Sane Insane Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Sane Insane. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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If you think anyone is sane you just don't know enough about them.
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Christopher Moore (Practical Demonkeeping (Pine Cove, #1))
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We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Choke)
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I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.
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Neil Gaiman (Neverwhere (London Below, #1))
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In a mad world, only the mad are sane.
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Akira Kurosawa
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A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Welcome to the Monkey House)
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Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?
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Terry Pratchett (Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1))
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The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
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Nikola Tesla
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Persistence. Perfection. Patience. Power. Prioritize your passion. It keeps you sane.
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Criss Jami (Killosophy)
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When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.
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Criss Jami (Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality)
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One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
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Nikola Tesla
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Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.
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Nora Ephron
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Whoever's calm and sensible is insane!
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Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi) (The Essential Rumi)
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Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
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Bertrand Russell (Unpopular Essays)
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When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
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Hermann Hesse
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A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.
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Erich Fromm (The Art of Being)
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When insane things start to arrange themselves in sane patterns around you, you know you got problems.
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Karen Marie Moning
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I'm simply saying that there is a way to be sane. I'm saying that you can get rid of all this insanity created by the past in you. Just by being a simple witness of your thought processes. It is simply sitting silently, witnessing the thoughts, passing before you. Just witnessing, not interfering not even judging, because the moment you judge you have lost the pure witness. The moment you say β€œthis is good, this is bad,” you have already jumped onto the thought process. It takes a little time to create a gap between the witness and the mind. Once the gap is there, you are in for a great surprise, that you are not the mind, that you are the witness, a watcher. And this process of watching is the very alchemy of real religion. Because as you become more and more deeply rooted in witnessing, thoughts start disappearing. You are, but the mind is utterly empty. That’s the moment of enlightenment. That is the moment that you become for the first time an unconditioned, sane, really free human being.
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Osho
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Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
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George Eliot (Middlemarch)
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Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode. Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.
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Matt Haig (The Humans)
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I'd rather be insane with you than sane without you. - Jake to Lydia
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Lisa Kleypas (Where's My Hero? (The Gamblers of Craven's, #2.5; Brotherhood - MacAllister's, #4.5; Splendid, #3.5))
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No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.
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Alan W. Watts
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Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don't understand.
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Megan Chance (The Spiritualist)
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Sane is rich and powerful. Insane is wrong and poor and weak. The rich are free, the poor are put in cages. Res Ipsa Loquitur, amen. Mahalo.
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Hunter S. Thompson (Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century)
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People who smile while they are alone used to be called insane, until we invented smartphones and social media.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up.
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Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle)
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Oh, my dear, if you only knew how strange is the matter regarding which I am here, it is you who would laugh. I have learned not to think little of any one's belief, no matter how strange it may be. I have tried to keep an open mind, and it is not the ordinary things of life that could close it, but the strange things, the extraordinary things, the things that make one doubt if they be mad or sane.
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Bram Stoker (Dracula)
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There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
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Dan Greenberg
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Embrace beautiful lies - the chronic insanity of the sane
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Sarah Kane (4.48 Psychosis)
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I began to get a feeling (...) of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact.
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William S. Burroughs (And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks)
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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.
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John Irving (The World According to Garp)
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See what I mean? You gotta be crazy. Ain't no time to be sane.
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Robin Williams
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I would have killed everyone of them to get to you. I would have done anything to get you back. Knowing that we were coming here was the only thing that kept me sane.” His brow creased. β€œThough there were a couple times when I went a little insane anyway.
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Marissa Meyer (Winter (The Lunar Chronicles, #4))
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Any form of government, not just Capitalism, is whatever people who have all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today.
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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Hocus Pocus)
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Don’t worry if they say you’re crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It’s a good thing to know - no matter what they call it.
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Anne Sexton
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In general, the more dysfunctional the family the more inappropriate their response to disclosure. Never expect a sane response from an insane system.
