Quotes About Paranoia

Sometimes they run. Those are the ones I find out in the dive bars, the sex clubs, the dark reflections in the night. They are always looking over their shoulders, because the evil of their acts is like a black halo ringing their heads, neon flashing vacancy, broken burnt-out letters, incomplete.

You can't trust the government to do anything right-except, of course, to conspire and cover up. Then it becomes diabolically efficient. The very people who are wildest for government conspiracies are often the same people who believe the government is incapable of delivering the mail efficiently.

Usually the most we feared from humans was either running into crazy slayer types

The difference between paranoia and remaining alert is how you let your fear affect you.

My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.

As for the tank, not only is it unAmerican and probably subversive to eat without watching stereo but also the racket from it would interfere even with a directional mike aimed at us from a distance . . .

The real fun of conspiracy hunting comes when you realize you can't trust anyone, as all the paranoids know.

For the paranoids, this increases their paranoia, which they seem to enjoy. For a guerrilla ontologist like me, it increases my agnosticism, which I prefer to paranoia, because I find it more amusing and less depressing.

In brief, once a government has n orders of secret police spying on each other, all are potentially suspect, and to be safe, a secret police of order n plus 1 must be created. And so on, forever.

National Security, in practice, must always fall short of the logically Empedoclean infinite regress it requires for perfect "security." In that gap between the ideal of "One Nation under surveillance with wire taps and urine tests for all," and the strictly limited real situation of finite resources and finite funding, there is ample encouragement for paranoias of all sorts to flourish, both among the citizens and among the police.

In spying-and-hiding transactions, worry leads to more worry and suspicion leads to more suspicion. The very act of participating, however unwillingly, in the secret police game — even as victim, or citizen being monitored — will eventually produce all the classic symptoms of clinical paranoia.

The agent knows who he is spying on, but he never knows who is spying on him. Could it be his wife, his mistress, his secretary, the newsboy, the Good Humor man?

Ever since then there has been a strain of right wing political thought which blames everything in the world on the Illuminati and claims they still continue. I stumbled on this literature in the mid-60s. Most of it is obviously paranoid. It's full of logical howlers such as only paranoids commit through a strong passion to prove an obsessive case, and I thought it was very funny.

Well, then I started to find out that it wasn't all paranoid. The Illuminati really was a very influential organization in its time. I am extremely skeptical that it still exists. But it did play a much larger role in the 18th century than most conventional historians realize. The more you look at it, the more intriguing connections leap out at you.

Hitler was a trauma intellectually because of his batty theory of the Elders of Zion plotting to take over Europe; the horrible results of his paranoia created a prejudice about thinking about conspiracies at all. To talk of conspiracy is called the Devil Theory of History and historians make fun of it.

Against the paranoia that easily infests either Establishment dogma and anti-Establishment dogma, the only defense I see is agnosticism, well-flavored with a sense of humor, and an awareness of one's own fallibility. I suspect a great deal, but as long as Government Secrets exist, I am not sure of anything.

After all, even those who create Disinformation Systems have themselves swallowed Disinformation Systems devised by their rivals. As Henry Kissinger once said, Anybody in Washington who isn't paranoid must be crazy.

When people with guns treat you as possibly guilty, you begin to feel possibly guilty.

He said after reading Illuminatus! he laughed so much that he got over his paranoia.

Many of our Government officials drop amphetamine pep pills at a fantastic rate, especially those who have to jet around the world for conferences every week. They think they're using it only to keep alert, but many of them really have the habit. The American people should seriously consider the extent to which our entire international policy is shaped by people who are chronic users of a drug known to produce paranoia and irrational hostility.

The grid of Circuits I and II creates four quadrants. Note that Hostile Strength (the tyrant) is inclined to paranoid withdrawal; he must govern, but he is also afraid. Cf. the careers of Hitler, Stalin, Howard Hughes, etc. and the inaccessible Castle and Court in Kafka's allegories. Note also that the dependent neurotic is not in retreat at all; he or she advances upon you, demanding fulfillment of emotional "needs" (imprints).

For this has become so crooked and perverse a nation that your precious bodily fluids are no longer your own, and not even your bladder or bloodstream are private. There is no place where they may not watch.

John Chen was a paranoid. He knew this about himself, just as he knew he had low self-esteem, a poor self-image, and a cornucopia of insecurities. But he also knew an enemy when he saw one. Even paranoids had enemies.

I watched the mirror for black sedans as we pulled away, and checked every side street as we drove to the freeway. I looked for their big black beast as we climbed the ramp, and kept looking, even after the freeway swallowed us, a buffalo joining a herd, one hiding among the many, and finally safe.