Insanity Quotes - Page 28

• Had that poor Reilly kook really been proud of Levy Pants? He had always said that he was. That was one good sign of his insanity.

  John Kennedy Toole

  Pants, Proud, Poor

  John Kennedy Toole (2004). “A Confederacy of Dunces”, p.551, LSU Press

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• Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.

  Ayn Rand

  Philosophy, Responsibility, Men

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.410, Penguin

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• Innocence is a kind of insanity

  Graham Greene

  Innocence, Kind

  Graham Greene (1973). “The Collected Edition: The quiet American”

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• There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.

  Frank Zappa

  Education, Witty, Stupid

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• He was an artist when he saw society: it never crossed his mind that society had to be like this; had any right, had any business being like this. A car in the street. Why? Why cars? This is what an artist has to be: harassed to the point of insanity or stupefaction by first principles.

  Martin Amis

  Artist, Car, Mind

  FaceBook post by Martin Amis from Dec 17, 2011

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• The center of every man's existence is a dream. Death, disease, insanity, are merely material accidents, like a toothache or a twisted ankle. That these brutal forces always besiege and often capture the citadel does not prove that they are the citadel.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Dream, Men, Doe

  "Twelve Types". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1903.

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• The distinction between sanity and insanity is narrower than a razor’s edge, sharper than a hound’s tooth, more agile than a mule deer. It is more elusive than the merest phantom. Perhaps it does not even exist; perhaps it is a phantom.

  Philip K. Dick

  Teeth, Doe, Razors

  Philip K. Dick (2011). “The VALIS Trilogy”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Insanity is catching.

  Terry Pratchett

  Catching

  Terry Pratchett (2007). “Making Money”, Harper

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• It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.

  Philip Jose Farmer

  Attitude, Insane World, Self

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• Only the insane take themselves seriously.

  Max Beerbohm

  Godly, Insane

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• If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them.

  Christopher Moore

  Thinking, Enough, Sane

  Christopher Moore (2009). “The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror”, p.91, Hachette UK

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• Belane, are you nuts?" Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?

  Charles Bukowski

  Nuts, Norm, Knows

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• I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.

  James Thurber

  Life, Death, Simple

  James Thurber (1983). “Credos and Curios”, HarperCollins

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• Nationalism is a type of insanity in which the boundaries of a land replace God.

  Billy Collins

  Land, Boundaries, Type

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• I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself.

  Julie Gregory

  Two, People, Broken

  Julie Gregory (2008). “Sickened”, p.274, Random House

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• Poetry, the best of it, is lunar and is concerned with the essential insanities. Journalism is solar (there are numerous newspapers named The Sun, none called The Moon) and is devoted to the inessential.

  Tom Robbins

  Moon, Essentials, Sun

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Still Life with Woodpecker”, p.73, Bantam

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• They don't hang dukes, darling. He'd be let off by reason of insanity. Everyone knows the upper classes are batty.

  Rhys Bowen

  Class, Dukes, Reason

  Rhys Bowen (2008). “Her Royal Spyness”, p.178, Penguin

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• No, I won't leave the world--I'll enter a lunatic asylum and see if the profundity of insanity reveals to me the riddles of life. Idiot, why didn't I do that long ago, why has it taken me so long to understand what it means when the Indians honour the insane, step aside for them? Yes, a lunatic asylum--don't you think I may end up there?

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Taken, Mean, Thinking

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• Insanity's so personal. It's hard to know who shares our secrets.

  Don DeLillo

  Secret, Share, Knows

  Don DeLillo (2011). “The Day Room”, p.42, Pan Macmillan

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• We are all more intelligent than we are capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the disease.

  Alain de Botton

  Intelligent, Disease, Awareness

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.125, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• This time I m not going to tell you a story. I'll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there.

  Paulo Coelho

  Country, Ideas, Inability

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• I could go on to speak of sanity as compared with insanity, decency as compared with vandalism, friendship as compared with rabies.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Goes On, Vandalism, Rabies

  Kurt Vonnegut (2009). “Bluebeard: A Novel”, p.134, Dial Press

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• Ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity.

  Aldous Huxley

  War, Stress, People

  Aldous Huxley (2008). “Brave New World Revisited”, p.78, Random House

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• We are singing today of the WIPE-OUT GANG - the WIPE-OUT GANG buys, owns & operates the Insanity Factory - if you do not know where the Insanity Factory is located, you should hereby take two steps to the right, paint your teeth & go to sleep.

  Bob Dylan

  Sleep, Two, Singing

  Bob Dylan (2014). “The Lyrics: Since 1962”, p.204, Simon and Schuster

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• It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven--that I hadn’t done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain--and wasted pain...why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.

  Ayn Rand

  Courage, Pain, Dirty

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.571, Penguin

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