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Renee Fredrickson (Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse (Fireside Parkside Books))
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Who says I'm insane?" "Oh you're sane alright. You're so sane, you scare me. You're so sane, it's insane.
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Neal Shusterman (Unwind (Unwind, #1))
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If you live with unhealthy people, to be healthy is dangerous. If you live with insane people, then to be sane is dangerous. If you live in a madhouse, even if you are not mad at least pretend that you are mad; otherwise those mad people will kill you.
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Osho
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I quite agree with Dr. Nordau's assertion that all men of genius are insane, but Dr. Nordau forgets that all sane people are idiots.
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Oscar Wilde
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Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society.
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Thomas Szasz
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You’re depressed, not crazy. It’s not insane to be depressed in this world. It’s more sane than being happy. I never trust those upbeat individuals who grin no matter what’s going on. Those are the ones with a screw loose, if you ask me.
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Ann Napolitano (Hello Beautiful)
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No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on the proper occasions." Henry Ward Beecher
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Henry Ward Beecher
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The only really sane person in there is Igor, and possibly the turnip. And I'm not sure about the turnip.
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Terry Pratchett (Making Money (Discworld, #36; Moist Von Lipwig, #2))
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Love has a way of making the sane insane and the insane normal.
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Shannon L. Alder
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What did being connected to the world get you? It got you sadder. Look, the world is not sane. If you stay connected to an insane world, well, you just go crazy. This is not a complicated theory. It's just simple logic.
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Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (Last Night I Sang to the Monster)
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Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.
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Henry Miller
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When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.
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Mark Twain
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They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger β€” look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair β€” soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?" Still indomitable was the reply β€” "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad β€” as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth β€” so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am quite insane β€” quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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...I just want to be free of the fears and anxieties and the superstitions of religion. An 'avenging GOD'? One who created Hell for those who don't believe? I thought we were the perfect and holy children of GOD? How could any limits possibly be put upon us? Hell.. really? I'm sorry, but... no. Wrong. You're wrong. That's an insane GOD and therefore not mine. Because, see, GOD would be very sane, don't you get it?
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Bill Hicks (Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines)
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If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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If you think anyone is sane you just don’t know enough about them. The key β€” and this is very relevant in our case β€” is to find someone whose insanity dovetails with your own.
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Christopher Moore (The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror (Pine Cove, #3))
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Living among the sane is insane.
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Cameron Jace (Insanity (Insanity, #1))
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The good part about having a mental disorder is having a valid reason for all the stupid things we do because of a damaged prefrontal cortex. However, the best part is seeing someone completely sane do the exact same things, without a valid excuse. This is the great equalizer of God and his little gift for all us crazy people to enjoy.
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Shannon L. Alder
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Society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up.
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Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
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I try to maintain a healthy dose of daydreaming to remain sane.
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Florence Welch
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I was cautious in what I said before the young lady; for I could not be sure that she was sane; and, in fact, there was a certain restless brilliancy about her eyes that half led me to imagine she was not.
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Edgar Allan Poe (The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether)
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The world is too sane. It could use a little madness.
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Cameron Jace (Insanity (Insanity, #1))
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Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.
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Philip K. Dick
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You know what insane people are, Alice?" the Pillar says. "They are just sane people who know too much.
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Cameron Jace (Insanity (Insanity, #1))
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Memory was that woman on the train. Insane in the way she sifted through dark things in a closet and emerged with the most unlikely ones - a fleeting look, a feeling. The smell of smoke. A windscreen wiper. A mother's marble eyes. Quite sane in the way she left huge tracts of darkness veiled. Unremembered.
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Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)
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I was sane once. It was horrible.
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Michael R. Fletcher (Beyond Redemption (Manifest Delusions, #1))
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One has to be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane
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Nikola Tesla (My Inventions)
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Most sane human beings who are over the age of six usually act or react not as per what they genuinely feel or really think but in accordance with the expectations of those around them.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Use and Misuse of Children)
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How are you still sane?" "Who says I am? I only stopped asking myself the escape question when the walls started to answer me." Shit.
