because I'm always so paranoid about doing corny things, or cheesy things in music, that often I probably don't make as good music as I could if I wasn't stifling it so much. — Jay Watson

The history of psychiatry rewrites itself so often that it almost resembles the self-serving chronicles of a totalitarian and slightly paranoid regime. — J.G. Ballard

Don't be afraid of losing a little power in daily associations. People who seek power and knowledge aren't misers. They aren't afraid. That is paranoid. — Frederick Lenz

The Air Loom, if Matthews revealed its existence under questioning, would now be recognised immediately as a classic paranoid delusion. But in 1797 it was something that had never been encountered before, and would emerge as the baffling leitmotif of a case that was unprecedented in almost every imaginable way. — Mike Jay

Though Ailes had spent more than four decades in Washington, D.C., and New York City, he still saw himself as a scrapper from a small town in a flyover state who'd had to fight for everything he had. When asked by one reporter what his antagonists thought of him, he replied, "I can pretty much pick the words for you: paranoid, right-wing, fat. — Gabriel Sherman

In Paranoid Park there is this Punk girl that keeps looking straight into The camera when she speaks, It's like she's speaking to us. — James Franco

Well right now Slothrop feels himself sliding onto the anti-paranoid part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him going back roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard images now of the Listening Enemy left between him and the wet sky.
Either They have put him here for a reason, or he's just here. He isn't sure that he wouldn't actually, rather have that reason ... — Thomas Pynchon

My paranoia never ends, but I haven't been paranoid about being spied on my shadowy forces for some time now. — Jon Ronson

Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations. — Thomas Pynchon

If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies" - his own unconsciousness projected outward. Criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals. — Eckhart Tolle

If for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. — Richard Hofstadter

Dali elbowed Jim in the ribs. "What he meant to say was he is sorry that duties of his office and his own paranoid nature caused him to overreact." Jim looked like someone had hit him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. "Yes." "And — Ilona Andrews

I once met a man who was paranoid about dying, so i shot him — Mark Brandon Read

I'm not paranoid, no. I'm different in that I have enemies. Very real ones. — Gore Vidal

Marvin the Paranoid Android sat slumped, ignoring all and ignored by all, in a private and rather unpleasant world of his own. — Douglas Adams

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity. — Chogyam Trungpa

The Academy is paranoid about its image. — Roger Ebert

If anyone tells you love makes you invincible, tell them they're full of shit. Love makes you paranoid and insecure and nervous you're going to fuck it all up and lose the best thing that's ever happened to you. — Cherie M. Hudson

It's a little bit over the top. I feel the same in my head I guess. I was quite a paranoid person anyway, so it doesn't really feed well when people are looking at you. I'm not really in the right job. I don't like having my photo taken. I don't like the attention. — Robert Pattinson

Pulling her eyes away, she figured it was best to keep such questions to herself. "You could have just, you know, asked me out instead," she offered, though she wasn't sure why.
John let out a soft chuckle. "Very true. I guess I just ... I wanted to keep you safe."
"Safe? From what?" Evangeline suddenly felt heat rush her face. Was this man just paranoid or what? "Safe from this? Or from you?"
He looked up, placing his fork down on the plate. His stare was expressionless and she suddenly regretted her brazen accusation. "Both." His reply had been simple, direct, stern. "Those people who did this to me, they'll do worse to you if they think that we're involved ... if they think that their message wasn't clear enough. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

High culture is paranoid about sentiment. But human beings are intensely sentimental. — Thomas Kinkade

What is going on in America is extreme. The youth cult, they worship youth so much it's almost paranoid. And LA is the Mecca of it all; they're taking it to the hilt. — Billie Joe Armstrong

You know you're writing a good thriller when you make yourself paranoid. — Shirley B. Garrett

I was having a mildly paranoid day, mostly due to the fact that the mad priest lady from over the river had taken to nailing weasels to my front door again. — Warren Ellis

I guess the line between being paranoid and being a rock star is smaller than one would expect. — Brian Molko

Look, Mr. uh, Wulf I appreciate your trying to warn me about this, Ireally do. But there's no such thing as vampires. They're made-up. We writers made them up. I'm sorry we did such a good job that we made the whole world paranoid, but it's true. They're fictional. Blame Bram Stoker. He started it. — Meg Cabot

No INSECURITY makes us sociopathic; too much makes us paranoid; but a little keeps us humble and introspective-a good thing... — J.R. Wirth

Suburbia is all about private ownership and not having to share, and it leads to a paranoid, defensive mindset. I know this, having grown up in Essex. — Hari Kunzru

I've never met anybody who's had a flashback in my life and I took millions of trips in the Sixties, and I've never met anybody who had any problem. I've had bad trips, but I've had bad trips in real life. I've had a bad trip on a joint. I can get paranoid just sitting in a restaurant; I don't have to take anything. — John Lennon

He was a psychotic. He was a borderline psychotic. He was a terrific, sensational actor, with a magical screen presence, you couldn't keep your eyes off him, but he was paranoid. He was sure everybody was out to get him. — Mark Rydell

Plus, I am paranoid by nature. I need to be in control. — Taylor Dayne

California Marijuana farmers are worried that radiation from Japan could affect their crops. Or maybe for some strange reason they're just being paranoid. — Conan O'Brien

I'm Jewish ... We're a very nervous group. Paranoid. Anxiety-ridden. Maybe that Hitler thing made us a little jumpy. Nothing like a Holocaust to make you mind your Ps and Qs for a couple hundred years I always say. — Andy Kindler

Pia. "Maybe I'm being paranoid."
"Paranoid is a lot better than stupid, sugar." Eva. — Thea Harrison

Either the gates of hell had opened, or Tom had lost his mind; for there could be nothing like this entity outside the precincts of the damned, except in the fevered fantasies of a raving paranoid psychopath — Dean Koontz

Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face. — Jim Butcher

I'm not paranoid!" I said
Looking fearfully around — Debby Feo

I've always been paranoid about the police, because even when I'm not doing anything illegal I'm thinking about doing something illegal. — Marilyn Manson

I've answered those questions a thousand and one times; I told you I mean what I am saying and I'm not using any code. You're just so unjust and so paranoid. You're taking advantage of me being from a country with a dictatorship. If I were German or Canadian, you wouldn't even have the opportunity to talk to me, nor would you arrest me. — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

The difference between being a victim and a survivor is often a low level of situational awareness. You can't be a super-spy, watchful and paranoid every day. But I am more watchful than the average American. — Barry Eisler

Even paranoid people have enemies. — Henry A. Kissinger

I have always been fascinated by paranoid people imagining conspiracies. I am fascinated by this in a critical way. — Umberto Eco

Just because I am paranoid does not mean that someone is not out to get me — Don Darkes