Quotes About Paranoia

This was perfect dictator-logic: we investigate you, therefore you are an enemy.

Relations between people were conditioned by the fact that one or other of you could be one of them. Everyone suspected everyone else, and the mistrust this bred was the foundation of social existence. Miriam could have been denounced

Why did people need a permit to ride a bike?' I ask. 'Because they could bring messages! Pass on news!' Koch cries. 'There was no other transport. People on bikes could evade checkpoints, they could have secret meetings.' Clearly the atmosphere of paranoid control had set in early under the Russians.

Unlike other dictators, Stalin and his satraps never made the mistake of believing themselves beloved -- on the contrary they saw plots under every stone.

His few friends and his former teachers might be watched, as well as his brothers and those dearest to him. The entire city, a dragnet. And he was already in it. He had to slip though its meshes. But by now he was really done in.

The truck was its own driver, and that driver was a high-functioning paranoid.

One of my biggest fears is thinking that there are people in my house when I'm home alone.

Dean had just come from seeing his lawyer. That was the first time that I found out that he had consulted a lawyer. He wanted to tell me what he thought was going on, but he was writing it down as if my house was bugged. He acted like everything was bugged.

This paranoid Islam, which blames outsider, 'infidels', for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.

When I was a kid in Nebraska, a cantankerous farmer, known for plinking with his '22 at passing cars in which he perceived enemies, ingeniously rigged up a shotgun in his house, trained on the inside of his front door so as to widely distribute any intruder.

I've been called 'paranoid,' 'schizophrenic,' 'the wild child of Silicon Valley.'

Science fiction writers have usually been very poor prognosticators of the future, either in literary or technological terms, and that's because we're all too human and, I think, have the tendency to see what we want to or, in the case of those more paranoid, what we fear.

The first three years, I don't think I would leave my hotel room outside of tennis, because I was like, 'I got to rest, I got to rest.' It was like sort of a paranoia to do everything as best as I can.

He was a psychotic. He was a borderline psychotic. He was a terrific, sensational actor, with a magical screen presence, you couldn't keep your eyes off him, but he was paranoid. He was sure everybody was out to get him.

You know, I read the papers and I watch the news a lot. I watch 'Dateline' and '48 Hours'. And I think we have a tendency to become terrified of one another, thinking that there is a serial killer that is on either side of you.

I read the papers, and I watch the news a lot. I watch 'Dateline' and '48 Hours.' And I think we have a tendency to become terrified of one another, thinking that there is a serial killer that is on either side of you.

The 'war on terror' has created a culture of fear in America.

America is so afraid of terror and terrorism to the point that they don't allow people to move around freely and see what they wish to see. I really wish to see the whole of America, if it is possible.

This is a do-it-yourself test for paranoia: you know you've got it when you can't think of anything that's your fault.

Regarding themselves as irreplaceable, both Lenin and Stalin tried in different ways to destroy their successors - Lenin through a testament that attacked Stalin and Trotsky, Stalin through purges culminating in the Doctors' Plot of 1953.

I wouldn't be surprised if she flips out, says it's the end of the world and starts handing out guns and ammo.

Neville flexed his nostrils, he didn't like the smell of this. The young man was clearly a monomaniac

Nothing got him angrier than when people implied he was paranoid. It made him feel persecuted.

I am being followed, I realized, with a blend of certitude and astonishment, like a soldier discovering that gangrene has taken hold of his leg.