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Brodi Ashton (Neverfall (Everneath, #1.5))
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We would not be ashamed of doing some of the things we do in private, if the number of sane human beings who do them in public were large enough.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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I should have thought of this years ago. But that was the problem with being sane. Sane people played by the rules. They looked for rational explanations and solutions in an insane universe.
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Born of Silence (The League, #5))
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In fact he was incurably insane and hallucinated more or less continuously, but by a remarkable stroke of lateral thinking his fellow wizards had reasoned that, in that case, the whole business could be sorted out if only they could find a formula that caused him to hallucinate that he was completely sane.* *This is a very common hallucination, shared by most people.
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Terry Pratchett (The Truth: Stage Adaptation)
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God judges men from the inside out; men judge men from the outside in. Perhaps to God, an extreme mental patient is doing quite well in going a month without murder, for he fought his chemical imbalance and succeeded; oppositely, perhaps the healthy, able and stable man who has never murdered in his life yet went a lifetime consciously, willingly never loving anyone but himself may then be subject to harsher judgment than the extreme mental patient. It might be so that God will stand for the weak and question the strong.
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Criss Jami (Healology)
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To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (β€œThe Medusa”)
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Thomas Ligotti
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Sometimes the actions of the sane make no sense.
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Mindy McGinnis (A Madness So Discreet)
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within every sane mind there was a trace of insanity, and within the depths of madness glimmered a seed of lucidity.
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Elif Shafak (10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World)
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Being bored is the price we pay for not being insane.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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When humans are not able to fathom the behaviour, actions, and motivations of others, they dismiss them as insane.
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Abhaidev (The Gods Are Not Dead)
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Are you insane?” β€œWhen humans are not able to fathom the behaviour, actions, and motivations of others, they dismiss them as insane.
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Abhaidev (The Gods Are Not Dead)
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Spontaneous insanity is the real bliss! It's sad that we are honored for playing sane, serious, safe, miserable and controlling in this poor world.
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Saurabh Sharma
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Sanity is not about confrontation. It's about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying "no" to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make them sane.
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Stefan Molyneux
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To evade insanity and depression, we unconsciously limit the number of people toward whom we are sincerely sympathetic.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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Most sane human beings’ chances of being alive in a thousand years’ time are a hundred times higher than their chances of being sincerely happy for at least ten consecutive days.
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Mokokoma Mokhonoana
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It is strange how oftentimes the air speaks. We are sane as long as we hear voices when there are none. We are insane when we hear nothing and worse we are deaf.
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Calvin Miller
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The conundrum of sanity and insanity, is that it serves us to be some of each. It's really only a question of degrees. You cannot possibly be 100% adjusted and live in this INSANE world. A little bit of crazy is a coping skill.
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Kelli Jae Baeli (Too Much World)
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The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
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Nikola Tesla
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I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God; sanctioned by man. I will hold the principles received by me when I was sane, not mad -- as I am now. Laws and principles are not for times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth -- so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane -- quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations are all I have at this hour to stand; there I plant my foot.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Take it from me: sane is mundane, insanity is the new black.
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Cameron Jace (Insanity (Insanity, #1))
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Mundane uproar made things worse, Where self-awareness couldn't be thrust, Dived deep into a jar of the arduous universe, Unintendedly flew high to another world, Unfit presently for the mythical realm, Just an insane birdie, living in a sane world.
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Hareem Ch (Another World)
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I no longer follow the voices of the sane. I follow the ill because they see farther, feel much more and change what the sane will not. This is the paradox of philosophers---trying to understand mass delusion among great people that have faith and knowledge, yet they can’t graduate from their institutions of religious theology to apply the knowledge they have gained for the shifting of Zion---- from words to action; from comfort to uncomfortable; from self serving to self giving; from competition to supporting; to tradition to unity; from bias to acceptance; from me to us.
