Insanity Quotes - Page 22

• The facts of the matter are that we have known for a long time that diagnoses are often not useful or reliable, but we have nevertheless continued to use them. We now know that we cannot distinguish insanity from sanity.

  David Rosenhan

  Long, Facts, Use

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• It was a symptom of the insanity of human beings in a cosmos obviously designed for them to live in, but which they industriously prepare to make unlivable.

  Murray Leinster

  Cosmos, Symptoms, Humans

  "The Time Tunnel". Book by Murray Leinster, Chapter 4, 1964.

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• The Empire is the institution, the codification, of derangement; it is insane and imposes its insanity on us by violence, since its nature is a violent one.

  Philip K. Dick

  Insane, Empires, Violence

  Philip K. Dick (2011). “The VALIS Trilogy”, p.265, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Want a good body? Work at it. Want to be a success? Work at it. Want to be truly exceptional? Be a touch insane... You need a little bit of insanity to do great things.

  Henry Rollins

  Insane, Body, Want

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.

  William James

  Vision, Facts, Horror

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.158, Booklassic

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• All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.

  Isaac Asimov

  Choices, Humanity, Common

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• I think marriage is all about timing. Getting married is insanity; I mean, it's a risk - who knows if you're going to be together forever? But you both say, 'We're going to take this chance, in the same spirit.

  Cate Blanchett

  Mean, Thinking, Forever

  "Cate Blanchett: 'Getting Married Is Insanity'". people.com. January 12, 2007.

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• The captain, thinking over this event afterward, realized that by his own lifelong standards he had a crew composed entirely of lunatics, with himself well to the front in degree of aberration; but he was fairly sure that this particular form of insanity was going to be useful.

  Hal Clement

  Thinking, Aberration, Captains

  "Mission of Gravity" by Hal Clement, (Ch. 9), 1954.

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• Our neighborhood - this solar system, the cosmos, actually - is so much more vast and amazing than the paltry headlines, insanity, and politics crammed at us daily as so-called news. The beauty of the hood and discoveries that await us are deserving of our attention and mandatory to our survival as a species.

  Vanna Bonta

  Discovery, Survival, Cosmos

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• A Britain which denounced the insanity of the nuclear strategy would be in a position to direct its influence at the United Nations and in the world at large, in a manner at present denied us

  Michael Foot

  Would Be, Nuclear, World

  "Michael Foot: key quotes" by Richard Nelsson, www.theguardian.com. March 3, 2010.

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• The poem you sent me was as fiery and virile as anything you've ever written - or anybody else, for that matter. Especially the second part went to my brain like the flaming liquor of insanity. No one else besides Jack London has the power to move me just that way.

  Robert E. Howard

  Moving, Brain, London

  Letter to Tevis Clyde Smith, c. November 1928.

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

  Dan Simmons

  Mind, Would Be, Psychopath

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• Insanity is a perfectly natural adjustment to a totally unnatural and negative environment.

  R. D. Laing

  Independence, Negative, Perfectly Natural

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• A culture-bearing book, like a mule, bears the culture on its back. No one should sit down to write one deliberately. Culture-bearing books appear almost accidentally, like a sudden surge in the stock market. There are books of high quality that are a part of the culture, but that is not the same. They are a part of it. They aren't carrying it anywhere. They may talk about insanity sympathetically, for example, because that's the standard cultural attitude. But they don't carry any suggestion that insanity might be something other than sickness or degeneracy.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Attitude, Book, Writing

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, Afterword to the 10th anniversary edition, written in Gothenburg, Sweden, 1984.

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• 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...What's happening is that each year our old flat earth of conventional reason becomes less and less adequate to handle the experiences we have and this is creating wide-spread feelings of topsy-turviness. As a result we're getting more and more people in irrational areas of thought...occultism, mysticism, drug changes and the like...because they feel an inadequacy in classical reason to handle what they know are real experiences.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Real, Fall, Thinking

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• Look, I learned from your uncle that when the universe turns out to be insane, the wise man embraces insanity.

  Bradley Denton

  Wise, Uncles, Men

  "Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede". Book by Bradley Denton, 1991.

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• Senator Rand Paul reflected on Mitt Romney's potential 2016 campaign and said, 'It's sort of what Einstein said, that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result.' When someone told him Einstein didn't actually say that, he said, 'In the words of Gandhi, 'My bad.''

  Jimmy Fallon

  Different, Campaigns, Definitions

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• I'm of an age when if I started to do eulogies, I'd be doing nothing else. You don't want to be remembered? I don't want them to be told to remember me.

  Garrison Keillor

  Life, Death, Eulogy

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• Baby, I have no idea how this will end. Maybe the equator will fall like a hula hoop from the earth's hips and our mouths will freeze mid-kiss on our 80th anniversary or maybe tomorrow my absolute insanity combined with the absolute obstacle course of your communication skills will leave us like a love letter in a landfill. But whatever, however, whenever this ends I want you to know that right now, I love you forever.

  Andrea Gibson

  Inspirational, Baby, Fall

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• This was the first time he had seriously confronted what he was doing, and the force of that awareness came very abruptly - with a surging of his pulse and a frantic pounding in his head. He was about to gamble his life on that table, and the insanity of that risk filled him with a kind of awe.

  Paul Auster

  Gambling, Risk, Tables

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• The Door Without a Key is the Door of Dreams; it is the door by which the sensitive escape into insanity when life is too hard for them, and artists use it as a window in a watch-tower. Psychologists call it a psychological mechanism; magicians call it magic, and the man in the street calls it illusion or charlatanry according to taste. It does not matter to me what it is called, for it is effectual.

  Dion Fortune

  Dream, Artist, Men

  Dion Fortune (2003). “Moon Magic”, p.83, Weiser Books

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• To search for wisdom apart from Christ means not simply foolhardiness but utter insanity.

  John Calvin

  Mean, Christ

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• Writing sustains me. But wouldn’t it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any better when I don’t write. On the contrary, it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I don’t write - which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity.

  Franz Kafka

  Writing, Mean, Unbearable

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• It is insanity to run from God and search for love.

  Erwin McManus

  Running, Searching For Love

  Erwin Raphael McManus (2008). “Soul Cravings: An Exploration of the Human Spirit”, p.50, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• Whom God wishes to destroy, He first makes successful in show business.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Successful, Wish, Firsts

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