Lunatic Quotes

I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher ... You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool ... or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. ~ C.S. Lewis

Dude, you didn't fugue, you were just berserk. That's like comparing a lunatic to a pissed guy with goals. ~ Chris Onstad

What the hell was that?" one of them asked.

"Jackal," Irene stated quietly while watching city streets turn to suburb.
They weren't taking her to a main airport but a small airstrip. One built
exclusively for private planes.

"Did she just call us jackals?" one of them joked.

Irene grinned which wiped the smile off the man's face. "No. I said the howl
you heard was jackal." She looked at Jenny. "They'll be coming for you."

Jenny glanced at the men and back at her. She looked terribly concerned she
had a lunatic in the car with her. "The jackals will be coming for me?"

"No. The wolves."

Jenny sighed. "Why oh why do I always get the nutcases?"

"Oh!" Irene pointed excitedly. "See that spot up there?"

"What about it?"

"That's where it all started. Where I crossed the Rubicon."

Exasperated, Jenny snarled, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"It's feeding time," Irene whispered.


"That's it." Jenny threw up her hands. "We're so medicating her. ~ Shelly Laurenston

We do live in a world with lunatic and mentally corrupted people, and still you expect I shouldn't smash some faces. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

I may have been a complete lunatic, but I was a complete lunatic with manners. ~ Maureen Johnson

Buffett, when he gave away his money, referenced Carnegie. He quoted from Carnegie. When he said, "The man who dies rich dies disgraced," in the 1880s, his fellow millionaires looked on him like he was a lunatic, you know, an idiot, a mad man. ~ David Nasaw

Rand Paul ... said national health insurance is slavery. He said, I'm a physician, and if there's national health insurance, the government is forcing me to take care of somebody who is ill. Why should I be a slave to the state? Here we're getting capitalist pathology in its most extreme, lunatic form. It is the opposite of solidarity, mutual support, mutual help. ~ Noam Chomsky

She had what's known as inner life and didn't know it. She lived off herself as if eating her own entrails. When she went to work she looked like a gentle lunatic because as the bus went along she daydreamed in loud and dazzling dreams. These dreams, because of all that interiority, were empty because they lacked the essential nucelus of⁠ - of ecstasy, let's say. Most of the time she had without realizing it the void that fills the souls of the saints. Was she a saint? So it seems. She didn't know what she was meditating because she didn't know what the word meant. But it seems to me that her life was a long meditation on the nothing. Except she needed others in order to believe in herself, otherwise she'd get lost in the successive and round emptiness inside her. She meditated while she was typing and that's why she made even more mistakes. ~ Clarice Lispector

Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside, and either accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for instance, Silas Durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he chooses to show enself at fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away. Between ~ H.G.Wells

To be a good actor, you have to be very smart. But to be a great actor, you also have to have a streak of, 'I'm an idiot, a complete lunatic.' ~ Lena Olin

Through our heart, we gain access to a psychological and emotional experience of abundance that, at times for me, is overwhelming it is so beautiful. There is beauty in each of us that is truly astonishing, a beauty that expresses itself on one level as abundance and on another level as endless healing, and finally a perspective that is so peaceful, so restful, that we can reside in it even in the face of this lunatic world that we live in. ~ Swami Chetanananda

Why can't I just stay with you?" Liam asks.
Mike stares at him. "Because I'm not a fucking lunatic," Mike says. "And I would become one if I had to deal with you all the fucking time."
"I'm here all the time anyway," Liam says.
"And I'm already one day away from killing you. ~ Taylor Fitzpatrick

If being in love made a person mad, then being away from the one you loved made you a lunatic. ~ Nicole Williams

The Rogue Film School is not for the faint-hearted. It is for those who have travelled on foot, who have worked as bouncers in sex clubs or as wardens in a lunatic asylum, for those who are willing to learn about lock picking or forging shooting permits in countries not favoring their projects. In short: for those who have a sense of poetry. For those who are pilgrims. For those who can tell a story to four year old children and hold their attention. For those who have a fire burning within. For those who have a dream. ~ Werner Herzog

Do you ever find yourself bursting into a sort of lunatic laughter at the sheer prettiness of things? ~ Beverley Nichols

I always was a rebel ... but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted ... and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not. ~ John Lennon

