“Almost nobody dances sober, unless they happen to be insane.”

Last update April 24, 2026. History

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Marcus Tullius Cicero180

Roman philosopher and statesman -106–-43 BC

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“Almost no one dances sober, unless he is insane.”
Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit.

Marcus Tullius Cicero book Pro Murena

Pro Murena (Chapter VI, sec. 13)

“nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: One

“Today that rarely happens. Most often the songs are used as a relief. They have nothing to do with the film per say. And all look almost the same. Just replace the central characters and a step here and there…choreography remains the same in most cases. So does the beat. We have so many classical dances and folk dances in the country but nobody seems to be using them.”

Waheeda Rehman (1938) Indian actress

Quote, Grace personified: Waheeda Rehman

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

“Those who dance appear insane to those who cannot hear the music.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Misattributed
First recorded appearance: Germaine de Staël's On Germany (1813). ". . . sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane." There are several other pre-Nietzsche examples, indicating that the phrase was widespread in the nineteenth-century; it was referred to in 1927 as an "old proverb".