Quotes about schizophrenic (48 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Some years ago Professor Bixler reminded us of the danger of overstressing the well-adjusted life. Everybody passionately seeks to be well-adjusted. We must, of course, be well-adjusted to avoid neurotic schizophrenic personalities, but there are some things in our world to which men of goodwill must be maladjusted. I confess that I never intend to become adjusted to the evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and the to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Source: 1960s, Strength to Love (1963), Ch. 2 : Transformed nonconformist

Life , Men , World , Food

“You must get away from the real thing because the real thing will limit your acting and cripple you. To think of your own mother's death each time you want to cry onstage is schizophrenic and sick.”

Stella Adler (1901–1992) American actress and teaching coach

Obituary in New York Times

Death , Thinking , Time , Cry

“Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying — but when God talks to us, we're said to be schizophrenic?”

Jane Wagner (1935) Playwright, actress

Other material for Lily Tomlin

God , Funny

“The way I see it, living in New Jersey is a challenge, what with the toxic waste and the eighteen wheelers and the armed schizophrenics."
Connie Rosolli”

Janet Evanovich book One for the Money

Source: One for the Money

Way

“Your ideal possession candidate's a thirteen-year-old recently orphaned schizophrenic girl three days away from her period on her way to see the shrink with whom she's romantically besotted.”

Glen Duncan book I, Lucifer

Source: I, Lucifer

Way , Girl

“If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

"Schizophrenia", p. 101.
The Second Sin (1973)

God , Dead

“Why is it when we talk to God we're said to be praying — but when God talks to us, we're said to be schizophrenic?”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Contributions of Jane Wagner

God

“Although the capacity to become schizophrenic may well be within all of us, there is no question that certain persons have distinctive genes predisposing them to the condition.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

Question , Personality

“We are greatly in need of specific research in this area of schizophrenic experience to help us understand Mesolithic man.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 6, p. 137
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

Understanding , Help

“The Cobra group started new, and first of all we threw away all these things we had known and started afresh, like a child — fresh and new. Sometimes my works look very childish, or childlike, schizophrenic or stupid, you know. But that was the good thing for me. Because, for me, the material is the paint itself. The paint expresses itself. In the mass of paint, I find my imagination and go on to paint it.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Quoted in: 'Karel Appel, Dutch Expressionist Painter, Dies at 85', by Margalit Fox, in 'Art & Design', New York Times May 9, 2006
Quote of an oral history in 'Contemporary Artists' - Karel Appel describes the wild artistic urgency that gave rise to the Cobra artist-group

Stupidity , Imagination , Painting

“I’ve gone insane, Michael decided, retrieving a cowhide-bound appointments book from his valise. Only certifiable schizophrenics showed meetings with God on their calendars.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower" p. 68 (originally published in Author’s Choice Monthly #8: Swatting at the Cosmos)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

God , Books

“The leaders of the United States have not only permitted that but assiduously promoted the diversity rather than the unity of the people they govern.
The leaders of other countries have, as we have seen, at times attempted to disavow their cultural heritage and shift the identity of their country from one civilization to another. In no case to date have they succeeded and they have instead created schizophrenic torn countries. The American multiculturalists similarly reject their country’s cultural heritage. Instead of attempting to identify the United States with another civilization, however, they wish to create a country of many civilizations, which is to say a country not belonging to any civilization and lacking a cultural core. History shows that no country so constituted can long endure as a coherent society. A multicivilizational United States will not be the United States; it will be the United Nations.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 12 : The West, Civilizations, and Civilization, § 1 : The Renewal Of The West?, p. 306

People , History , Time , Country

“She was an extremely attractive woman if you like the type, which could best be described as homicidal schizophrenic paranoiac with kittenish overtones.”

