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, Lunatic Asylums, Planets

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

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.

  Antonin Artaud

  Men, Ideas, Mad

  Antonin Artaud (1988). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.485, Univ of California Press

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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, Lunatic Asylums

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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Military, Believe, Army

  Orthodoxy (1908) ch. 2

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing like an insane asylum for gently incubating death.

  Antonin Artaud

  Insane, Insane Asylum

  Antonin Artaud (1995). “Watchfiends & Rack Screams: Works from the Final Period”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the early days of his reign, Bismarck confided to a friend that it would some day be necessary for Germany to confine William II in an insane asylum.

  Kelly Miller

  Insane, Germany, Bismarck

  Kelly Miller (1919). “Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's such a tragedy that man endures in killing his brother and his own kind, putting him in jail and insane asylums, letting him lay out in the street.

  Sun Ra

  Brother, Men, Jail

  10 Copy quote

• I had, toward the last, been shut off from all visitors, and so when the lawyer, Peter A. Hendricks, came and told me that friends of mine were willing to take charge of me if I would rather be with them than in the asylum, I was only too glad to give my consent

  Nellie Bly

  Giving, Lasts, Visitors

  Nellie Bly (2015). “The Collected Works of Nellie Bly (Annotated)”, p.87, Golgotha Press

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• All the asylum clothing is made by the patients, but sewing does not employ one's mind. After several months' confinement the thoughts of the busy world grow faint, and all the poor prisoners can do is to sit and ponder over their hopeless fate

  Nellie Bly

  Fate, Mind, Doe

  Nellie Bly (2015). “The Collected Works of Nellie Bly (Annotated)”, p.82, Golgotha Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses.

  Antonin Artaud

  Nastiness, Madness, Misunderstood Genius

  "Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society". Essay by Antonin Artaud, 1947.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The insane asylum on Blackwell’s Island is a human rat-trap. It is easy to get in, but once there it is impossible to get out.

  Nellie Bly

  Islands, Insane, Rats

  Nellie Bly (2015). “The Collected Works of Nellie Bly (Annotated)”, p.87, Golgotha Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.

  Denis Diderot

  Beautiful, Crazy, Stupid

  "'Ceci n'est pas un conte' ('This Is No Tale')". Book by Denis Diderot, 1796.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

  Charles Darwin

  Animal, Men, Theory Of Evolution

  "The Descent of Man". Book by Charles Darwin, February 24, 1871.

  76 Copy quote

  Show source

• Being born into the Royal Family is like being born into a mental asylum. Marrying into it is not something to be taken lightly.

  John Lydon

  Taken, Bipolar, Royal

  16 Copy quote

• You spend all your life trying to do something they put people in asylums for.

  Jane Fonda

  Funny, Humorous, People

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

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.

  Mark Twain

  Funny, Running, People

  Mark Twain (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)”, p.5637, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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, Lunatic Asylums

  14 Copy quote

• [defines a madman as] a man who preferred to become mad,in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor.

  Antonin Artaud

  Men, Ideas, Mad

  Antonin Artaud, Susan Sontag (1976). “Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings”, p.485, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Havelock Ellis

  Depression, Optimism, Psychology

  Dance of Life (1923) ch. 3

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I come to present the strong claims of suffering humanity. I come to place before the Legislature of Massachusetts the condition of the miserable, the desolate, the outcast. I come as the advocate of helpless, forgotten, insane men and women; of beings sunk to a condition from which the unconcerned world would start with real horror.

  Dorothea Dix

  Strong, Real, Men

  "Memorial To The Legislature of Massachusetts". Book by Dorothea L. Dix, 1843.

  158 Copy quote

  Show source

• The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they're letting the worst patients run the place.

  Robert W. Welch, Jr.

  Letting Go, Running, Country

  13 Copy quote

• Earth is an insane asylum, to which the other planets deport their lunatics.

  Voltaire

  Insanity, Bipolar, Insane

  23 Copy quote

• Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.

  Virginia Woolf

  Women, Home, House

  The Common Reader "Lady Dorothy Nevill" (1925) See Crisp 2; Hemans 3

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many people think it's in bad taste to advertise for an insane asylum... but come on down. We're going crazy.

  Colin Mochrie

  Crazy, Thinking, People

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

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is the most innocent place in any country? Is it not the insane asylum? These people drift through life truly innocent, unable to see into themselves at all.

  Arthur Miller

  Country, People, Insane

  "With respect for Her Agony - but with Love" in LIFE magazine, February 7, 1964.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source