There were no mad flashings of the eye, no lunatic grimace passed over his face. He was not out of his mind, which was so clear and buoyant that he asked himself why he wanted to do it at all. And he said to himself that he wanted to do it because he was evil, thoroughly evil. And he smiled as he said it and was content. He looked quite innocent, like any happy person. ~ Patrick Suskind

Two men in a small boat, never sure what they might encounter out on the sea or what they might pull up from the abyss, beneath melted stars and electric full moons, where breakers and swells assault the islets like hysterical herds of cattle and the lunatic eye of the lighthouse never lets us out of its sight. ~ Morten A. Strøksnes

an took one step closer to Hart. Though he kept his eyes averted, there was no mistaking the anger in his stance and his voice. "She is my wife, under my protection. The only way I will let you do anything against this marriage is if you declare me a lunatic again."
Hart flushed dull red. "Ian, listen to me - "
"I want her as my wife, and she stays my wife." Ian softened his voice a notch. "She is a Mackenzie now. Treat her as one. ~ Jennifer Ashley

The difference between a humanist and a lunatic is in fact one of degree ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee

There are things you haven't thought of in centuries."
I waited for the joke, then realized he was serious. Apparently our break up had turned him into a raving lunatic. I should probably be flattered. "Really Alex, you don't have to act like an immature kid. It's fine if you want to see me again, but next time, just say so instead of making up asinine stories. ~ Angela Corbett

When the lunatic is met with ideas incompatible with his delusion he distorts facts by rationalization to preserve the inner consistency of his delusions. ~ E. Franklin Frazier

For 50 years, nuclear power stations have produced three products which only a lunatic could want: bomb-explosive plutonium, lethal radioactive waste and electricity so dear it has to be heavily subsidised. They leave to future generations the task, and most of the cost, of making safe sites that have been polluted half-way to eternity. ~ James Buchan

You comin' or what? Ryker returned.
Layne glanced through Merry and Cal, nodded and followed Ryker. It would seem big, scary, badass, looking like a raving lunatic Ryker needed his BFF.
Fuck. ~ Kristen Ashley

Madison looked from Jason, who jerked his head toward the gate, signaling her to get moving, to Longbranch, whose cold, direct gaze said Jason would pay in blood for any kind of double-cross.
One thing was clear: Jason Haley had been lying to her since the moment he set foot on her porch. Was he really plotting with the Roses? Or had he decided to sacrifice himself to get her into the sanctuary?
Madison threw her arms around Jason's neck as if she couldn't face being parted from him and whispered fiercely in his ear, "You lying lunatic bastard. They're going to kill you."
"I love you too," he murmured. "Go find Seph. Help him. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

What we've got here is a lunatic genius ghost-in-the-computer monorail that likes riddles and goes faster than the speed of sound. Welcome to the fantasy version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. ~ Stephen King

The Secret Service once watched for people who fit the popular profile of dangerousness: the lunatic, the loner, the threatener, the hater. ~ Bill Dedman

My parents are both very funny but they're also relatively soft-spoken, normal human beings while I'm just a lunatic. I don't know where this loud, ballsy, hammy ridiculousness came from. I'm just glad I followed my goals and my parents did too. It's not like we even had a plan when I dragged my mom to Los Angeles. ~ Emma Stone

I thought about how I had now let a self-proclaimed lunatic into my house twice and considered the possibility that my life needed sorting out. ~ Rasmenia Massoud

I can't tell you how sorry I am. About everything. About your poor cat, about that horrendous funeral my dad concocted, and really about my lunatic father in general. I'm sorry you had to move in next to a family of complete weirdos. I don't know how you've put up with all of it. I mean, you never even complained about the busted purple coffin we had sitting in the middle of our front lawn. ~ Emily Cassel

Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool ~ Plato

There are two different kinds of glee club in this world. The first sing barbershop favourites and Gershwin tunes, they swing gently, moving from side to side and sometimes clicking their fingers and winking. Howard could basically deal with that type. He had got through those occasions graced by glee clubs of that type. But these boys were not of that type. Swaying and clicking and winking were just how they got warmed up. Tonight this glee club had chosen as their opener 'Pride (In the Name of Love)' by U2, which they had taken the trouble to transform into a samba. They swayed, they clicked, they winked. They did coordinated spins. They switched places with each other. They moved forward, they moved back – always retaining their formation. They smiled the kind of smile you might employ when trying to convince a lunatic to quit holding a gun to your mother's head. ~ Zadie Smith

