“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
Quotes about madness
A collection of quotes on the topic of madness, likeness, doing, people.
Best quotes about madness
“My wish is that you may be loved to the point of madness.”
André Breton (1896–1966) French writer
Source: What is Surrealism?: Selected Writings
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius”
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
“Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!”
Jane Austen book Love and Freindship
Source: Love and Friendship
“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.”
Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist
“She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Variant: she’s mad, but she’s magic.
“I’m not mad. I’m in a perfectly happy mood, you asshole.”
Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist
“Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.”
Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems
Variant: Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.
Source: Howl and Other Poems
Quotes about madness
Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician
Variant: You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matters? She's not perfect — you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break — her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there.
Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter
"Bad Guy"
When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? (2019)
Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker
Source: Alice in Wonderland: Based on the Motion Picture Directed by Tim Burton
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
“To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness.”
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher
Jack Kerouac book On the Road
Part One, Ch. 1
On the Road (1957)
Context: They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
Variant: Everyday I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.
Jennifer Aniston (1969) television and film actress from the United States
Interview for Vogue magazine (December 2008)
Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat
About the first World War.
The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“If you have an enemy, then learn and know your enemy, don't just be mad at him or her”
Denzel Washington (1954) actor, screenwriter, director, producer
“Don't forget love;
it will bring all the madness you need
to unfurl yourself across the universe.”
Meera Bai Hindu mystic poet
Mīrābāī, in ” Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West”, p. 251
“I feel the madness creeping slowly. Loved by many I'm still lonely.”
Ronnie Radke (1983) American singer
In the song "The Westerner"
“Lyrically I'm untouchable, uncrushable. Getting mad blunted in the S-500.”
The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper
"Think BIG"
Song lyrics
“It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours.”
Diogenes of Sinope (-404–-322 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, one of the founders of the Cynic philosophy
Stobaeus, iii. 3. 51
Quoted by Stobaeus
L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology
"Times Must Change" in Ability # 179 (20 March 1966).
Shawn Mendes (1998) Canadian singer-songwriter and model
On the rumours about his sexuality. <br class="br"> Shawn Mendes: ‘I’m 20. I want to have fun’, The Guardian, April 07, 2019 https://www.theguardian.com/global/2019/apr/07/shawn-mendes-im-20-i-want-to-have-fun-interview-social-media,
“People who try hard to do the right thing always seem mad.”
Stephen King book The Stand
Source: The Stand
Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights
Heathcliff (Ch. XVI).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you — haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe; I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always — take any form — drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss where I can not find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!
“The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way is the one that achieves madness.”
Mick Jagger (1943) British rock musician, member of The Rolling Stones
Douglas Adams (1952–2001) English writer and humorist
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Omnibus
“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation
Source: Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), p. 83
Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer
HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)
David Tennant (1971) Scottish actor
Radio Times interview (April 2007) http://www.radiotimes.com/content/show-features/doctor-who/david-tennant-interview-2007/
Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist
Interview with Earth First! in Administrative Maximum Facility Prison, Florence, Colorado, USA, (June 1999)
Interviews
“Proud of my near-madness, as if I had attained a goal.”
Peter Handke (1942) Austrian writer, playwright and film director
Source: Das Gewicht der Welt [The Weight of the World], p. 16
Francesco Balilla Pratella (1880–1955) Italian composer
Original text:
Tutti gli innovatori sono stati logicamente futuristi, in relazione ai loro tempi. Palestrina avrebbe giudicato pazzo Bach, e così Bach avrebbe giudicato Beethoven, e così Beethoven avrebbe giudicato Wagner.
Rossini si vantava di aver finalmente capito la musica di Wagner leggendola a rovescio! Verdi, dopo un’audizione dell’ouverture del Tannhäuser, in una lettera a un suo amico chiamava Wagner matto.
Siamo dunque alla finestra di un manicomio glorioso, mentre dichiariamo, senza esitare, che il contrappunto e la fuga, ancor oggi considerati come il ramo più importante dell’insegnamento musicale...
Source: Technical Manifesto of Futurist Music (1911), p. 80
Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) President of Upper Volta
From 1985 interview with Swiss Journalist Jean-Philippe Rapp, translated from Sankara: Un nouveau pouvoir africain by Jean Ziegler. Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions Pierre-Marcel Favre, 1986. In Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983-87. trans. Samantha Anderson. New York: Pathfinder, 1988. pp. 141-144.
Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter
Bad Blood, written by Taylor Swift, Max Martin, and Shellback
Song lyrics, 1989 (2014)
Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor
You just have to laugh at yourself. It's funny.
Interview on The Ellen Show, "Ellen Chats With Justin Bieber", 3 November, 2010
Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor
Don't Be Cruel, written by Otis Blackwell and Elvis Presley (1956)
Song lyrics
Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990) Norwegian philosopher, mountaineer, and author
Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)
Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter
KCRW – Man In The Moon (January 4, 1994)
From Interviews
Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer
"Take no prisoners" http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,220099,00.html, interview by Linda Grant, The Guardian (13 May 2000). <br class="br">About
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
1963 interview, used in The Century of the Self (2002)
Context: My argument with so much of psychoanalysis, is the preconception that suffering is a mistake, or a sign of weakness, or a sign even of illness, when in fact, possibly the greatest truths we know have come out of people's suffering; that the problem is not to undo suffering or to wipe it off the face of the earth but to make it inform our lives, instead of trying to cure ourselves of it constantly and avoid it, and avoid anything but that lobotomized sense of what they call "happiness." There's too much of an attempt, it seems to me, to think in terms of controlling man, rather than freeing him. Of defining him rather than letting him go. It's part of the whole ideology of this age, which is power-mad.
“And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.”
Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.
Alcuin (735–804) English scholar and abbot
Variant translation: We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness.
Works, Epistle 127 (to Charlemagne, AD 800)
“And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?”
Edgar Allan Poe book The Tell-Tale Heart
The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)
Context: And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses? -- now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
“[Thou] mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms!”
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet
Source: Henry IV: Part 1
XIV. 216–217 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Alexander Pope's translation:
: In this was every art, and every charm,
To win the wisest, and the coldest warm:
Fond love, the gentle vow, the gay desire,
The kind deceit, the still reviving fire,
Persuasive speech, and more persuasive sighs,
Silence that spoke, and eloquence of eyes.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: The Iliad
“Quos vilt perdere dementat' Whome the gods wish to destroy, they first drive mad (Latin).”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer
H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author
Source: At the Mountains of Madness and Other Tales of Terror
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition
“Without madness what is man
more than the healthy beast,
corpse adjourned that procreates?”
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher
Poem "D. Sebastião", verses 8-10
Message
Original: Sem a loucura que é o homem
Mais que a besta sadia,
Cadáver adiado que procria?
Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa
“We're all mad here. Im mad. You're mad”
Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Variant: We're all mad here.
Source: Alice in Wonderland
“All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.”
Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet
