Mental Illness Quotes

• Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence– whether much that is glorious– whether all that is profound– does not spring from disease of thought– from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Depression, Spring, Science

  Edgar Allan Poe (1927). “Tales by Edgar Allan Poe”, p.117, Dimitrios Spyridon Chytiris

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  You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.

  Robin Williams

  Inspirational, Positive, Depression

  "Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing". Book by Larry Chang, 2006.

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  Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

  Sigmund Freud

  Inspirational, Alive, Way

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

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  If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.

  Thomas Szasz

  Depression, Prayer, Humorous

  The Second Sin "Schizophrenia" (1973)

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  Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.

  Carl Jung

  Funny, Depression, Witty

  Quoted in the Observer, 19 Jul 1975.

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• Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.

  William J. Clinton

  Healing, Bipolar, Helpful

  "10 Male Celebrities Who Are Smashing Mental Health Stereotypes" by Lindsay Holmes, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 16, 2016.

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• My goal is to see that mental illness is treated like cancer.

  Jane Pauley

  Cancer, Medicine, Goal

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  Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Depression, Crazy, Party

  Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 4

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• Insane people are always sure they're just fine. It's only the sane people who are willing to admit they're crazy.

  Nora Ephron

  Depression, Crazy, Insane Person

  "What a piece of work is man!: Camp's unfamiliar quotations from 2000 B.C. to the present", (p. 320), 1989.

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• Sanity remains defined simply by the ability to cope with insane conditions.

  Anna Castillo

  Bipolar, Insane, Mental Health

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• Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.

  John Lennon

  Life, Depression, Running

  "The Beatles Anthology". Book by The Beatles, 2000.

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• Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

  R. D. Laing

  Depression, Crazy, Insane World

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• Psychiatry's a young science. Yesterday's madman may be tomorrow's genius. Beethoven and Van Gogh were both a bit loopy. In my view, most madmen are remarkable. They're explorers, travelers beyond the rim of consciousness. Not surprising if they pick up a few bugs and get sick. That's all it is, madness. Mad just means sick. If you get fluid on the lungs it's pleurisy. If it's fluid on the brain, it's insanity.

  Clare Boylan

  Depression, Mean, Yesterday

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• I kept pushing against the black, though, almost a reflex. I wasn't trying to lift it. I was just resisting. Not allowing it to crush me completely. I wasn't Atlas, and the black felt as heavy as a planet; I couldn't shoulder it. All I could do was not be entirely obliterated.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Depression, Crush, Black

  Stephenie Meyer (2009). “Breaking Dawn: Twilight”, p.219, Hachette UK

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• He realized now that a lot of the problem had been his own mind, which was usually moving at a speed ten or twenty times that of his classmates. They had thought him strange, weird, or even suicidal, depending on the escapade in question, but maybe it had been a simple case of mental overdrive-if anything about being in constant mental overdrive was simple. Anyway, it was the sort of thing you got under control after a while-you got it under control or you found outlets for it.

  Stephen King

  Depression, Moving, Suicidal

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• I think wanting to write is a fundamental sign of disease and discomfort. I don't think people who are comfortable want to write.

  Kay Redfield Jamison

  Depression, Writing, Thinking

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• Psychoanalysts believe that the only "normal" people are those who cause not trouble to either themselves or anyone else.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  Depression, Believe, People

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• [I] learned ... that friends are a good source of food and soul when one has not yet gotten the hang of cooking or living (as opposed to dying) alone. That nothing-not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state-will make the past disappear. Only time and patience heal things. I learned that cutting up your arms in an attempt to make the pain move from inside to outside, from soul to skin, is futile. That death is a cop-out. I tried all of these things.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Depression, Sex, Pain

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• You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Funny, Attitude, Common Sense

  "Personal Recollections" by Rush Rhees, Ch. 6, 1981.

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• Part of being sane is being a little bit crazy.

  Janet C. Long

  Depression, Crazy, Littles

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• She wished some help would come from outside. But in the whole world there was no help. Society was terrible because it was insane. Civilized society is insane. Money and so-called love are its two great manias; money a long way first. The individual asserts himself in his disconnected insanity in these two modes: money and love.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Depression, Two, Long

  D.H. Lawrence (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)”, p.3771, Delphi Classics

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• I can't sleep with you tonight, baby, my head's all messed up, you've no idea. It's somewhere else and it's full of voices and songs and bad things.

  Hanif Kureishi

  Depression, Song, Baby

  Hanif Kureishi (2009). “The Buddha of Suburbia”, p.164, Faber & Faber

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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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• Recovering from the suicide of a loved one, you need all the help you can get.

  Judy Collins

  Suicide, Needs, Helping

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• When you are insane, you are busy being insane-all the time ... when I was crazy, that was all I was.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Crazy, Insane

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