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Shannon L. Alder
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There is nothing sane, merciful, heroic, devout, redemptive, wise, holy, loving, peaceful, joyous, righteous, gracious, remotely spiritual, or worthy of praise where mass murder is concerned. We have been in this world long enough to know that by now and to understand that nonviolent conflict resolution informed by mutual compassion is the far better option.
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Aberjhani (Splendid Literarium: A Treasury of Stories, Aphorisms, Poems, and Essays)
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Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa -exultant, ordinary Clarissa - will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visonary, will be the one to die.
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Michael Cunningham (The Hours)
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It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane.
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Philip JosΓ© Farmer
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She was perfectly sane in streets unknown. She loved conversing with people tagged as strangers. She was social, amiable & all that is her. Yet, with known people she felt unknown, she choked words and fought inside. And indeed she tripped insane while traversing those streets known. She stared at others and consumed their happiness through senses cold. And so she waits for Winter's warmth to touch her in streets of distant shore, in her own world of simple happiness.
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Debatrayee Banerjee
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Oh thank God, please you have to help me!” begged the human. β€œShe tied me up, she wants to kill me!” I arched a brow. β€œIs that so?” β€œShe’s insane!” I folded my arms across my chest. β€œWell, the good news is, she’s totally sane. The bad news is my fiancΓ©e here is a crazy, homicidal bitch and she wants to kill you.
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Suzanne Wright (Here Be Sexist Vampires (Deep In Your Veins, #1))
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You can't compare men or women with mental disorders to the normal expectations of men and women in without mental orders. Your dealing with symptoms and until you understand that you will always try to find sane explanations among insane behaviors. You will always have unreachable standards and disappointments. If you want to survive in a marriage to someone that has a disorder you have to judge their actions from a place of realistic expectations in regards to that person's upbringing and diagnosis.
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Shannon L. Alder
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So instead of seeing your depression and anxiety as a form of madness, I would tell my younger selfβ€”you need to see the sanity in this sadness. You need to see that it makes sense. Of course it is excruciating. I will always dread that pain returning, every day of my life. But that doesn’t mean the pain is insane, or irrational. If you touch your hand to a burning stove, that, too, will be agony, and you will snatch your hand away as quickly as possible. That’s a sane response. If you kept your hand on the stove, it would burn and burn until it was destroyed.
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Johann Hari (Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions)
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Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do." The sign read: "Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion." "It seemed to me," said Wonko the Sane, "that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.
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Douglas Adams (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #4))
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What do those who struggle against power do when they seize power? What does the revolutionary do when the revolution triumphs? Why do those who call for independence and freedom take away the independence and freedom of others? And is it sane or insane to believe, as so many around us apparently do, in nothing? We can only answer these questions for ourselves. Our life and our death have taught us always to sympathize with the undesirables among the undesirables. Thus magnetized by experience, our compass continually points toward those who suffer.
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Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer (The Sympathizer #1))
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The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.
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Erich Fromm (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)
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American society is uncomfortable with the idea that some people’s lives are difficult past the point of sanity and that they aren’t necessarily to blame. There’s no way you can argue that everyone has a difficult life. This is an incredible culture; the majority of people live in amazing comfort, with real dignity, maybe more comfort and dignity than any other culture in the history of the world. We live relatively safe and sane lives, which, if you’ve ever loved anybody and therefore feared for them, is a wonderful thing. But part of our moral responsibility is to keep in our minds those whose lives are unsafe and insane. In this way, fiction can be like a meditation, a way of saying: Though things are this way for me right now, they could be different later and are different for others this very moment.
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George Saunders
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The only reason I am inside the Palace of Illusions is that I am afraid of being declared insane. I know it is all fake. I know everyone is conspiring against me (everyone in this simulation). And I still can’t get out. It’s like a man speeding his bike towards the edge. He knows his future. Yet he can’t make a turn, for he has a stunt to perform for others to watch. This condition is subdued insanity. When you know you are not sane, yet have to act like everything is all right with the world you live in. It is insanity deferred. Insanity postponed. Only to haunt you all the time. An undercurrent. Not manifested in totality.
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Abhaidev (The Meaninglessness of Meaning)
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The "pathology of normalcy" rarely deteriorates to graver forms of mental illness because society produces the antidote against such deterioration. When pathological processes become socially patterned, they lose their individual character. On the contrary, the sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology and arranged the means to give satisfactions which fit the pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation, in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic.
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Erich Fromm (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)
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Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do... Perhaps the strongest case of all is this: that only one great English poet went mad, Cowper. And he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry was not the disease, but the medicine... He was damned by John Calvin... Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion... The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits... The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason... Materialists and madmen never have doubts... Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have the mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity.
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G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy)
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The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus. The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities." Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perception of basic orgonotic functioning by means of rigid armoring; in the schizophrenic, on the other hand, the armoring practically breaks down and thus the biosystem is flooded with deep experiences from the biophysical core with which it cannot cope." The "deep experiences" to which Reich refers are the pleasurable streaming sensations associated with intense excitation that is mainly sexual in nature. The schizophrenic cannot cope with these sensations because his body is too contracted to tolerate the charge. Unable to "block" the excitation or reduce it as a neurotic can, and unable to "stand" the charge, the schizophrenic is literally "driven crazy." But the neurotic does not escape so easily either. He avoids insanity by blocking the excitation, that is, by reducing it to a point where there is no danger of explosion, or bursting. In effect the neurotic undergoes a psychological castration. However, the potential for explosive release is still present in his body, although it is rigidly guarded as if it were a bomb. The neurotic is on guard against himself, terrified to let go of his defenses and allow his feelings free expression. Having become, as Reich calls him, "homo normalis," having bartered his freedom and ecstasy for the security of being "well adjusted," he sees the alternative as "crazy." And in a sense he is right. Without going "crazy," without becoming "mad," so mad that he could kill, it is impossible to give up the defenses that protect him in the same way that a mental institution protects its inmates from self-destruction and the destruction of others.
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Alexander Lowen (Fear Of Life)
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A psychotic world we live in. The madmen are in power. How long have we known this? Faced this?-And-how many of us do know it? Not Lotze. Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up. I suppose only a few are aware of all this. Isolated persons here and there. But the broad masses...what do they think? All these hundreds of thousands in this city, here. Do they imagine that they live in a sane world? Or do they guess, glimpse the truth...? But, he thought, what does it mean, insane? A legal definition. What do I mean? I feel it, see it, but what is it? He thought, it is something they do, something they are. It is their unconsciousness. Their lack of knowledge about others. Their not being aware of what they do to others, the destruction they have caused and are causing. No, he thought. That isn't it. I don't know; I sense it, inuit it. But-they are purposely cruel...is that it? No. God, he thought, I can't find it, make it clear. Do they ignore parts of reality? Yes. But it is more. It is their plans. Yes, their plans. The conquering of the planets. Something frenzied and demented, as was their conquering of Africa, and before that, Europe and Asia. Their view; it is cosmic. Not of man here, a child there, but an abstraction: race, land. Volk. Land. Blut. Ehre. Not of honorable men but of Ehre itself, honor; the abstract is real, the actual is invisible to them. Die Gute, but not good men, this good man. It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into the granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. And they-these madmen-respond to the granite, the dust, the longing of the inanimate; they want to aid Natur. And, he thought, I know why. They want to be the agents, not the victims, of history. They identify with God's power and believe they are godlike. That is their basic madness. They are overcome by some archetype; their egos have expanded psychotically so that they cannot tell where they begin and the godhead leaves off. it is not hubris, not pride; it is inflation of the ego to its ultimate-confusion between him who worships and that which is worshiped. Man has not eaten God; God has eaten man. What they do not comprehend is man's helplessness. I am weak, small, of no consequence to the universe. It does not notice me; I live on unseen. But why is that bad? Isn't it better that way? Whom the gods notice they destroy. Be small...and you will escape the jealousy of the great.
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Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle)