Quotes About Sanity

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.

In things pertaining to enthusiasm, no man is sane who does not know how to be insane on proper occasions.

And indeed, if Evgeny Irtenev was mentally ill, then all people are just as mentally ill, and the most mentally ill are undoubtably those who see signs of madness in others that they do not see in themselves.

si Eugène Irténieff était un malade psychique, alors tous les hommes le sont également, et parmi eux les plus malades sont ceux qui voient les indices de la folie chez les autres et ne les voient point en eux-mêmes.

Am I mad because I see what others do not, or are they mad that do these things that I see?

In his profession, Wright had seen horror stacked on horror, plenty of evidence that there was no shortage of hell right here on earth. As to what had kept him sane in the face of all that he had witnessed, it was a simple sense of purpose. "It is that simple, John," Wright said. "There is evil. And there is good.

A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense. Power runs with ideas that only the crazy would draw into doubt. The "taken for granted" is the test of sanity; "what everyone knows" is the line between us and them.

They certified that I was sane; but I know that I am mad." This confession gives us the key to what is most important and significant in Tolstoy's hidden life.

I was home alone watching George Bush speak on television. So it was just really the two of us. And as I listened to him, I realized, that one of us ... was nuts! And for the first time ever, I went "Wow, it's not me!"

Humor is how we find comfort in the totally illogical, for it is the bridge back to the logical.

To think that the spectre you see is an illusion does not rob him of his terrors: it simply adds the further terror of madness itself -- and then on top of that the horrible surmise that those whom the rest call mad have, all along, been the only people who see the world as it really is.

Sanity ... had it ever been more than a convention -- a comfortable set of blinkers, an agreed mode of wishful thinking, which excluded from our view the full strangeness and malevolence of the universe we are compelled to inhabit?

Sanity is madness put to good use.

How can a doctor judge a woman's sanity by merely bidding her good morning and refusing to hear her pleas for release? Even the sick ones know it is useless to say anything, for the answer will be that it is their imagination.

Here is the most important thing for us all to remember, for the sake of our common sanity and safety: In America, the right to vote and democratically elect a president is just as precious and valued as the right to protest and express yourself against that president.

Sometimes I wonder if the human race isn't collectively as mad as a sack of door knobs.

The healing power of art is not a rhetorical fantasy. Fighting to keep language, language became my sanity and my strength. It still is, and I know of no pain that art cannot assuage. For some, music, for some, pictures, for me, primarily, poetry, whether found in poems or in prose, cuts through noise and hurt, opens the wound to clean it, and then gradually teaches it to heal itself. Wounds need to be taught to heal themselves.

Sanity is the thread through the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Once cut, or unravelled, all that lies in wait are gloomy tunnels unfathomable by any map, and what hides there is a beast in human form, wearing our own face.

And our madness-measure is always changing. Probably we are less tolerant of madness now than at any period in history. There is no place for it. Crucially, there is no time for it. Going mad takes time. Getting sane takes time.

Creativity is on the side of health – it isn't the thing that drives us mad; it is the capacity in us that tries to save us from madness.

Sanity is the thread through the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Once cut, or unravelled, all that lies in wait are gloomy tunnels unfathomable by any map, and what hides there is a beast in human form, wearing our own face. We are what we fear.

I had better come clean now and say that I do not believe that art (all art) and beauty are ever separate, nor do I believe that either art or beauty are optional in a sane society.

Un acto de esta naturaleza es ilegítimo y nulo por el sólo motivo de que el que lo hace no está en su cabal sentido. Decir lo mismo de todo un pueblo, es suponer un pueblo de locos y la locura no constituye derecho. Aun cuando el hombre pudiese enajenarse a sí mismo, no puede enajenar a sus hijos.