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) American writer

Source: The 10th Victim (1965), Chapter 5 (p. 45)

“[in a British accent] Oh, they're so royal! We're lucky to have them coming here. But the rabble undoubtedly will be violent. Scum protesters– Oh, these insane people imagining the helicopters landing and the troops– these insane schizophrenics have come to town. The rabble– I'm so glad– thank God we're elite enough to have them though. I'm so honored. [switches to Cockney accent] Get back there mate! I'll have to have you arrested and have you deported! We're protecting criminals inside, busy stealing our pension funds and overrunning the country with third world populations. Now get back, you Yankee scum! HA HA! To show you the power of the Royal Guard Brigade! And this is the scotch we've been coughing down! Look at that pumpkin-headed Yank! That's the one, Alex Jones! I want you to know, young man, we will be watching you continually while we protect the Transhumanists putting cancer viruses in our children's shots!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Alex Jones English British Accent imitates Police" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGgK9ygGluk, The Alex Jones Show, 13 May 2013.
2013

God , Children , People , World

“Well, he's schizophrenic. And has been since 1968.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Roger Waters, interviewed on Australian radio (1988)

“My mom was a manic depressive schizophrenic who, after a year in prison, went home and shot herself. My sister, Shannon, an amazing poet, who was raised by this woman, and was dating a guy who broke up with her for the fourth time in three weeks. And one day, she came to his house, got a gun, and blew her brains out all over his headboard. I just went through a divorce, five years in court and cost me $2 million dollars. If anyone, by law, should be forced to take antidepressants it's me…But instead, I choose to be an antidepressant. And you can take me with alcohol.”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

Neverlution (2011)

Alcohol , Law , Guy , Home

“"I'm *not* schizophrenic. A little manic-depressive, maybe."
"Know thyself."
"We try, sir."”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)

“Schizophrenia--its nature, etiology, and the kind of therapy to use for it--remains one of the most puzzling of the mental illnesses. The theory of schizophrenia presented here is based on communications analysis, and specifically on the Theory of Logical Types. From this theory and from observations of schizophrenic patients is derived a description, and the necessary conditions for, a situation called the "double bind"--a situation in which no matter what a person does, he "can't win."”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

It is hypothesized that a person caught in the double bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms.
Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, Jay Haley, and John Weakland (1956) " Towards a theory of Schizophrenia http://www.psychodyssey.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/TOWARD-A-THEORY-OF-SCHIZOPHRENIA-2.pdf" In: Behavioral Science (1956) Vol 1, nr.4, pp.251-254

Communication , Nature , Personality

“[In response to having being referred to as schizophrenic] Well, that is clearly not my mental illness; I am Bipolar-II — which is the new gladiator sandal!
Schizophrenia is, of course, hearing voices— not doing voices.”

Maria Bamford (1970) American actress and comedian

Ask Me About My New God! (2013)

“So I think we need a new plan. Next time a country wants to take us on, 'stead of sending bombs, let's try this: send everyone in the country a color television and a satellite dish. And give 'em the basic package, not HBO — screw those people. And before the war starts, we make them all sit down. "Okay, we'll go to war with you. You want a piece of us, fine, fine. Before we go, I want you guys to understand us a little better, so you have to sit down and watch ESPN2 for 24 hours. 'Cause you watch ESPN2 for a full day, you're gonna understand America a lot better. 'Hi, we're America! We build monster trucks for fun! We developed the top fuel dragster, zero to three hundred thirty miles an hour in under five seconds, cause, pfft, we were bored. Piss us off, heh, and see what we build! And we may feel bad about it later! Ask Japan. But before we feel bad…we're gonna jack you up! And then we're gonna send you FOOD! 'Cause we're America; we're schizophrenic. Don't mess with a nation that needs medication!'"”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

The Fifth-Annual End-of-the-World Tour (2007)

War , People , Food , Color

“The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

People

“As with emotionally drawn-out religious initiations, neurobiological studies of stress disorders indicate that subjects become intensely absorbed by sensory displays. The mystical experiences of schizophrenics and temporal lobe epileptics, which may be at the extreme end of the "normal" distribution of religious experience, also exhibit intense sensory activity. These may help to inspire new religions. There is no evidence, however, that more "routine" religious experiences that commit the bulk of humanity to the supernatural have any characteristic pattern of brain activity.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 16
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Religion , Study , Help

“[The Joker is a] psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy. … Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night. I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going.”

