Asylums Quotes - Page 4

• Civilization today reminds me of an ape with a blowtorch playing in a room full of dynamite. It looks like the monkeys are about to operate the zoo, and the inmates are taking over the asylum.

  Vance Havner

  Zoos, Civilization, Looks

  11 Copy quote

• In today's life, the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. The right to live and triumph is now conquered almost by the same means by which you conquer internment in an asylum: the inability to think, amorality and hiperexcitation.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Stupid, Mean, Thinking

  "The Book of Disquiet". Book by Fernando Pessoa, p.173, 1982.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• I would be happy to accept asylum, political asylum, in India — a nation I love. In return, I will bring Mayawati a range of the finest British footwear.

  Julian Assange

  Political, Return, India

  "Mayawati controversy: Text of Julian Assange's statement". www.thehindu.com. September 6, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It seems as though I were in a lunatic asylum, but I am never sure who is the attendant and who the inmate.

  James Bryant Conant

  Lunatic Asylums, Inmates, Seems

  1950 Of Washington. Letter to Bernard Baruch, Feb. Quoted in James G Hershberg James B Conant (1993).

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home, pursues their descendants still.

  Thomas Paine

  Mother, Religious, Home

  Thomas Paine (2015). “Common Sense: and The American Crisis I”, p.25, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Chinese describe themselves as political refugees. Many base that claim on China's strict population laws, which allow them to have only one child. But if we accept them as bona fide political refugees for that reason, doesn't it follow that people living in countries where abortion is illegal (such as Ireland and Poland) should also receive political asylum? After all, their country's policy is forcing them to give birth to unwanted children.

  Ed Koch

  Country, Children, Law

  Ed Koch (1994). “Ed Koch on Everything: Movies, Politics, Personalities, Food and Other Stuff”, Birch Lane Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our borders are much too porous...We want to keep them open, but we also have to be much more careful. ...Right now, if you get on an airplane [to the U.S.] and claim asylum...when you arrive at Kennedy Airport in New York, they will say to you, 'OK, we'll give you a hearing on whether you deserve asylum. Show up in a year.' And two-thirds of the people never show up.

  Charles Schumer

  New York, Airplane, Airports

  4 Copy quote

• If I weren't doing what I'm doing now, the actress thing, the star business, if you want to call it that, whatever it is, I'd be in an asylum. I'm sure of it.

  Mia Farrow

  Stars, Actors, Want

  4 Copy quote

• We hail the return of the day of thy birth,
  Fair Columbia! washed by the waves of two oceans
  Where men from the farthest dominions of earth
  Rear altars to Freedom, and pay their devotions;
  Where our fathers in fight, nobly strove for the Right,
  Struck down their fierce foemen or put them to flight;
  Through the long lapse of ages, that so there might be
  An asylum for all in the Land of the Free.

  Abraham Coles

  Freedom, Father, Ocean

  Abraham Coles (1880). “The microcosm, and other poems”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world sometimes feels like an insane asylum. You can decide whether you want to be an inmate or pick up your visitor's badge. You can be in the world but not engage in the melodrama of it; you can become a spiritual being having a human experience thoroughly and fully.

  Deepak Chopra

  Spiritual, Insane, World

  57 Copy quote

• I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.

  Werner Herzog

  Lunatic Asylums, Should, Lunatic

  "Herzog on Herzog". Book by Werner Herzog, 2002.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

  Thomas Paine

  Love, Tyrants, Europe

  Thomas Paine (2015). “Common Sense: and The American Crisis I”, p.32, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do not oppose the insane asylum - but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Men, Community, Insanity

  "What's the Matter with Chicago?" by Eugene V. Debs in "Chicago Socialist", www.marxists.org. October 25, 1902.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• They're caught where there's no way out or where you can't see out. What are you going to do about it? I don't have the answer. If I did there would be no insane asylums. But I see a lot of people, a lot of my friends in the same predicament. Many times in my life, I was there myself.

  Ric Ocasek

  People, Insanity, Insane

  5 Copy quote

• The world is becoming like a lunatic asylum run by lunatics.

  David Lloyd George

  Running, Political, Lunatic Asylums

  In Observer 8 Jan. 1933

  44 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a face, look for the main light and the main shadow; the rest will come naturally — it's often not important. And then you must cultivate your memory, because Nature will only provide you with references. Nature is like a warden in a lunatic asylum. It stops you from becoming banal.

  Edouard Manet

  Memories, Light, Shadow

  "Portrait of Manet by himself and his contemporaries". Book edited by Pierre Courthion, p. 98, 1960.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most threatened group in human societies as in animal societies is the unmated male: the unmated male is more likely to wind up in prison or in an asylum or dead than his mated counterpart. He is less likely to be promoted at work and he is considered a poor credit risk.

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Animal, Wind, Risk

  6 Copy quote

• South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.

  James L. Petigru

  War, Insane, Republic

  "Too large to be an asylum". Post and Courier, February 13, 2010.

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we, who live outside asylums, act as if we lived in a fictitious world- that is to say, if we are consistent with our beliefs- we cannot adjust ourselves to actual conditions, and so fall into many avoidable semantic difficulties. But the so-called normal person practically never abides by his beliefs, and when his beliefs are building for him a fictitious world, he saves his neck by not abiding by them. A so-called "insane" person acts upon his beliefs, and so cannot adjust himself to a world which is quite different from his fancy.

  Alfred Korzybski

  Faith, Fall, Insane Person

  Alfred Korzybski (1958). “Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics”, p.87, Institute of GS

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed.

  Tony Abbott

  Country, Australia, People

  "Tony Abbott blames carbon tax for 'uncertainty'". Interview with Leigh Sales, www.abc.net.au. August 22, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To go into acting is like asking for admission to an insane asylum. Anyone may apply, but only the certifiably insane are admitted.

  Michael Shurtleff

  Funny, Humorous, Insane

  Michael Shurtleff (2009). “Audition: Everything an Actor Needs to Know to Get the Part”, p.3, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you grant asylum to so many refugees, your house may be sacked sooner by the soldiers; I see that clearly. The question is, however, whether, because of this danger, you should refuse to practice such a beautiful virtue as charity.

  Vincent de Paul

  Beautiful, Practice, House

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1985). “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents”

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many sensible things banished from high life find an asylum among the mob.

  Herman Melville

  Sensible

  Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war”, p.41

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• When commenting on the turmoil and disorder of the world, If the other planets are inhabited, they must be using this earth as their insane asylum.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Insanity, Insane, World

  7 Copy quote

• ...in the midst of migrants in search of a better life there are people in need of protection: refugees and asylum-seekers, women and children victims of trafficking...Many move simply to avoid dying of hunger. When leaving is not an option but a necessity, this is more than poverty.

  Antonio Guterres

  Children, Moving, People

  27 Copy quote