Asylums Quotes - Page 2

• I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they're running the asylum.

  Robert De Niro

  Running, Thinking, Reality

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• People in the world can never imagine the length of days to those in asylums. They seemed never ending, and we welcomed any event that might give us something to think about as well as talk of.

  Nellie Bly

  Thinking, People, Giving

  Nellie Bly (2016). “Ten Days in a Mad-House”, p.69, Nellie Bly

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• Our first responsibility is to protect the American people and we cannot put on blinders to expect that everyone who seeks asylum does so in good faith.

  Bill Shuster

  Faith, Responsibility, People

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• I always had a desire to know asylum life more thoroughly - a desire to be convinced that the most helpless of God's creatures, the insane, were cared for kindly and properly.

  Nellie Bly

  Insane, Desire, Creatures

  Nellie Bly (2015). “The Collected Works of Nellie Bly (Annotated)”, p.6, Golgotha Press

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• If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers.

  E. W. Howe

  Funny, Mother, Children

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• I find Cambridge an asylum, in every sense of the word.

  A. E. Housman

  Cambridge

  "Housman 1897-1936". Book by Grant Richards, p. 100, 1942.

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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, Lunatic Asylums

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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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• I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat.

  Antonin Artaud

  Suicide, Time, Morning

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

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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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• An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

  George Bernard Shaw

  America, Would Be, Empty

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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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• Our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.

  Samuel Adams

  Religious, Freedom, Religion

  Samuel Adams' Speech delivered at the State House in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, August 1, 1776.

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• We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Insane, Illness, Results

  Madeleine L'Engle (2016). “The Irrational Season”, p.183, Open Road Media

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• A hermitage in the forest is the refuge of the narrow-minded misanthrope; a hammock on the ocean is the asylum for the generous distressed.

  Herman Melville

  Ocean, Generosity, Forests

  Herman Melville (1855). “Israel Potter: his fifty years of exile”, p.20

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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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• 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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• flight from tyranny does not of itself insure a safe asylum, far less a happy home.

  Herman Melville

  Home, Doe, Safe

  Herman Melville (2009). “Billy Budd and Other Tales”, p.251, Penguin

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• I had wished to find in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me from love... duty, reason and decency, which upon other occasions have some power over me, are here useless. The Gospel is a language I do not understand when it opposes my passion... but when love has once been sincere how difficult it is to determine to love no more! 'Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this deceitful, faithless world; I think no more of it.

  Peter Abelard

  Love, Hate, Philosophy

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• Afraid? Batman's not afraid of anything. It's me. I'm afraid. I'm afraid that The Joker may be right about me. Sometimes…I question the rationality of my actions. And I’m afraid that when I walk through those asylum gates... when I walk into Arkham and the doors close behind me... it’ll be just like coming home.

  Grant Morrison

  Home, Doors, May

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• The only problem that those people have anyway is that they don't like new cars and hair sprays. That's why they are put away. They make the other members of the society fearful. Every asylum in this nation is filled with poor souls who simply cannot stand lanolin, cellophane, plastic, television, and subdivisions.

  John Kennedy Toole

  Hair, People, Car

  John Kennedy Toole (2004). “A Confederacy of Dunces”, p.469, LSU Press

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• [Death is] the best asylum for pains and sorrows and troubles and the injustices of life.

  Sadegh Hedayat

  Death, Pain, Sorrow

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• I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Stars, Believe, Men

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

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• We may convert every house in the country into a charity asylum, we may fill the land with hospitals, but the misery of man will still continue to exist until man's character changes.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Country, Character, Men

  Swami Vivekananda (2016). “Vivekananda Reader”, p.290, Advaita Ashrama (A publication branch of Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math)

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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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