O, judgment, thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.
—Gail Godwin (b.1937) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.
—Allen Ginsberg (1926–97) American Poet, Activist
Far from the madding crowd
—Thomas Gray (1716–71) English Poet, Book Collector
The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, like sweet bells jangled, out of time and harsh.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
In order to act, you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.
—Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French Head of State, Physician, Publisher, Political leader
Better mad with the rest of the world than wise alone.
—Baltasar Gracian (1601–58) Spanish Scholar, Prose Writer
Only the insane have strength enough to survive. Only the survivors determine what is sane.
—Unknown
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Children’s Books Writer, Short story, Novelist, Poet, Journalist
A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes, but to get into accord with them; they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
Sanity is very rare: every man almost, and every woman, has a dash of madness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French Actor, Drama Theorist
How strange to have failed as a social creature—even criminals do not fail that way—they are the law’s “Loyal Opposition,” so to speak. But the insane are always mere guests on earth, eternal strangers carrying around broken decalogues that they cannot read.
—Unknown
The sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Every sense hath been o’erstrung, and each frail fibre of the brain sent forth her thoughts all wild and wide.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossing with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
The great proof of madness is the disproportion of one’s designs to one’s means.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society.
—Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian-American Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) American Poet
There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
—Oscar Levant (1906–72) American Musician, Composer, Author, Comedian, Actor
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Insanity: A perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
—R. D. Laing (1927–89) Scottish Psychiatrist
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish Novelist, Playwright
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 (1889–1951) Austrian-born British Philosopher
Insanity is hereditary; you can get it from your children
—Sam Levenson (1911–80) American Humorist, Writer, TV Personality, Journalist
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.
—Bruce Feirstein (b.1956) American Screenwriter, Humorist