Heath Ledger (1979–2008) Australian actor

Speaking about playing the Joker, in an interview conducted by Sarah Lyall, during filming of The Dark Knight, in London, as quoted in [Sarah Lyall, Movies: In Stetson or Wig, He's Hard to Pin Down, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/movies/moviesspecial/04lyal.html, The New York Times, Movies, nytimes.com, Web, November 4, 2007, 2008-08-18]

Thinking , Night

“Cthelll is the terrestrial inner nightmare, nocturnal ocean, Xanadu: the anorganic metal-body trauma-howl of the earth (…) [P]lutonic science slides continuously into schizophrenic delirium. Fast forward seismology and you hear the earth scream.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"Barker Speaks: The CCRU Interview with Professor D.C. Barker" (1999), in Fanged Noumena, pp. 498–9

Science

“Schizophrenia is like love: there is no specifically schizophrenic phenomenon or entity; schizophrenia is the universe of productive and reproductive desiring machines, universal primary production as "the essential reality of man and nature"”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

The Desiring Machine
Anti-Oedipus Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1977)

Love , Nature , Reality , Universe

“A rolling stone gathers no moss.'
Try as I might I could not remember the meaning. At last I hazarded, 'Well, it means a person who's always active and never pauses to reflect — ' No, that didn't sound right. I tried again. 'That means a man who is always active and keeps growing in mental and moral stature won't grow stale.' He was looking at me more intently, so I added by way of clarification, 'I mean, a man who's active and doesn't let grass grow under his feet, he'll get ahead in life.'
Doctor Nisea said, 'I see.' And I knew that I had revealed, for the purposes of legal diagnosis, a schizophrenic thinking disorder.
'What does it mean?' I asked. 'Did I get it backward?'
'Yes, I'm afraid so. The generally-accepted meaning of the proverb is the opposite of what you've given; it is generally taken to mean that a person who — '
'You don't have to tell me,' I broke in. 'I remember — I really knew it. A person who's unstable will never acquire anything of value.”

Philip K. Dick book We Can Build You

Source: We Can Build You (1972), chapter 17, page 224.

Life , Way , Thinking , Grass

“Our pride and progress could be unqualified if the story might end here. But history reveals that America has been a schizophrenic personality where these two documents are concerned. On the one hand she has proudly professed the basic principles inherent in both documents. On the other hand she has sadly practiced the antithesis of these principles.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

History , Personality

“Dayton shook the leadership elite of post-Cold War Europe. The Europeans were grateful to the United States for the leading the effort that finally ended the war in Bosnia, but some European officials were embarassed that American involvement had been necessary. Jacque Poos's 1991 assertion that Europe's "hour had dawned" lay in history's dustbin, alongside James Baker's view that we had no dog in that fight. "One cannot call it an American peace", French Foreign Minister de Charette told the press, "even if President Clinton and the Americans have tried to pull the blanket over to their side. The fact is that the Americans looked at this affair in ex-Yugoslavia from a great distance for nearly four years and basically blocked the progression of things." But de Charette also acknowledged that "Europe as such was not present, and this, it is true, was a failure of the European Union." Prime Minister Alain Juppé, after praising the Dayton agreement, could not resist adding, "Of course, it resembles like a twin the European plan we presented eighteen months ago" - when he was Foreign Minister. Agence France-Presse reported that many European diplomats were "left smarting" at Dayton. In an article clearly inspired by someone at the French Foreign Ministry, Le Figaro said that "Richard Holbrooke, the American mediator, did not leave his European collegues with good memories from the air base at Dayton." They quoted an unnamed Franch diplomat as saying, "He flatters, he lies, he humiliates: he is a sort of brutal and schizophrenic Mazarin." President Chirac's national security assistant, Jean-David Levitte, called to apologize for this comment, saying it did not represent the views of his boss. I replied that such minidramas were inevitable given the pressures and frustrations we faced at Dayton and were inconsequential considering that the war was over.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 318

