Top 100 Insanity Madness Quotes
#1. Error in extremis - extremely pure, extremely persistent, or extremely peculiar - becomes insanity. madness is radical wrongness.
Kathryn Schulz
#2. I got both hands on her throat and there was nothing inside me but the black madness of that desire to kill her, to close my hands until she turned purple and lay still and there'd be an end to her forever. Let them send me to the chair. Let 'em burn me. All they could do was kill me.
Charles Williams
#3. Asylums are crazy places, with crazy rules. If you're not mad when you arrive, you are when you leave. (That's if you ever leave.) I was lucky ... I got slung out; they couldn't afford to keep me any longer.
Stephen Richards
#5. What if the insane are too raw to know which stations are real and which are just confused static?
Kate Scelsa
#6. It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.
Philip K. Dick
#7. How crazy craziness makes everyone, how irrationally afraid. The madness hidden in each of us, called to, identified, aroused like a lust. And against that the jaw sets. The more I fear my own insanity the more I must punish yours ...
Kate Millett
#8. One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness
Anne Lamott
#9. If I can only see him in madness, is it worth trying to hold onto sanity?
Beth Revis
#10. Owing to the disabilities of the two major sovereigns, one incapacitated by alcohol and the other by insanity, the result was not what it might have been. Renewed madness was already darkening Charles's mind when he arrived and in the brief intervals when he was lucid, Wenceslas was drunk.
Barbara W. Tuchman
#11. Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.
John Irving
#13. The different sorts of madness are innumerable.
Avicenna
#14. I would dream of a place, a place to shelter all my madness.
J. Limbu
#15. Urges like the loony who enjoys strangling, it's his buzz. He gets depressed when in seclusion, as he can't strangle anybody so in the end he hangs himself in turmoil. Their brain can't handle it. He wants so bad to kill, but they will not let him, so he has to kill himself.
Stephen Richards
#16. A loon thought he was Frank Sinatra and every time Frank came on TV or radio the loon would go mad, impostor!
Stephen Richards
#18. Some of the madmen are really fun to be with. I soon learnt to relate to them. I soon became one of them. I ended up the maddest of the mad. There is no madder than myself! Please believe it.
Stephen Richards
#19. (Her husband's departure ... ) had picked Mildred up by the hair and dropped her down at the doorstep of insanity.
From Butterfly on F street
Edward P. Jones
#20. Men were always quick to believe in the madness of women.
Alison Goodman
#21. Looking back at the years I spent in the asylums, I'm now convinced some of that insanity rubbed off onto me!
Stephen Richards
#22. April 43rd 2000
Today is the day of great triumph. There is a king of Spain. He has been found at last. That king is me. I only discovered this today. Frankly, it all came to me in a flash.
Nikolai Gogol
#23. He had found in himself the perfect, undeniable case of insanity. He possessed wisdom, patience, tolerance, truthfulness, loyalty, and moral fortitude - all the qualities that go to make an utter madman.
Machado De Assis
#24. Ever see moors murderer Ian Brady, study his photos, study Black, study Cannon, study Sutcliffe - study them all! Who says evil is not recognisable?
Stephen Richards
#26. Maybe it's an insanity test, Haggis thought - if you believe it, you're automatically kicked out. He considered that possibility. But when he read it again, he decided, "This is madness.
Lawrence Wright
#27. I rehearsed Foucault's argument that the presence of madness on our doorstep is good for us, for it reminds us the life we live is only one among several human possibilities.
Michael Greenberg
#28. Is Bronson mad! Let me ask you! How else can I be? I'm probably the maddest guy on two legs if the truth was known, but prison will never beat me, I'd sooner die today than allow it too!
Stephen Richards
#29. A doctor once asked me: 'Charlie, what do you think your problem is?' Doc,' I said, ' ... you're the problem!
Stephen Richards
#30. Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is ... Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever. They were not perfect, but they were my friends.
Susanna Kaysen
#31. A force as of madness in the hands of reason has done all that was ever done in the world.
Thomas Carlyle
#32. I personally could never come to terms with my label of 'Criminally Insane'. Just because of my violent outbursts in prison, don't mean to say I'm mad. Obviously I had become a disruptive element within the penal system. Uncontrollable! Unpredictable! But that don't make insanity!
Stephen Richards
#33. In the gray world above, I hear myself howling with laughter. Far below me, in the psychic abyss that is part of the Darkness, I hear another howling, one full of joy and pain, rage and celebration.
Not just another witch is coming, my foolish Sisters, but Witch.
