 |
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands
explained. No man has a wholly undiseased mind; in one way or another all men are
mad. |
Heaven knows insanity was disreputable enough, long ago; but now that the lawyers
have got to cutting every gallows rope and picking every prison lock with it,
it is become a sneaking villainy that ought to hang and keep on hanging its
sudden possessors until evil-doers should conclude that the safest plan was
to never claim to have it until they came by it legitimately. The very calibre
of the people the lawyers most frequently try to save by the insanity subterfuge
ought to laugh the plea out of the courts, one would think.
- "Unburlesquable
Things," The Galaxy Magazine, July 1870
The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people, but if we tried to
shut up the insane we should run out of building materials.
- Following the Equator
|
...we all know that in all matters of mere opinion that [every] man is
insane--just as insane as we are...we know exactly where to put our finger
upon his insanity: it is where his opinion differs from ours....All Democrats
are insane, but not one of them knows it. None but the Republicans. All
the Republicans are insane, but only the Democrats can perceive it. The
rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane. |
 Mark Twain Postcard |
But we are all insane, anyway. Note the mountain-climbers.
- Mark Twain's Notebook
Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.
That is where the true evil lies.
- "A New Crime," 1875
Once I talked to the inmates of an insane asylum in Hartford. I have talked
to idiots a thousand times, but only once to the insane...
- quoted in Isabel Lyon's Journal, 15 February 1906
Why, no one is sane, straight along, year in & year out, & we
all know it. Our insanities are of varying sorts, & express themselves in
various forms --fortunately harmless forms as a rule -- but in whatever form
they occur an immense upheaval of feeling can at any time topple us distinctly
over the sanity-line for a little while; & then if our form happens to be
of the murderous kind we must look out -- & so must the spectator.
- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 10 September 1901
Every extraordinary occurrence unsettles the heads of hundreds of thousands
of men for a few moments or hours or days.
- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 10 September 1901
No ruler is ever slain but the tremendous details of it are ravenously devoured
by a hundred thousand men whose minds dwell, unaware, near the temporary-insanity
frontier -- & over they go, now! There is a day -- two days -- three --
during which no Ruler would be safe from perhaps the half of them; & there
is a single moment wherein he would not be safe from any of them, no doubt.
- Letter to Joseph Twichell, 10 September 1901
Quotations | Newspaper Articles | Special Features | Links | Search