War , Peace , Dogs , Quotes

“Like the paranoid schizophrenic, the vatic personality pretends to be talking about the grandiose outside cosmic world, but he is really talking grandiosely in symbolic ways only about his narcissistic self and his inner world. The mystic pretends to discard his sensory self in order to meld with the cosmic Self; but in discarding his senses he abjures his only connection with the cosmos and re-encounters only himself. The realities he expounds are inside him.”

Weston La Barre (1911–1996) anthropologist

Source: Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion (1972), p. 265

World , Way , Reality , Sense

“So when the 1960's came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything—and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Guston's quote is describing his departure from Abstract Expressionism
1961 - 1980
Source: 'It's About Freedom' - as quoted in 'It's About Freedom, Philip Guston's Late Works in the Schirn'; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 11/6/2013 – 2/2/2014 http://db-artmag.com/en/78/on-view/its-about-freedom-philip-gustons-late-works-in-the-schirn/

War , World , Feeling , Home

“Almost every messianic movement in the world came into being as a result of hallucinatory visions of a prophet. One point must be emphasized about the prophet of a messianic movement: He is not a schizophrenic, as was so long assumed. A schizophrenic with religious paranoia will state that he is God, Jesus, the Great Spirit, or some other supernatural being. The prophet, on the other hand, never states that he is supernatural—only that he has been in contact with supernatural powers.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Of course, after his death, his disciples tend to deify him or at least give him saintly status.
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Death , God , World

““God” is often clinically paranoiac because the shaman’s “supernatural helper” is the projection of the shaman himself. The personality of Yahweh, so to speak, exactly fits the irascible personality of the sheikh-shaman Moses; the voices of Yahweh and Moses are indistinguishable. Of course, shamans do not always have an easy time of it. If the dereistic dreamer arouses too much anxiety, people call him crazy, just as people must put themselves at a psychological distance from the frightening and uncanny schizophrenic. But if the dreamer largely allays anxiety in the society, then he is the shaman-savior. Thus it is that outsiders to the society cannot tell the difference between a psychotic and a vatic personality. Only the society itself can distinguish between its psychotics and its shaman-saviors.”

Weston La Barre (1911–1996) anthropologist

Source: Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion (1972), p. 266

God , People , Time , Personality

“The schizophrenic is seen to be afraid of the nihilistic void that … will remain when a rigid world-view is discarded.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

[describing the implications of Ehrenzweig’s theory] p. 95, note
Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974)

World

“Devils and demons have no objective existence. They have always represented, again, portions of mankind’s own psychological reality that to some extent he had not assimilated -- but in a schizophrenic kind of expression, projected instead outward from himself.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 921, Page 398
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume Two (1986)

Reality

“ROSES ARE RED. VIOLETS ARE BLUE, I'M A SCHIZOPHRENIC AND so AM I”

Larry Andersen (1953) American baseball player

He Made the saying popular on a T-Shirt he wore.
"Now Some Comic Relief" (1989)

Funny

“Schizophrenic language has in this sense an interesting resemblance to poetry.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1980s, Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983), Chapter 5, p. 138

Sense

“Western democracy has to be ruled out. For me that’s cut and dried: there’s no question of setting up democracy in Israel, because democracy means equal rights for all, irrespective of racial or religious origins. Therefore democracy and Zionism cannot go together. And Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed this state to be a Jewish state, is a totally schizophrenic document. You just can’t, on the one hand, want a Jewish state and at the same time give non-Jews the right to become a majority.”

Meir Kahane (1932–1990) American/Israeli political activist and rabbi

G-d's Law: an Interview with Rabbi Meir Kahane https://web.archive.org/web/20090219141224/http://kahane.org/meir/interview.htm

Democracy , Question , Time

“American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if … the fundamental human drive is not the urge for pleasure or the satisfaction of biological needs, but the need to grow and to realize one’s full potential, their comfortable, empty, purposeless days are indeed cause for a nameless terror.”

Betty Friedan book The Feminine Mystique

Ch 13 "The Forfeited Self".
The Feminine Mystique (1963)

Pleasure , Sense

“I am emphasizing individuals set apartfrom others as ill, because, according to our theory, we could say that before the second millennium B. C., everyone was schizophrenic.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book III, Chapter 5, p. 405
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“The schizophrenic is probably having exactly the same experience as the magician but has no context in which to understand it.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: The schizophrenic has had their window kicked in, the magician has got a body of law – probably most of it bollocks, it doesn’t matter. The magician’s got a system into which the alien information that will be pouring into him or her will be fitted. They’ve got a filing cabinet, like the Qabalah, which is a filing cabinet for ideas. It divides the whole universe up into ten drawers. Any experience can be passed into one of the drawers. The schizophrenic is probably having exactly the same experience as the magician but has no context in which to understand it. … The schizophrenics I have known, the most evident thing about it is the interconnectedness of everything. That’s standard lunacy, it’s also standard magic. But with one of them, it is uncontrollable, you are lost in a world in which everything is obviously connected by symbolic threads. That is what the magician is seeking, to see these threads that connect things up. If you’ve got a system – even if it’s a completely made-up bogus system – then you’ve at least got a filing cabinet to sort this stuff into, you don’t have to get crushed under it.

Understanding

“Schizophrenics have a whole lot of trouble telling the level of abstraction of a story. They're always biased in the direction of interpreting things more concretely than is actually the case.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: Schizophrenics have a whole lot of trouble telling the level of abstraction of a story. They're always biased in the direction of interpreting things more concretely than is actually the case. You would take a schizopohrenic and say, "Okay, what do apples, bananas and oranges have in common?" and they would say, "They all are multi-syllabic words."
You say "Well, that's true. Do they have anything else in common?" and they say, "Yes, they actually all contain letters that form closed loops."
This is not seeing the trees instead of the forest, this is seeing the bark on the trees, this very concreteness.

“The schizophrenic has had their window kicked in, the magician has got a body of law – probably most of it bollocks, it doesn’t matter. The magician’s got a system into which the alien information that will be pouring into him or her will be fitted.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: The schizophrenic has had their window kicked in, the magician has got a body of law – probably most of it bollocks, it doesn’t matter. The magician’s got a system into which the alien information that will be pouring into him or her will be fitted. They’ve got a filing cabinet, like the Qabalah, which is a filing cabinet for ideas. It divides the whole universe up into ten drawers. Any experience can be passed into one of the drawers. The schizophrenic is probably having exactly the same experience as the magician but has no context in which to understand it. … The schizophrenics I have known, the most evident thing about it is the interconnectedness of everything. That’s standard lunacy, it’s also standard magic. But with one of them, it is uncontrollable, you are lost in a world in which everything is obviously connected by symbolic threads. That is what the magician is seeking, to see these threads that connect things up. If you’ve got a system – even if it’s a completely made-up bogus system – then you’ve at least got a filing cabinet to sort this stuff into, you don’t have to get crushed under it.

