"Most people assume that the majority is right, that society is
normal and sane, and that the misfit, dissident, loner or nonconformist is
abnormal and possibly mentally ill. That’s what they are programmed and
conditioned to believe. It is a classic “cattle control” method of getting the
herd to keep itself in line. However, many great thinkers, intellectuals and
writers throughout history have said the opposite. See these great quotes from
them below."
“The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but
to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” - Marcus Aurelius, Roman
Emperor
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a
profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the
most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell
them the Truth." - H. L. Mencken
“Even if you are a minority of one, the Truth is the Truth.” -
Gandhi
"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties,
nations and epochs, it is the rule." - Friederich Nietzsche
"Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane
world." - R. D. Lang
"Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools, and
the rest of us are in great danger of contagion." - Thornton Wilder
"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being
overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and
sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of
owning yourself." - Friederich Nietzsche
"Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with
others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it
is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes
against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand
together. But the creator is the man who stands alone." - Ayn Rand
"The sick individual finds himself at home with all other
similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of
pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the
separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at
ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully
sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so
much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become
psychotic." - Eric Fromm, Swiss Psychologist (The Anatomy of Human
Destructiveness)
The Parable of the Poisoned Well:
“There was once a wise king who ruled over a vast city. He was
feared for his might and loved for his wisdom. Now in the heart of the city,
there was a well whose waters were pure and crystalline from which the king and
all the inhabitants drank. When all were asleep, an enemy entered the city and
poured seven drops of a strange liquid into the well. And he said that
henceforth all who drink this water shall become mad.
All the people drank of the water, but not the king. And the people
began to say, "The king is mad and has lost his reason. Look how strangely
he behaves. We cannot be ruled by a madman, so he must be dethroned."
The king grew very fearful, for his subjects were preparing to rise
against him. So one evening, he ordered a golden goblet to be filled from the
well, and he drank deeply. The next day, there was great rejoicing among the
people, for their beloved king had finally regained his reason."
"A time will come when the whole world will go mad. And to
anyone who is not mad they will say: 'You are mad, for you are not like
us.'" - St. Anthony the Great (attributed to)
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards. Everything is
upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities
destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy
information, and religion destroys spirituality." - Michael Ellner
Dogbert: "Reality is always controlled by the people who are
most insane." - Scott Adams, Dilbert
"We are in the process of creating what deserves to be called
the idiot culture. Not an idiot sub-culture, which every society has bubbling
beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself.
For the first time, the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our
cultural norm, even our cultural ideal." - Carl Bernstein, U.S.
Journalist. Guardian (London, June 3, 1992)
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be
wrong." - Oscar Wilde
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the
majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” - Mark Twain
"Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue..."
- Billy Joel, in his hit song Honesty
"Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in
what cage." - Ray Bradbury
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this
planet." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds;
our planet is the mental institution of the universe." - Johann von Goethe
"In a mad world, only the mad are sane." - Akira Kurosawa
"What sane person could live in this world and not be
crazy?" - Ursula K. LeGuin (b. 1929), US author, The Princess
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives...
I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends... and I think I’m liable
to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about
it." - John Lennon, Interview BBC-TV (June 22, 1968)
"The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is
able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing
superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the
government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he
is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally
he is apt to spread discontent among those who are." - H.L. Mencken
"In America, the criminally insane rule and the rest of us, or
the vast majority of the rest of us, either do not care, do not know, or are
distracted and properly brainwashed into acquiescence." - Kurt Nimmo
"America is an insane asylum run by the inmates." -
Lester Roloff (1914-1982)
"When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity;
since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the madness on which the
whole world happens to agree." - George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), British
playwright
"The statistics on sanity are that one out of
every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of
your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you." - Rita Mae
Brown
“I think the reward for conformity is that everyone
likes you except yourself.” - Rita Mae Brown
"The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're
still a rat." - Lily Tomlin (1939 - ), Actress
"It is dangerous to be right when the government is
wrong." - Voltaire
"Sometimes I think that the greatest sign that there is
intelligent life somewhere in the universe is that it hasn't tried to contact
us yet." - Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes
"If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves." - Aldous Huxley, Author of A Brave New World
"They
must find it difficult...those who have taken authority as the truth, rather
than truth as the authority." - Gerald Massey
“Devotion
to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more
heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of
thinking.” - Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
http://www.happierabroad.com/Quotes_Insanity.htm