Anne Bishop
#34. You can grow up being a troublemaker and then before you know it the next thing you're doing is listening to Frank Zappa whilst chilling out ... now that's the intelligent way out. What would a psychiatrist say about that?
Stephen Richards
#35. Falling in love is not rational. It's madness. A beautiful, wonderful moment of magnificent insanity.
Michael Faudet
#36. Madness is forever! We even smell different, our hearts don't beat, they tick, our eyes are different, we don't just see, we also pick up vibes. We are probably dehumanised and way past our 'sell by' date, totally unusable, bitter as lemons.
Stephen Richards
#37. Sex and love they choose the different paths. Love always leads to devotion, sacrifice, and dedication, which are forms of insanity and madness; but sex it is always about comfort, pleasure and power.
M.F. Moonzajer
#38. Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.
Denis Diderot
#39. I stood balanced on the brink of madness. Insanity and longevity are a truly terrifying combination; if I gave in now, I might pay the price for centuries to come.
C.S. Friedman
#40. Nowadays I just don't care; I've taken the Frank Zappa stance. I am who I am! Some love me, some loathe me, some respect me and some despise me. But after all that's been, I still love the insane! As they're exciting, dangerous and highly explosive! For me mad dogs are gentlemen.
Stephen Richards
#41. He's no idiot, in fact he's a genius... and that's as far from an idiot as you can get without reaching madness.
Mike Judge
#42. We all disapprove of prostitution; but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness; but what is national sanity?
G.K. Chesterton
#43. Emotions had welled close to the surface, and she thought her heart had never felt so full as it did standing next to the defiled grave of a whore while lunatics sang the national anthem.
Mindy McGinnis
#44. It's madness, of course', thought Moist. 'But now I've got it, too.
Terry Pratchett
#45. Julian spoke with the clear, unequivocal lucidity of madmen who have escaped the hypocrisy of having to abide by a reality that makes no sense.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#46. Mad Hatter: "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?"
"Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
"No, I give it up," Alice replied: "What's the answer?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter
Lewis Carroll
#47. Love was insanity at its most beautiful - a madness of desperation and desire that made the most improbable choice possible.
A Meredith Walters
#48. Acid gave me a clinical, unblinking look at madness, and I discovered I wasn't brave enough to be insane.
Craig Ferguson
#49. The first part of madness is believing what you hear. The Second is acting on it.
Sam Hawksmoor
#50. Once upon a time there was a
Once upon a time there was a
Once upon a time there was a
Stop this. It's undignified.
N.K. Jemisin
#51. First sign of madness, talking to your own head.
J.K. Rowling
#52. Forced to recognize our inhumanity, our reason coexists with our insanity. And though we choose between reality and madness, it's either sadness or euphoria.
Billy Joel
#53. Those with the money are eccentric. Those without, insane.
Bruce Robinson
#55. Dictatorships, wars, and cruelty drive whole countries to madness. My theory is that the human species was crazy from the very first and that civilization and culture are only enhancing man's insanity.
A Tale of Two Sisters
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#56. Vaughn is talking about the heat, and his voice is so excited that it breaks into whispers at times. He loves his madness the way a bird loves the sky.
Lauren DeStefano
#57. The human race will last. Everywhere and forever, for it will never be sane and only insanity is divine. Only the mad destroy themselves and all they have wrought.
And only the phoenix lives forever.
Fredric Brown
#58. Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#59. Madness is like an alternative residence. When sanity chases you out of home, take shelter in madness.
Munia Khan
#60. While madness in individuals is relatively rare, it is virtually a prerequisite for a certain sort of political leader.
Joyce Carol Oates
#61. He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it ... he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice.
Donald Barthelme
#62. There is madness in every single being, is there not?
Delia Winters
#63. That in you which recognizes madness as madness (even if it is your own) is sanity, is the arising awareness, is the end of insanity.
Eckhart Tolle
#64. So, yeah, insane people give me hope. Courage to go on being sane and alive, always with the cure at hand, should I ever tire and need it: madness.
Ray Bradbury
#65. My girl was mad and I loved her. Upon a night, she read my poetry; and kissing me madly she cried, 'You are a genius, my love!' To which I replied, 'My girl,' whispering, 'Every doctor in this land with a prescription pad is more of a genius than I.
Roman Payne
#66. Going mad is the beginning of a process. It is not supposed to be the end result.
Jeanette Winterson
#69. You can take care of him," she insisted. This was madness. This was a true example of temporary insanity.
"I can't."
"Why not?" She demanded.