Law

“There is a need for this subtype — but not too many.
The critical thing with schizotypal shamanism is, it is not uncontrolled the way it is in the schizophrenic.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: In the 1930s an anthropologist named Paul Radin first described it as "shamans being half mad," shamans being "healed madmen." This fits exactly. It's the shamans who are moving separate from everyone else, living alone, who talk with the dead, who speak in tongues, who go out with the full moon and turn into a hyena overnight, and that sort of stuff. It's the shamans who have all this metamagical thinking. When you look at traditional human society, they all have shamans. What's very clear, though, is they all have a limit on the number of shamans. That is this classic sort of balanced selection of evolution. There is a need for this subtype — but not too many.
The critical thing with schizotypal shamanism is, it is not uncontrolled the way it is in the schizophrenic. This is not somebody babbling in tongues all the time in the middle of the hunt. This is someone babbling during the right ceremony. This is not somebody hearing voices all the time, this is somebody hearing voices only at the right point. It's a milder, more controlled version.
Shamans are not evolutionarily unfit. Shamans are not leaving fewer copies of their genes. These are some of the most powerful, honored members of society. This is where the selection is coming from. … In order to have a couple of shamans on hand in your group, you're willing to put up with the occasional third cousin who's schizophrenic.

Way

“Second we must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)
Context: Second we must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. Each of us is something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against ourselves. A persistent civil war rages within all or our lives. Something within us causes us to lament with Ovid, the Latin poet, "I see and approve the better things, but follow the worse," or to agree with Plato that human personality is like a charioteer having two headstrong horses, each wanting to be go in a different direction, or to repeat with the Apostle Paul, "The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, I do."

Evil , Hurt , Personality

“In order to have a couple of shamans on hand in your group, you're willing to put up with the occasional third cousin who's schizophrenic.”

Robert M. Sapolsky (1957) American endocrinologist

Emperor Has No Clothes Award acceptance speech (2003)
Context: In the 1930s an anthropologist named Paul Radin first described it as "shamans being half mad," shamans being "healed madmen." This fits exactly. It's the shamans who are moving separate from everyone else, living alone, who talk with the dead, who speak in tongues, who go out with the full moon and turn into a hyena overnight, and that sort of stuff. It's the shamans who have all this metamagical thinking. When you look at traditional human society, they all have shamans. What's very clear, though, is they all have a limit on the number of shamans. That is this classic sort of balanced selection of evolution. There is a need for this subtype — but not too many.
The critical thing with schizotypal shamanism is, it is not uncontrolled the way it is in the schizophrenic. This is not somebody babbling in tongues all the time in the middle of the hunt. This is someone babbling during the right ceremony. This is not somebody hearing voices all the time, this is somebody hearing voices only at the right point. It's a milder, more controlled version.
Shamans are not evolutionarily unfit. Shamans are not leaving fewer copies of their genes. These are some of the most powerful, honored members of society. This is where the selection is coming from. … In order to have a couple of shamans on hand in your group, you're willing to put up with the occasional third cousin who's schizophrenic.

“The Europeans are … making a choice that will inevitably give Europe more geopolitical clout—at the expense of American primacy. … And the impetus will come not just from Europe's new ambition, which will gather slowly, but also from America's domestic politics and its schizophrenic reaction to the rise of Europe.”

Charles A. Kupchan (1958) American university teacher

Source: The End of the American Era (2002), Chapter four: "The Rise of Europe"

“I have been impressed time and again by the schizophrenic character of many businessmen. They are capable of being extremely far‐sighted and clear‐headed in matters that are internal to their businesses. They are incredibly short sighted and muddle‐headed in mat ters [sic!] that are outside their businesses but affect the possible survival of business in general. This short sightedness is strikingly exemplified in the calls from many businessmen for wage and price guidelines or controls or incomes policies. There is nothing that could do more in a brief period to destroy a market system and replace it by a centrally controlled system than effective governmental control of prices and wages. The short‐sightedness is also exemplified in speeches by business men on social responsibility. This may gain them kudos in the short run. But it helps to strengthen the already too prevalent view that the ptirsuit [sic!] of profits is wicked and im moral [sic!] and must be curbed and controlled by external forces. Once this view is adopted, the external forces that curb the market will not be the social consciences, however highly developed, of the pontificating executives; it will be the iron fist of Government bureaucrats. Here, as with price and wage controls, business men seem to me to reveal a suicidal impulse.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)

Time , Business , Help , Suicide

“This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? … If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Episode 1, Chapter 12
The Power of Myth (1988)

Personality , Life , People , World