Insane Quotes (9 quotes)
An insane man is a sick man. Please don’t forget that, gentlemen.
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
Only the insane take themselves seriously.
In 'Poor Romeo!', collected in The Works of Max Beerbohm (1921), 145.
Ordinarily he is insane, but he has lucid moments when he is only stupid.
Describing “Savoye, a mediocre diplomat, appointed Ambassador to Frankfort by Lamartine in 1848.” Quoted from L'Esprit de Tout le Monde, in 'Foreign Wit and Humor: From Contemporaries', Current Opinion (Mar 1894), 15, No. 3, 292. This source credits only “Heine said”. Max John Herzberg more specifically credits “Heinrich Heine” in Insults : A Practical Anthology of Scathing Remarks and Acid Portraits (1941), 74.
Our highest claim to respect, as a nation, rests not in the gold, nor in the iron and the coal, nor in inventions and discoveries, nor in agricultural productions, nor in our wealth, grown so great that a war debt of billions fades out under ministrations of the revenue collector without fretting the people; nor, indeed, in all these combined. That claim finds its true elements in our systems of education and of unconstrained religious worship; in our wise and just laws, and the purity of their administration; in the conservative spirit with which the minority submits to defeat in a hotly-contested election; in a free press; in that broad humanity which builds hospitals and asylums for the poor, sick, and insane on the confines of every city; in the robust, manly, buoyant spirit of a people competent to admonish others and to rule themselves; and in the achievements of that people in every department of thought and learning.
From his opening address at an annual exhibition of the Brooklyn Industrial Institute. As quoted in biographical preface by T. Bigelow to Austin Abbott (ed.), Official Report of the Trial of Henry Ward Beecher (1875), Vol. 1, xiv.
Since my mother is the type that’s called schizophrenogenic in the literature—she's the one who makes crazy people, crazy children—I was awfully curious to find out why I didn’t go insane.
Quoted in Colin Wilson,New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972, 2001), 155-56.
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.
In 'Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World', Modern Mechanix and Inventions (Jul 1934), 117.
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
…...
When a man lacks mental balance in pneumonia he is said to be delirious. When he lacks mental balance without the pneumonia, he is pronounced insane by all smart doctors.
Martin H. Fischer, Howard Fabing (ed.) and Ray Marr (ed.), Fischerisms (1944).
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that exalted, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
…...
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
