Madmen Quotes - Page 9

• If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgment.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Moving, Christian Inspirational, Mind

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• Confined on the ship, from which there is no escape, the madman is delivered to the river with its thousand arms, the sea with its thousand roads, to that great uncertainty external to everything. He is a prisoner in the midst of what is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence: that is, the prisoner of the passage. And the land he will come to is unknown—as is, once he disembarks, the land from which he comes. He has his truth and his homeland only in that fruitless expanse between two countries that cannot belong to him.

  Michel Foucault

  Country, Sea, Land

  Michel Foucault (2001). “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, p.9, Psychology Press

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• This cold night will turn us all to fools and madmen.

  William Shakespeare

  Night, Fool, Cold

  William Shakespeare (1833). “The plays and poems of William Shakspeare”, p.791

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• People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen forget.

  James A. Baldwin

  Pain, People, Hatred

  "Giovanni's Room". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1956.

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• Since an intelligence common to us all makes things known to us and formulates them in our minds, honorable actions are ascribed by us to virtue, and dishonorable actions to vice; and only a madman would conclude that these judgments are matters of opinion, and not fixed by nature.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Truth, Lying, Honor

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• Don't believe stories which you see in the papers about troops asking as a special privilege not to be relieved. We stick it, at all costs if necessary, as long as ordered, but everyone's glad to hand over to someone else. And anyone who says he enjoys this kind of thing is either a liar or a madman.

  Harry Yoxall

  War, Liars, Believe

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• We must not contradict, but instruct him that contradicts us; for a madman is not cured by another running mad also.

  Antisthenes

  Running, Teaching, Mad

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations". Pp. 779-80, 1922.

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• If the [Vestiges] be true, the labours of sober induction are in vain; religion is a lie; human law is a mass of folly, and a base injustice; morality is moonshine; our labours for the black people of Africa were works of madmen; and man and woman are only better beasts!

  Adam Sedgwick

  Lying, Science, Men

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• Nor has his death the world deceiv'd than his wondrous life surprise d; if he like a madman liv'd least he like a wise one dy'd.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Death, Wise, World

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• I may be a lunatic, but then, wasn't my lunacy caused by a monster that lurks at the bottom of every human mind? Those who call me a madman and spurn me may become lunatics tomorrow. They harbor the same monster.

  Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

  Depression, Mind, Monsters

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• There is a pleasure in being mad, which none but madmen know.

  John Dryden

  Depression, Mad, Insanity

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• And of course you are mad, if by a madman we mean a mind that questions and rejects every civilized norm.

  Stephen Fry

  Depression, Mean, Mad

  Stephen Fry (2003). “Revenge: A Novel”, p.158, Random House

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• Then it is in me, too, the psychotic streak. A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this? And-how many of us do know it? ... Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses-what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse, the truth...?

  Philip K. Dick

  Depression, Thinking, Cities

  Philip K. Dick (2007). “Four novels of the 1960s”

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• Chess players are madmen of a certain quality, the way the artist is supposed to be, and isn't, in general.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Artist, Player, Quality

  Pierre Cabanne, Marcel Duchamp (1971). “Dialogues with Marcel Duchamp”, Studio

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• Before Bin Laden did everything but advertise. Yet he had to blow up the Twin Towers just to get the attention of anyone outside the intelligence community. So what did we do? We invaded the wrong country, killed the wrong madman, and too often used the wrong interrogation techniques on the wrong people-all because our leaders lost contact with the truth.

  Richard North Patterson

  Country, Blow, Interrogation Techniques

  Richard North Patterson (2012). “The Devil's Light: A Novel”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

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• The biggest problem this world has today is not President [Barack] Obama with global warming, which is inconceivable, this is what he's saying. The biggest problem we have is nuclear - nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That's in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces.

  Donald Trump

  Country, President, Nuclear

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

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• Someone like myself, who claimed to be a real madman, living and organized with a Pythagorean precision.

  Salvador Dali

  Real, Precision, Organized

  "Diary of a Genius". Book by Salvador Dali, p. 17, 1964.

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• Gilles Deleuze believed that every society needed a madman so we could feel better about ourselves. I do my best to fill that role.

  George Singleton

  Feel Better, Roles, Needed

  Source: therumpus.net

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• And when you say the policies are what caused this war - American policies - that's not to say that they're wrong. It's not to say that the policies were made by madmen or evil people. It's simply to say that you better understand the motivation of your enemy if you're going to defeat him. And the man who is motivated by a belief that his religion is being attacked by a superpower is much more dangerous than a man who's mad at you because you have women in the workplace.

  Michael Scheuer

  Motivation, War, Men

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• I think one of the most destructive things in terms of American security has been for all of our leaders, without exception in both parties, to identify Osama bin Laden as a gangster or as a madman, as an apocalyptic character who's out to destroy our civilization.

  Michael Scheuer

  Party, Character, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Hawks favor war on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is reckless, tyrannical and instinctively aggressive, and that if he comes into possession of nuclear weapons in addition to the weapons of mass destruction he already has, he is likely to use them or share them with terrorists. The threat of mass death on a scale never before seen residing in the hands of an unstable madman is intolerable – and must be preempted.

  Charles Krauthammer

  War, Mass Destruction, Hands

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• He that spareth in everything is an inexcusable niggard. He that spareth in nothing is an inexcusable madman. The mean is to spare in what is least necessary, and to lay out more liberally in what is most required in our several circumstances.

  Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax

  Mean, Niggard, Circumstances

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• "No," he says, taking us both in. "No, no, no. You've come farther than most people on this planet will in their lifetimes. You've overcome obstacles and dangers and things that should've killed you. You've outrun an army and a madman and deadly illness and seen things most people will never see. How do you think you could have possibly come this far if you didn't have hope?"

  Patrick Ness

  Army, Thinking, People

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• In the great depression, things could only be set right by causing the idle plant to work again . . . Roosevelt . . . spent billions of public money and created a huge public debt, but by so doing he revived production and brought his country out of the depression. Businessmen, who in spite of such a sharp lesson continued to believe in old-fashioned economics, were infinitely shocked, and although Roosevelt saved them from ruin, they continued to curse him and to speak of him as 'the madman in the White House.' . . . [It's one more] striking example of inability to learn from experience.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, Believe, White

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• The genius of art finds sanctuary among children and madmen to survive.That is who we are.

  Marilyn Manson

  Art, Children, Genius

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