Madmen Quotes

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.
The lunatic, the lover and the poet
Are of imagination all compact:
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold,
That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt:
The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
― Shakespeare William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Humanity can be divided into madmen and cowards. My personal tragedy is in being born into a world where sanity is held to be a character flaw.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“All men are mad in some way or another, and inasmuch as you deal discreetly with your madmen, so deal with God's madmen too, the rest of the world.”
― Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Put a man on the brink of the abyss and - in the unlikely event that she doesn't fall into it - he will become a mystic or a madman... Which is probably the same thing!”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

“That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and ... people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.”
― Denis Diderot

“I have long known about madmen and kings; I have long known about feeling real. I have long been lucky enough to feel real, no matter what diminishments or depressions have come my way. And I have long known that the moment of queer pride is a refusal to be shamed by witnessing the other as being ashamed of you.”
― Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts

“One must have common sense, nothing is permanent, nothing endures. I have come to the conclusion that this place is run by a madman. A madman, let me tell you, can be very logical. If you are rich and logical and also mad, you can succeed for a very long time in living out your illusion. But in the end....in the end this will break up. Because, you see, it is not reasonable what happens here! That which is not reasonable must always pay the reckoning in the end.

~Dr. Barron”
― Agatha Christie, Destination Unknown

“I remind myself that madmen really exist. Sometimes they achieve the highest levels of political power in modern industrial nations.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“The world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“Peggy, just think about it. Deeply. Then forget it. And an idea will jump up in your face.”
― Don Draper

“Our worst fears lie in anticipation.”
― Don Draper

“You're good. Get better. Stop asking for things.”
― Don Draper

“All great events have been set in motion by madmen, by mediocre madmen. Which will be true, we may be sure, of the "end of the world" itself.”
― Emil M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“Blackmail threats are e-mails from madmen.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes