Madhouses Quotes
But whenever one meets modern thinkers (as one often does) progressing towards a madhouse, one always finds, on inquiry, that they have just had a splendid escape from another madhouse. Thus, hundreds of people become Socialists, not because they have tried Socialism and found it nice, but because they have tried Individualism and found it nasty.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
But madness? That small remnant of altered consciousness, pure or in response to circumstances. Circumstances of life, even those of the body itself and its chemistry. How cruel and stupid to punish this as we do with ostracism and fear, to have forged a network of fear, strong as the locks and bars of a back ward. This is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as...
Kate Millett
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Charles Bukowski
The street to my left was backed up with traffic and I watched the people waiting patiently in the cars. The was almost always a man and a women, staring straight ahead, not talking. It was, finally, for everyone, a matter of witing. You waited and you waited- for the hospital, the doctor, the plumber, the madhouse, the jail, papa death himself. First the signal red, then the signal was green. The citizens of the world ate food and watched t. v. and worried about their jobs or lack of the...
Charles Bukowski
Already all confusion. Things and imaginings. As of always. Confusion amounting to nothing. Despite precautions. If only she could be pure figment. Unalloyed. This old so dying woman. So dead. In the madhouse of the skull and nowhere else. Where no more precautions to be taken. No precautions possible. Cooped up there with the rest. Hovel and stones. The lot. And the eye. How simple all then. If only all could be pure figment. Neither be nor been nor by any shift to be. Gently gently. On....
Samuel Beckett
And it all flew away like a dream--even my passion, and yet it really was strong and true, but...where has it gone now? Indeed the thought occasionally flits through my head: "Didn't I go out of my mind then and spend the whole time sitting in a madhouse somewhere, and maybe I'm sitting there now--so that for me it was all a seeming and only seems to this day.
Fyodor Dostoevsky