I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is. Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum. That is one of the things that distinguishes us among the nations ... We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough ... Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree. ~ Louis De Bernieres

Writers are the lunatic fringe of publishing. ~ Judith Rossner

Sade is still a prisoner when he dies, but this time in a lunatic asylum,acting plays on an improvised stage with other lunatics. A derisory equivalent of the satisfaction that the order of the world failed to give him was provided for him by dreams and by creative activity. The writer,
of course, has no need to refuse himself anything. For him, at least, boundaries disappear and desire can
be allowed free rein. In this respect Sade is the perfect man of letters. He created a fable in order to give
himself the illusion of existing. ~ Albert Camus

Fitz must not know in advance, for he would try to stop her. He might simply lock her in her room. He could even get her committed to a lunatic asylum. A wealthy upper-class man could have a female relative put away without much difficulty. All Fitz would have to do was to find two doctors willing to agree with him that she must be mad to want to marry a German. ~ Ken Follett

I am jealous of the little kid
spinning around near the fountain.
What would these people think
if I were to start spinning
with my arms spread wide?
A lunatic on drugs, probably.
My greatest accomplishment here is not caring,
letting go of other people's opinions.
I am not wound as tight.
I can let go,
just no spinning yet. ~ Samantha Schutz

What plan?" said Jace.
"I always have a plan," said Julian calmly.
Dru lifted her coffee cup. "It's great to have you back, Jules. I missed your lunatic schemes."
Helen was on her feet now. Aline appeared to be trying not to giggle. ~ Cassandra Clare

Really? Is there anyone here one hundred percent human? No. I think dying from an unbuckled belt is the least of our concerns right now." – Sasha
"And I don't put it in drive until everyone's secure. That means you, wolfboy." – Sundown
"Un-frakkin'-believable. I'm in hell. With a lunatic. Might as well have stayed with Zarek. Next thing you know, you'll be drowning pancakes with syrup, too. (He made a grand showing of buckling himself in.) Hope you get fleas." – Sasha ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. ~ George Orwell

If I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it'd be on my mind all the time as how the hell we really got this way. It's a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can't think this. Well, alright, as soon as you leave you can start thinking about it again without giving aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe of the Christian religion. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Oscore is my favorite model," he says. "He has a very strange face. I don't know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It is a puzzle. ~ Jandy Nelson

As a last resort, with the orange nearing my face and my back pressing hard against the sharp edge of my broadcast table, I grabbed my phone to tell Carlos that if I didn't make it home tonight, it wasn't because I didn't love him, or didn't want to watch a documentary on special scientific graphs, or was too obsessed with my job to relax and enjoy a good meal and some television. It was only because I was zapped out of existence by a lunatic Non-John Peters. And that, in fact, I do love Carlos, and I would want nothing more than to watch a documentary on scientific graphs over some homemade linguini, or go out to eat again, or whatever.

But then, as I grabbed my phone, I thought: That's way too long to write for a text. So I just hit John Peters upside the head with it... ~ Joseph Fink

One of the things about leadership is that you've got to show up. And if you want to be president of the United States you've got to make a case to the American people that Barack Obama needs to be dismissed from his position. ~ Tim Pawlenty

I start to think about all the things I haven't said since Bailey died, all the words stowed deep in my heart, in our orange bedroom, all the words in the whole world that aren't said after someone dies because they are too sad, too enraged, too devastated, too guilty, to come out - all of them begin to course inside me like a lunatic river. ~ Jandy Nelson

What's the deal with this Malachai?" Xevikan
"I don't know. I just joined him myself. But he seems level. Decent even." Zavid
"He's with a half-daeve turncoat, a Charonte, and an Aamon, and you don't find that off?" Xevikan
"Wait until you meet his Arel girlfriend, lunatic mother, and the two human homicidal maniac he calls family. Buddy, everything about the Malachai ain't right." Zavid ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The rise to power of a right-wing lunatic in a free election in Germany. ~ Bernie Sanders

