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Quotations about sanity
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
Inside every sane person there’s a madman struggling to get out,” said the shopkeeper. “That’s what I’ve always thought. No one goes mad quicker than a totally sane person.”
Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Light Fantastic (1986)
But he who knows what insanity is, is sane; whereas insanity can no more be sensible of its own existence, than blindness can see itself.
[Sanus est, qui scit quid sit insania, quippe insania scire se non potest, non magis quam caecitas se videre.]
Apuleius (c. 124 - c. 170 AD) Numidian writer, philosopher, rhetorician [Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis]
Apologia; or, A Discourse on Magic [Apologia; seu, Pro Se de Magia], ch. 80 [tr. Bohn’s (1853)]
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "He who knows what madness is, is ipso facto sane. For madness cannot know itself any more than blindness can see itself." [tr. Butler (1909)]
But I aint so sho that ere a man has the right to say what is crazy and what aint. It’s like there was a fellow in every man that’s done a-past the sanity or the insanity, that watches the sane and insane doings of that man with the same horror and the same astonishment.
Sometimes I aint so sho who’s got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It’s like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it’s the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it. … That’s how I reckon a man is crazy. That’s how he cant see eye to eye with other folks. And I reckon they aint nothin else to do with him but what the most folks says is right.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) American novelist
As I Lay Dying (1930)
Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (1917-2007) American historian, author, social critic
Interview with Brian Lamb, C-SPAN (10 May 1998)
It’s said that “power corrupts,” but actually it’s more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable.
David Brin (b. 1950) American scientist and author
The Postman, ch. 14 (1985)
Often paraphrased: "It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things than power." See Frank Herbert.
It’s probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls — as little as one may like to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything.
And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one’s sense of humor begins to reassert itself.
Stephen King (b. 1947) American author
Pet Sematary (1983)
Crazy — a nonscientific term meaning that the person to whom one applies that label has a world picture differing from the accepted one.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Time Enough For Love [Lazarus Long] (1973)
Stupidity often saves a man from going mad.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894) American poet, essayist, scholar
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, ch. 2 (1858)
Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.
Those of us who are not in the asylum, and not demonstrably due there, are nevertheless, no doubt, insane in one or two particulars. I think we must admit this; but I think that we are otherwise healthy-minded. I think that when we all see one thing alike, it is evidence that, as regards that one thing, our minds are perfectly sound. Now there are really several things which we do all see alike; things which we all accept, and about which we do not dispute. For instance, we who are outside of the asylum all agree that water seeks its level; that the sun gives light and heat; that fire consumes; that fog is damp; that six times six are thirty-six, that two from ten leaves eight; that eight and seven are fifteen. These are, perhaps, the only things we are agreed about; but, although they are so few, they are of inestimable value, because they make an infallible standard of sanity. Whosoever accepts them him we know to be substantially sane; sufficiently sane; in the working essentials, sane. Whoever disputes a single one of them him we know to be wholly insane, and qualified for the asylum.
Very well, the man who disputes none of them we concede to be entitled to go at large. But that is concession enough. We cannot go any further than that; for we know that in all matters of mere opinion that same man is insane — just as insane as we are; just as insane as Shakespeare was. We know exactly where to put our finger upon his insanity: it is where his opinion differs from ours.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Christian Science, Book 1, ch. 5 (1907)
(Source)
The madman thinks the rest of the world crazy.
Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 386 [tr. Lyman (1862)]
BERNARD. It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it: I have an independent mind, you are eccentric, he is round the twist.
Jonathan Lynn (b. 1943) English actor, comedy writer, director
Yes, Prime Minister, S1E7 “The Bishop’s Gambit” (1986) [with Antony Jay]
A strong mind is one which does not lose its balance even under the most violent excitement.
Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) Prussian soldier, historian, military theorist
On War, Book 1, ch. 3 (1832) [tr. J. Graham (1873)]
(Source)
Alt. trans.: "A strong character is one that will not be unbalanced by the most powerful emotions." [tr. Howard & Paret (1976)]
Every time I try to define a perfectly stable person, I am appalled by the dullness of that person.
Other Authors and Sources
J. D. Griffin
Each nation knowing it has the only true religion and the only sane system of government, each despising all the others, each an ass and not suspecting it.
