44 Quotes About Madness

In the world of literature, art, and philosophy, madness has often been a source of fascination and inspiration. It teeters on the edge of genius, offering a glimpse into the depths of human emotion and the complexities of the mind. Madness can be seen as a force of chaos, but also creativity, pushing boundaries and challenging conventional norms. In this collection of 44 quotes about madness, we delve into the profound and often paradoxical thoughts of poets, philosophers, and thinkers who have contemplated the fine line between chaos and creativity. These quotes capture the essence of madness not as a mere affliction, but as an integral aspect of the human condition, inviting us to embrace its unpredictable beauty and potential for insight.

1. “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.” - Philip K. Dick

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

3. “Enough madness? Enough? And how do you measure madness? - The Joker” - Grant Morrison

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

5. “It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world.” - James Connolly

6. “It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed” - Thomas Moore

7. “Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it.” - Douglas Adams

8. “One is always considered mad when one perfects something that others cannot grasp.” - Edward D. Wood, Jr.

9. “As long as he deceived himself about the truth, he could blame fortune and have confidence in the future. Now the clouds of madness were closing round his mind.” - Hermann Bahr

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. “I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.” - Kahlil Gibran

12. “Can one man's madness be another's real life?” - Emma Frances Dawson

13. “Erotic: meaning you're "desired."For madness is seductive, sexy. Female madness.So long as the female is reasonably young and attractive.” - Joyce Carol Oates

14. “You don't seem mad at all,' she said.But I am, although I'm undergoing a cure, because my problem is that I lack a particular chemical. However, while I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being mad, living life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be. Do you know what exists out there, beyond the walls of Villete?” - Paulo Coelho

15. “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

16. “All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.” - William Saroyan

17. “So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there's always madness. Madness is the emergency exit.” - Alan Moore

18. “If there must be madness, something may be said for having it on a heroic scale” - John Kenneth Galbraith

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

20. “Se tudo o resto não me basta por que hei-de impedir o efeito paliativo das benzodiazepinas e a volúpia desta evocação alucinatória?If everything else is not enough for me why should I stop the palliative effect of benzodiazepines and the lust of this hallucinatory evocation?” - Victor Eustáquio

21. “No idea with who has no idea” - Nomoto

22. “This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.” - Rene Daumal

23. “Then he looked up, despite all best prior intentions. In four minutes, it would be another hour; a half hour after that was the ten-minute break. Lane Dean imagined himself running around on the break, waving his arms and shouting gibberish and holding ten cigarettes at once in his mouth, like a panpipe. Year after year, a face the same color as your desk. Lord Jesus. Coffee wasn't allowed because of spills on the files, but on the break he'd have a big cup of coffee in each hand while he pictured himself running around the outside grounds, shouting. He knew what he'd really do on the break was sit facing the wall clock in the lounge and, despite prayers and effort, count the seconds tick off until he had to come back and do this again. And again and again and again.” - David Foster Wallace

24. “Once upon a time there was aOnce upon a time there was aOnce upon a time there was aStop this. It's undignified.” - N.K. Jemisin

25. “There are those to whom one must advise madness.” - Joseph Joubert

26. “Gavin, I can’t talk to you here. People will call me crazy." My imaginary friend smirked. "But you’re already talking to me." "Well, I have to stop." His smirk grew cocky. "I doubt you can resist." And he was right. There was nothing I wanted more than to give my full attention to an imagined shadow and ignore those who ignored me in the real world. I wanted to talk out loud to Gavin―to play and laugh boisterously with him. In a dream I could justify such behavior, but to succumb to hallucinations while wide awake would only prove me insane.” - Richelle Goodrich

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. “Who but the mad would choose to keep on living? In the end, aren't we all just a little crazy?” - Libba Bray

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

30. “The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.” - Robert Anton Wilson

31. “I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant - impossible socially, but full-scale - and that it's the knockings and baterrings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banaility.” - Elizabeth Bowen

32. “When a mad man found some certain way to express his insanity in original way, he would get promoted to be called an Artist.... Wait, are you talking about me?” - Hiroko Sakai

33. “If there was one thing I feared as I was growing up . . . No, that's stupid. I feared hundreds of things: the dark, the death of my father, the possibility that I might rejoice the death of my mother, sums involving vernier calipers, groups of schoolboys with nothing much to do, death by drowning. But of all these, I feared the most the possibility that I might go mad too.” - Jerry Pinto

34. “I was, a near grown man, sat in his dank, dark and rickety digs, feverishly hovering about the glare of a computer screen like a disorientated moth, one searching for a flaming light of recognition from someone/anyone!” - Tom Conrad

35. “Some people are attracted to sickness, to the kind of madness where sparks fly off the head, to the incoherence of despair, masked by nervous energy, which winds up looking like bewildered joy.” - Luke Davies

36. “All men are mad in some way or another, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world.” - Bram Stoker

37. “Cuando el amor no es locura,no es amor.” - Pedro Calderón de la Barca

38. “..he was 'nuts about her', as the parlance of the day had it, as if it were generally recognised that love and madness are adjoining rooms with extremely porous walls.” - Jan Kjærstad

39. “... insanity is never reasonable.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

40. “...then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.” - Herman Melville

41. “Before the beginning of yearsThere came to the making of manTime, with a gift of tears;Grief, with a glass that ran;Pleasure, with pain for leaven;Summer, with flowers that fell;Remembrance, fallen from heaven,And madness risen from hell;Strength without hands to smite;Love that endures for a breath;Night, the shadow of light,And Life, the shadow of death.” - Algernon Charles Swinburne

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

43. “One secret of life is that the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. Another secret is that laughter is carbonated holiness” - Anne Lamott

44. “Ecoute les orguesElles jouent pour toiIl est terrible cet air làJ'espère que tu aimesC'est assez beau nonC'est le requiem pour un conJe l'ai composé spécialement pour toiA ta mémoire de scélératC'est un joli thèmeTu ne trouves pasSemblable à toi mêmePauvre conVoici les orguesQui remettent çaFaut qu't'apprennes par c�ur cet air làQue tu n'aies pas mêmeUne hésitationSur le requiem pour un conQuoi tu me regardesTu n'apprécies pasMais qu'est-ce qu'y a là dedansQui t'plaît pasPour moi c'est idemQue ça t'plaise ou nonJ'te l'rejoue quand mêmePauvre conEcoute les orguesElles jouent pour toiIl est terrible cet air làJ'espère que tu aimesC'est assez beau nonC'est le requiem pour un conJe l'ai composé spécialement pour toiA ta mémoire de scélératSur ta figure blêmeAux murs des prisonsJ'inscrirai moi-même : "Pauvre con” - Serge Gainsbourg