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Mental-illness Quotes

After Abalyn said what she said, I panicked. Someone tells me I can't remember what I definitely do ...

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A phenomenon that might seem only backwards or silly when expressed at a social level becomes madnes...

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I began to imagine orchestration where before I heard only the cacophony of randomness. Crazy people...

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I mean, that's at least in part why I ingested chemical waste - it was a kind of desire to abbreviat...

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Statistics say that a range of mental disorders affects more than one in four Americans in any given...

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There are a couple of reasons why I take comfort in being able to put all this in my own vernacular ...

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One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering ...

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Oh! This'll impress you - I'm actually in the Abnormal Psychology textbook. Obviously my family is s...

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I had noticed that both in the very poor and very rich extremes of society the mad were often allowe...

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Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still

Alcohol ruined me financially and morally, broke my heart and the hearts of too many others. Even th...

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Picture of Craig Ferguson
Craig FergusonAmerican on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

There's an inherent thing in me where, if things are going too smooth, I'll sabotage the hell out of...

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It can't have been fun to live with somebody whose brain was under siege.

Cause I'd rather stay hereWith all the madmenThan perish with the sadmen roaming freeAnd I'd rather ...

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She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth...

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I was back in disgust. I stood in the centre of the big room, naked, letting the heat strike me from...

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I AM come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the q...

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That millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make these people sane.

For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed throug...

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One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

When mental [illness] increases until it reaches the danger point, do not exhaust yourself by effort...

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I see now the virtue in madness, for this country knows no law nor any boundary. I pity the poor sha...

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Picture of Grant Morrison
Grant MorrisonBatman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth

A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption.

Picture of Guy de Maupassant
Guy de MaupassantLe Horla et autres contes fantastiques

It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see noth...

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So far gone am I in the dark side of earth, that its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but...

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Insanity? The mental processes of a man with whom one disagrees, are always wrong. Where is the line...

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To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown.

This was an adequate enough performance, as improvisations go. The only problem was that my entire e...

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Anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.

The thing about a spiral is, if you follow it inward, it never actually ends. It just keeps tighteni...

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Everyone wanted me to feed them that story—darkness to light, weakness to strength, broken to whole....

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It’s so weird, to know you’re crazy and not be able to do anything about it, you know? It’s not like...

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John Green (author)Turtles All the Way Down

He was lovable the way a child is lovable, and he was capable of returning love with a childlike pur...

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We who were not so pathologically far out on the spectrum of self-involvement, we dwellers of the vi...

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Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness.

How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart, slash off its spectr...

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This is glorious!' I cried, and then i looked at the sinner by my side. He sat with his head sunk on...

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the intensity, glory, and absolute assuredness if my mind's flight made it very difficult for me to ...

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It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damag...

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Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, f...

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Picture of Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield JamisonAn Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness...

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Picture of Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield JamisonAn Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The re...

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Picture of Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield JamisonAn Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

When both she and I had to deal with our respective demons, my sister saw the darkness as being with...

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But money spent while manic doesn't fit into the Internal Revenue Service concept of medical expense...

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Picture of Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield JamisonAn Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

God only knew what ran underneath the fierce self-discipline and emotional control that had come wit...

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I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current s...

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Picture of Kay Redfield Jamison
Kay Redfield JamisonAn Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just t...

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Toni hears voices," said Trapp. "But who is this Dr. Ellsworth to tell her she's a schizophrenic? Ma...

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You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill...

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Eventually my mother suffered a complete breakdown, and the court orders were finally signed. They t...

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My grandfather often felt frustrated or baffled by my grandmother's illness, but when it came to the...

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Stigmas speak to the idea of difference and how difference shames us and those we know.

Holding one's self responsible is a critical feature in stigma and in the generation of shame since ...

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At the root of this dilemma is the way we view mental health in this country. Whether an illness aff...

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Picture of Michelle Obama
Michelle ObamaMichelle Obama: In Her Own Words

Illness is always an interaction between [mind and body]. It can begin in the mind and affect the bo...

