38 Madness Quotes

In the realm of human emotion and psychological exploration, madness often dances on the thin line between brilliance and chaos. It captivates us, mystifies us, and sometimes even mirrors the intensity of our own internal struggles. Whether portrayed through the lens of literature, philosophy, or modern media, quotes about madness offer profound insights into the human condition. As you delve into this curated collection of the top 38 madness quotes, prepare yourself for a journey through the depths of the mind, where clarity and confusion intertwine, revealing the hidden truths of our existence.

1. “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

2. “First sign of madness, talking to your own head.” - J.K. Rowling

3. “Great wits are to madness near alliedAnd thin partitions do their bounds divide.” - John Dryden

4. “He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. "I will go mad!" he annouced.” - Douglas Adams

5. “The cries of the dead are terrible indeed; you should try not to hear them.” - Philip K. Dick

6. “If I am mad, it is mercy! May the gods pity the man who in his callousness can remain sane to the hideous end!” - H.P. Lovecraft

7. “If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse.And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humoured these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.” - Blaise Pascal

8. “To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you're completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction,there's no point to continue. ” - Jennifer Salaiz

9. “They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.” - Nathaniel Lee

10. “And how do you know that you're mad? "To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?" I suppose so, said Alice. "Well then," the Cat went on, "you see a dog growls when it's angry, and wags it's tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.” - Lewis Carroll

11. “Some were brilliant bordering on genius. Others, genius bordering on madness” - Erich Segal

12. “Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.” - Philip K. Dick

13. “My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,Shakes so my single state of manThat function is smothered in surmise,And nothing is but what is not.” - William Shakespeare

14. “Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

15. “If we feel our way into the human secrets of the sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction to emotional problems which are not strange to us.--"The Content of the Psychoses” - Carl Gustav Jung

16. “I have lived nearly fifty years, and I have seen life as it is. Pain, misery, hunger ... cruelty beyond belief. I have heard the singing from taverns and the moans from bundles of filth on the streets. I have been a soldier and seen my comrades fall in battle ... or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I have held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no gallant last words ... only their eyes filled with confusion, whimpering the question, "Why?"I do not think they asked why they were dying, but why they had lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!” - Dale Wasserman

17. “I turned to Dionysus. "You cured him?""Madness is my specialty. It was quite simple.""But...you did something nice. Why?"He raised and eyebrow. "I am nice! I simple ooze niceness, Perry Johansson. Haven't you noticed?” - Rick Riordan

18. “I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason.” - Benjamin Moser

19. “The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.” - Mick Jagger

20. “Crazy people are considered mad by the rest of the society only because their intelligence isn't understood.” - Wei Hui

21. “And never, never, dear madam, put 'Wednesday' simply as the date! That way madness lies!” - Lewis Carroll

22. “Hé woffode ðá swá lange mid wordum dyslíce, óð ðæt hé feóll geswógen.” - Aelfric

23. “Soon madness has worn you down. It’s easier to do what it says than argue. In this way, it takes over your mind. You no longer know where it ends and you begin. You believe anything it says. You do what it tells you, no matter how extreme or absurd. If it says you’re worthless, you agree. You plead for it to stop. You promise to behave. You are on your knees before it, and it laughs.” - Marya Hornbacher

24. “Bashere shrugged, grinning brhind his grey-streaked moustaches, "When I first slept in a saddle, Muad Cheade was Marshal-General. The man was as mad as a hare in spring thaw. Twice every day he searched his bodyservant for poison, and he drank nothing but vinegar and water which he claimed was sovereign against the poison the fellow fed him, but he ate everything the man prepared for as long as I knew him. Once he had a grove of oaks chopped down because they were looking at him. And then insisted they be given decent funerals; he gave the oration. Do you have any idea how long it takes to dig graves for twenty-three oak trees?" "Why didn't somebody do something? His Family?" "Those not as mad as him, or madder, were afraid to look at him sideways. Tenobia's father wouldn't have let anyone touch Cheade anyway. He might have been insane, but he could outgeneral anyone I ever saw. He never lost a battle. He never even came close to losing.” - Robert Jordan

25. “I made a sorry face in response to such strong insistence, but I couldn’t believe him. Fantasies were exactly that―fantasies. Whimsy. Wishes. Mere castles in the sky without foundation or substance. Dreams didn’t come true. To believe so would be to believe falsely, to surrender to madness, to give in to an unreliable hope that would crush me once again as it always, always did!” - Richelle E. Goodrich

26. “I walked into my own book, seeking peace.It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.” - Anais Nin

27. “The perfect being, huh? There is no such thing as perfect in this world. That may sound cliché, but it’s the truth. The average person admires perfection and seeks to obtain it. But, what’s the point of achieving perfection? There is none. Nothing. Not a single thing. I loathe perfection! If something is perfect, then there is nothing left. There is no room for imagination. No place left for a person to gain additional knowledge or abilities. Do you know what that means? For scientists such as ourselves, perfection only brings despair. It is our job to create things more wonderful than anything before them, but never to obtain perfection. A scientist must be a person who finds ecstasy while suffering from that antimony. In short, the moment that foolishness left your mouth and reached my ears, you had already lost. Of course, that’s assuming you are a scientist” - Tite Kubo

28. “It is love and reason,' I said,'fleeing from all the madness of war.” - H.G. Wells

29. “You're all trying to figure out what went wrong inside my head. Fucking idiots. You'll never crack the code that's inside my head. You'll never get into my castle. You'll never even get past the gate.” - Brent Runyon

30. “Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back. People who are possessed are not possessed by something that just comes but instead by something that comes back. Sometimes life comes back. If in me everything crumbled before that power, it is not because that power was itself necessarily an overwhelming one: it in fact had only to come, since it had already become too full-flowing a force to be controlled or contained - when it appeared it overran everything. And then, like after a flood, there floated a wardrobe, a person, a loose window, three suitcases. And that seemed like Hell to me, that destruction of layers and layers of human archaeology.” - Clarice Lispector

31. “I push against the tree and run away, stumbling, the unreal night playing with me, gravity pulling from below, behind, above, making me fall. And I run through a world that is rotating, conscious of the earth's spin, of our planet twirling as it careens through nothingness, of the stars spiraling above, of the uncertainty of everything, even ground, even sky. Mumtaz never calls out, although a thousand and one voices scream in my mind, sing, whisper, taunt me with madness.” - Mohsin Hamid

32. “Sabe, sargento, a loucura, quando dá a um grande número de pessoas, chama-se sociedade contemporânea. Quando dá a uma pessoa só, interna-se essa pessoa.” - Afonso Cruz

33. “Almost every day I can feel myself suffering mainly in the head, I can explain the pain to myself but knowing it comes from an inflammation of my imagination doesn't prevent it being reality itself. What's more I'd be crazy not to go crazy. We don't know what an illness is. On awful hurts we plaster little old words, as if we could think hell with a paper bandage.” - Hélène Cixous

34. “When he did think—when his brain began the slow chugging of rusty gears—the only thoughts that came were unspeakable things like, what’s the worst age a child can die? Worse yet was—after hours spent staring at the ceiling until it became a real-life Escher print with fans on the floor, useless windowsills, and dresser drawers that spilled underwear when opened—worse yet was when his mind found answers to those questions. Two-years-old isn’t so bad, he mused. They barely had a life. Twenty? At least they got to experience life! But fourteen... fourteen was the worst.” - Jake Vander Ark

35. “When people fall in love, they are apt to go a little mad.” - Jennifer Paynter

36. “It's a myth that crazy people don't know they're crazy. Many of us are surely as capable of epiphany and introspection as anyone else, maybe more so. I suspect we spend far more time thinking about our thoughts than do sane people.” - Caitlín R. Kiernan

37. “Madness is only an amplification of what you already are.” - Margaret Atwood

38. “I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of “madness”. Then: I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: “Poor thing, she’s crazy!” (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s - my madness would not be an escape from “reality”.” - Frida Kahlo