"Umm ... I don't ... like ... " I couldn't say diapers. I had my own baby! "I don't like ... black ... babies ...
L.D. Davis
#70. Somewhere deep inside his mind, somewhere beyond the event horizon of rationality, the sheer pressure of insanity had hammered his madness into something harder than diamond.
Terry Pratchett
#71. Madness is a bowl of poison cherries, chew them and die, but you die screaming in agony.
Stephen Richards
#72. When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity; since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the whole world happens to agree.
George Bernard Shaw
#73. Suddenly, madness was everywhere, and I was determined to learn about the impact it had on the way society evolves. I've always believed society to be a fundamentally rational thing, but what if it isn't? What if it is built on insanity?
Jon Ronson
#74. (aside) Oh, you are well tuned now,
But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am.
William Shakespeare
#75. I want to be loved so badly, it verges on mild insanity.
Gary Shteyngart
#76. You will certainly grant me that neither antiquity nor whatever nation has devised a more repulsive and blasphemous absurdity than that of eating your God. This is the most disgusting dogma of Christian religion, the greatest insult to the Highest Being, the climax of madness and insanity.
Frederick The Great
#77. Take outside - freedom. What is it? What does it mean to a madman? I'll tell you, we go years through a lifetime with no love, no sex, no nice food and no nice clothes. So when it comes ... we choke on it! The kindness strangles us; we can't cope, so we make pigs of ourselves.
Stephen Richards
#78. It is impossible for the sane to truly understand madness.
Lance Conrad
#79. In my madness I see your face in mine.
David Bowie
#80. Anyway, madness and genius. They're the disturbed pals of the human condition. The Bonnie and Clyde, the Thelma and Louise, the baking soda and vinegar. Insanity just walks alongside the brilliant like some creepy, insistent shadow.
Deb Caletti
#81. It's maybe impossible to escape (your own head), but I guess the secret is the prison cell just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and prettier and prettier and prettier.
David Lynch
#82. When you can no longer differentiate between the insanity spewed onto the blank page, and the madness evident in the all-but shattered mirror ... that's when you know you're doing it right.
Dave Matthes
#83. Unlike most I don't fear prison, never have, never will. Obviously I don't want it, I hate it, but it's the hate that drives me on to survive.
Stephen Richards
#84. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so
ordinary that the whippers are in love too.
William Shakespeare
#85. There are times when the mind is dealt such a blow it hides itself in insanity. While this may not seem beneficial, it is. There are times when reality is nothing but pain, and to escape that pain the mind must leave reality behind.
Patrick Rothfuss
#87. The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it's natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous, and I'm afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what's there, to embrace it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn.
Dario Argento
#88. The supreme trick of mass insanity is that it persuades you that the only abnormal person is the one who refuses to join in the madness of others, the one who tries vainly to resist. We will never understand totalitarianism if we do not understand that people rarely have the strength to be uncommon.
Eugene Ionesco
#89. Madness is born in the blood. It is my birthright.
Grant Morrison
#90. I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misinterpret things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! - Don't turn the light on!
Tennessee Williams
#91. Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.
Susanna Clarke
#92. It is easy to identify a shallow person by the attention he gives to what will do him absolutely no good.
Michael Bassey Johnson
#93. There is no end. There is no cure. It gets worse with time. Cure. How can you cure an institution, we are bricks crumbling in the walls of despair. Death is inevitable for us all. But the insanity is here to stay.
Stephen Richards
#94. In Dostoevsky there were things unbelievable and not to be believed, but some so true they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the insanity of gambling were there to know as you knew the landscape and the roads in turgenev
Ernest Hemingway,
#95. A madman overcomes it by adapting to his surroundings. You can't give up. Why die? There is always another mission; it's the missions that keep you alive.
Stephen Richards
#96. But these people _announced_ their madness ... they flaunted their insanity, they weren't half mad and half not, curled around a door frame. They were properly mad in the Shakespearean sense, talking sense when you least expected it.
Zadie Smith
#98. One lunatic in Rampton used to have bouts of hysteria. Where he would let out a scream, and run at a wall and dive headfirst ... crash! He was given a crash helmet! (Well it is a mad house.)
Stephen Richards
#99. Madness,' Nick called. 'That's all I've found here. Does Avalon breed insanity? Is that the nature of magic, to drive everyone out of their minds?
Brom
#100. He was a silent type, very nervy of people: shy, introverted, nobody would believe he could scream so loud ... well he did drink a bottle of bleach!
Stephen Richards