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Picture of Norman Cousins
Norman CousinsAnatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient

He could only consider me as the living corpse of a would-be suicide, a person dead to shame, an idi...

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After being hurt by the world so much, they began to see the demons within humans. So without hiding...

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For someone like myself in whom the ability to trust others is so cracked and broken that I am wretc...

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Show me what you've written," I said, although I wanted desperately to avoid looking at it.

And I was incapable of living all by myself in those lodgings where I didn't know a soul. It terrifi...

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Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know ho...

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It is painful for the plant which is myself to live in the atmosphere and light of this world. Somew...

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I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved. A wearisome thought.I want money. Unless I have it....

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Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. An...

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Now his work-mates pitied him, although they tried not to show it, and it was generally arranged tha...

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His body had become a companion which seemed always about to leave him: it had its own pains which m...

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The exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one -...

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I've always told people that for each person there is a sentence--a series of words--which has the p...

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It has been said of dreams that they are a 'controlled psychosis,' or, put another way, a psychosis ...

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Preaching a man a sermon with a broken head and telling him to be right with God is equal to telling...

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Creative people, as I see them, are distinguished by the fact that they can live with anxiety, even ...

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It is merely an accident of history that it is considered normal in our society to believe that the ...

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Picture of Sam Harris
Sam HarrisThe End of Faith: Religion

But the strange thing, the thing that you can never explain to anyone, except another nut, or, if yo...

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Office Peone looked at John and wondered what mental illness he had. The Seattle streets were filled...

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And then I realized that my sister was trying to LIVE a romance novel. Man, that takes courage and i...

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Picture of Sherman Alexie
Sherman AlexieThe Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique...

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I’ve found that it’s of some help to think of one’s moods and feelings about the world as being simi...

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The uncomfortable, as well as the miraculous, fact about the human mind is how it varies from indivi...

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I used to think it utterly normal that I suffered from “suicidal ideation” on an almost daily basis....

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Don’t ask me those questions! Don’t ask me what life means or how we know reality or why we have to ...

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Suicide is a form of murder— premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think...

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Kaysen elaborates through parts of the book on her thoughts about how mental illness is treated. She...

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Are you crazy? It's a common phrase, I know. But it means something particular to me: the tunnels, t...

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Viscosity occurs on a cellular level. And so does velocity.In contrast to viscosity's cellular coma,...

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I’m not flailing now, as my muscles are rigid with the tension of holding myself together. The pain ...

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Have I gone mad like Anne and no one has the heart to tell me? I wish someone would tell me, I feel ...

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Haymitch isn't thinking of arenas, but something else. "Johanna's back in the hospital."I assumed Jo...

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I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather...

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What I didn't say was that each time I picked up a German dictionary or a German book, the very sigh...

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We all feel inadequate very often. It’s only when it gets chronic that it is disturbing to one’s emo...

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The ethics of psychiatric therapy is the very negation of the ethics of political liberty. The forme...

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The medical profession's classic prescription for coping with such predicaments, Primum non nocere (...

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The term 'deinstitutionalization' conceals some simple truths, namely, that old, unwanted persons, f...

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Picture of Thomas Szasz
Thomas SzaszCruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

We cannot institutionalize helping the "victims" of personal disasters.

Picture of Thomas Szasz
Thomas SzaszCruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

The pressure to reduce health care costs is aimed only at the treatment of real diseases. There is n...

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Picture of Thomas Szasz
Thomas SzaszCruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

The cruelty intrinsic to the workhouse system was excused by the need to discourage idleness, much a...

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Picture of Thomas Szasz
Thomas SzaszCruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

The young and the old are defenseless against relatives who want to get rid of them by casting them ...

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Picture of Thomas Szasz
Thomas SzaszCruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

The fatal weakness of most psychiatric historiographies lies in the historians' failure to give suff...

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Picture of Thomas Szasz
Thomas SzaszCruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

When and why do we attribute a person's behavior to brain disease, and when and why do we not do so?...

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Picture of Thomas Szasz
Thomas SzaszCruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted