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Much Madness is Divinest Sense
To a discerning eye ... Emily Dickinson
We have names for people who have many beliefs for which there is no rational justification. When their beliefs are extremely common we call them ‘religious’; otherwise, they are likely to be called ‘mad’, ‘psychotic’ or ’delusional’. Sam Harris, The End of Faith
The danger of religious faith is that it allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy. ibid.
Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. Euripides, 484-406 B.C.
Good morning, Mr Beale. They tell me you are a madman. Network 1976 starring Faye Dunaway & Peter Finch & William Holden & Robert Duvall & Wesley Addy & Ned Beatty & Beatrice Straight & Jordan Charney & William Prince & Lane Smith & Marlene Warfield & Conchata Ferrell et al, director Sidney Lumet
I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work. Or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickle’s-worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do. And there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe. And our food is unfit to eat. And we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don’t go out any more. We sit in the house and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller. And all we say is, Please, at least leave us alone in our living-rooms. Let me have my toaster, and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone. Well I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don’t want you to protest. I won’t want you to ride. I don’t want you to write to your Congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, I’m a human being. Goddamnit. My life has value! ibid.
cf.
We’re not going to take this any more. We’re as mad as Hell [cf. Network 1976]. Rab C Nesbitt s5e5: Racket, BBC 1996
That’s more like it – Mad Dutch Alchy Bastard. Rab C Nesbitt s6e5: Bulbs, BBC 1997
As a mad-man, no-one can beat me. Maradona
You’ve got to go full-tilt bozzo. ’Cause you’re only given a little spark of madness. And if you lose that, that’s enough. Robin Williams
I can’t even get mad these days. Boys from the Blackstuff e3: Shop thy Neighbour, Chrissie to wife, BBC 1982
We are all born mad. Some remain so. Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot starring Stephen Brennan & Barry McGovern & Johnny Murphy & Sam McGovern et al, director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, Estragon
At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. Stephen King
I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. Vincent van Gogh
I shouldn’t precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can’t very well get out of it. Vincent van Gogh
Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence – whether much that is glorious – whether all that is profound – does not spring from disease of thought – from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. Edgar Allan Poe
Doubt ... is an illness that comes from knowledge and leads to madness. Gustave Flaubert, Memoirs of a Madman
Not mad exactly but suffering. Vincent was an epileptic and struggled with deepening bouts of depression, made worse no doubt by the relentless bad news from Theo that still nobody wanted to buy his pictures. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Van Gogh, BBC 2006
There’s always a sense of reasoning in Leonardo’s [Da Vinci] prophecies. And there’s also often a moral and ethical reading to them; even if he himself explained that the prophecies could be described as brain-teasers. Almost as if he, the author of them, was a mad man. Alessandro Vezzosi, director Museo Ideale
There is perhaps a hint of madness in Pre-Raphaelite painting. Andrew Lloyd Webber, Perspectives, ITV 2011
There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad. Salvador Dali
Do you feel blame? Are you mad? Uh, do you feel like wolf kabob Roth vantage? Gefrannis booj pooch boo jujube; bear-ramage. Jigiji geeji geeja geeble google. Do you begep flagaggle vaggle veditch-waggle bagga? Charles Manson, interview San Quentin Prison
I ain’t mad, you know. Quadrophenia 1979 starring Phil Daniels & Mark Wingett & Leslie Ash & Philip Davis & Sting & Toyah Willcox & Ray Winstone & Gary Shail & Michael Elphick et al, director Franc Roddam, Jimmy to Steph
He’s madder than mad Jack McMad, the winner of last year’s Mr Madman competition. Blackadder III: Duel & Duality, Blackadder of his Scottish cousin, BBC 1987
Who would have noticed another madman around here? Blackadder Goes Forth: Plan F – Goodbyeee, Blackadder to Baldrick, BBC 1989
Madness! Madness! The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 starring Alec Guinness & William Holden & Jack Hawkins & Ann Sears & Sessue Hayakawa & James Donald & Geoffrey Horne & Heihachiro Okawa & Keiichiro Katsumoto et al, director David Lean, engineer closing lines
The Fuhrer Cult taken to excess. Twilight of the Idols in all its splendour. Where Madness rules, the Absurd is not far away. Hitler: A Profile, History 1995
My love’s a noble madness. John Dryden, 1631-1700
Great wits are sure to madness near allied,
And thin partitions do their bounds divide. John Dryden
There is a pleasure sure
In being made, which none but madmen know! John Dryden
Only the madman is absolutely sure. Robert Anton Wilson
Money is our madness, our vast collective madness. D H Lawrence
Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family’s mental health. Susanna Kaysen, ‘Girl, Interrupted’