Lunatic Asylums Quotes

• My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can't prove it, but you can't disprove it either.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Views, Planets, Used

  "God Is Not Great". Book by Christopher Hitchens, www.theguardian.com. 2011.

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• The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.

  Havelock Ellis

  Depression, Optimism, Psychology

  Dance of Life (1923) ch. 3

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• A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Funny, Faith, Witty

  "The Antichrist". Book by Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888.

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• The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Military, Believe, Army

  Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 2

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• The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

  Thomas Paine

  Religious, Bipolar, Religion

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• The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Education, Children, Growing Up

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.63, Penguin

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• Hollywood is a cross between a health farm, a recreation center and an insane asylum. It's a company town, and I happen to like the company!

  Michael Caine

  Insane, Hollywood, Towns

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• Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Birthday, Dream, Time

  Soren Kierkegaard (1946). “Either/or”

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• It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway,' but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.

  Mike Royko

  Views, Bipolar, Information

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• 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

  Inmates, Seems, Asylums

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

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• 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

  Communication, Thinking, Talking

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• Had there been a Lunatic Asylum in the suburbs of Jerusalem, Jesus Christ would infallibly have been shut up in it at the outset of his public career. That interview with Satan on a pinnacle of the Temple would alone have damned him, and everything that happened after could have confirmed the diagnosis. The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a Lunatic Asylum.

  Havelock Ellis

  Religious, Jesus, Careers

  Impressions and Comments 5 January (1922)

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• Doubtless the lunatic asylums of the world are filled with unfortunate women who have failed to see my charms.

  Cassandra Clare

  World, Charm, Filled

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.2070, Simon and Schuster

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• I cannot here avoid giving my most decided sufferage in favour of the moral qualities of maniacs. I have no where met, excepting in romances, with fonder husbands, more affectionate parents, more impassioned . . . than in the lunatic asylum, during their intervals of calmness and reason.

  Philippe Pinel

  Husband, Giving, Romance

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• When I cease to preach salvation by faith in Jesus put me into a lunatic asylum, for you may be sure that my mind is gone.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Jesus, Mind, Gone

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1988). “Spurgeon at His Best: Over 2200 Striking Quotations from the World's Most Exhaustive and Widely-read Sermon Series”, Baker Publishing Group

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• 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.

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• There is no such thing as a pure extrovert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum.

  Carl Jung

  Men, Would Be, Extroverts

  Richard Isadore Evans, Carl Gustav Jung, Ernest Jones (1964). “Conversations with Carl [Gustav] Jung and reactions from Ernest Jones”, Princeton, N.J., Van Nostrand

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• A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum.

  H. L. Mencken

  Men, Land, Done

  A Little Book in C Major ch. 3 (1916)

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• ...By a 'silly' theory I mean one which may be held at the time when one is talking or writing professionally, but which only an inmate of a lunatic asylum would think of carrying into daily life. ... It must not be supposed that the men who maintain these theories and beliefs are 'silly' people. Only very acute and learned men could have thought of anything so odd or defended anything so preposterous against the continual protests of common sense.

  C. D. Broad

  Silly, Mean, Writing

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• America is a lunatic asylum.

  Ezra Pound

  America, Asylums, Lunatic

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• The longer I live, the more convinced am I that this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Used, Planets, Convinced

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• If I were to say what I really think I would be arrested or shut away in a lunatic asylum. Come on, I am sure that it would be the same for everyone.

  Roberto Bolano

  Thinking, Would Be, Arrested

  Mining Mirror magazine, Volume 19, p. 3, 2006.

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

  David Lloyd George

  Running, Political, World

  In Observer 8 Jan. 1933

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• I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum

  George Bernard Shaw

  Moon, Men, Earth

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• When Švejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms: 'I really don't know why those loonies get so angry when they're kept there. You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be astonished, but there it's the most common or garden thing to do. There's a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of.

  Jaroslav Hašek

  Garden, People, Naked

  Jaroslav Hašek (1993). “The Good Soldier Svejk”, Everyman's Library

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