You sweet ... beautiful ... lunatic, he heard himself mutter. ~ Lisa Kleypas

A lunatic is just a minority of one. ~ George Orwell

Sad as it is, we cannot conceal the fact that in spite of our companionship with flowers we have not risen very far above the brute. Scratch the sheepskin and the wolf within us will soon show his teeth. It has been said that a man at ten is an animal, at twenty a lunatic, at thirty a failure, at forty a fraud, and at fifty a criminal. Perhaps he becomes a criminal because he has never ceased to be an animal. Nothing is real to us but hunger, nothing sacred except our own desires. Shrine after shrine has crumbled before our eyes; but one altar if forever preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,-ourselves. Our god is great, and money is his Prophet! We devastate nature in order to make sacrifice to him. We boast that we have conquered Matter and forget that it is Matter that has enslaved us. What atrocities do we not perpetrate in the name of culture and refinement! ~ Kakuzo Okakura

From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity. ~ Dean Koontz

A demon hunter," Jace clarified. "I kill demons. It's not that complicated, really."

Simon looked at Clary again. "For real?" His eyes were narrowed, as if he half-expected her to tell him that none of it was true and Jace was actually a dangerous escaped lunatic she'd decided to befriend on humanitarian grounds. ~ Cassandra Clare

If I followed my better instincts right now, I would put this typewriter in the Volvo and drive to the home of the nearest politician
any politician
and hurl the goddamn machine through his front window ... flush the bugger out with an act of lunatic violence then soak him down with mace and run him naked down Main Street in Aspen with a bell around his neck and black lumps all over his body from the jolts of a high powered "Ball Buster" cattle prod. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Each generation ... rescues a new area from what its predecessors arrogantly and snobbishly dismissed as 'the lunatic fringe. ~ Christopher Hill

There are some situations from which one can only escape by acting like a devil or a lunatic. ~ George Orwell

Awesome. I was a jealous lunatic...and I wasn't alone. Touchdown! ~ Robin Mellom

If you hear voices, you're a lunatic. If you write down what they say, you're an author. ~ Dani Harper

It may come as an extraordinary shock to you but you're the only woman who has ever succeeded in getting under my skin. It could be because you're a raving lunatic. ~ Margaret Way

You realize, half-bloods are impossible. A human body shouldn't be able to contain an elemental demon. It's physically and mentally impossible. Something about how you and your demon are tied together goes beyond scientific explanation. You shouldn't exist. It's a wonder you're not a jabbering lunatic. ~ Pippa DaCosta

Doubtless the lunatic asylums of the world are filled with unfortunate women who have failed to see my charms. ~ Cassandra Clare

Today I found yet more evidence that I'm a lunatic. The proof came in a package in the mail. The sender? Myself. The evidence? Tampered with. ~ Jarod Kintz

Later the island was turned into a leper colony, a lunatic asylum, and a naval base. The government had only recently turned the island back into a prison. ~ Nelson Mandela

The materialist is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts. ~ G.K. Chesterton

In all of the possible scenarios Kian had envisioned, encountering a lunatic had not been one of them. It just showed him that he could never be completely prepared. ~ D.A. Rhine

I'm constantly listening to music and thinking about it and compiling my own cassettes and CDs in obsessively specific order. I have quite lunatic agendas for what I want to achieve. They won't make sense to anyone other than me, but it is what I've spent most of my life doing. ~ Michel Faber

The terms "idiot" and "lunatic" were acceptable diagnostic terms in England up until 1959. "Imbecile" and "feeble-minded person" were, likewise, listed as official categories in the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. England has always lagged a bit behind in discarding outdated terms for the disadvantaged. When I was there in 1980, it was still possible to shop for used clothing at the local Spastic Shop. That is, compared to the United States, where it takes, oh, about twenty-five minutes for a diagnostic euphemism to become a conversational faux pas. ~ Mary Roach

Alden seems like a very nice boy. The kind of boy I'd like to see you hanging out with." I almost laughed out loud. If she only knew! A reincarnated, soul-sharing lunatic. Ghost Boy---every mother's dream. ~ Mary Lindsey

I always think I could play a fantastic psychopath. I'd like to play a psycho. With a heart, you know. A caring lunatic. ~ Nick Frost

If we were to judge nature by its common sense or likelihood, we wouldn't believe the world existed. In nature, improbabilities are the one stock in trade. The whole creation is one lunatic fringe ... No claims of any and all revelations could be so far-fetched as a single giraffe. ~ Annie Dillard

Syn tightened his seat belt as God drove like a damn lunatic through the city. He was now on the interstate doing over a hundred miles an hour.

"If the person's already dead, what's the damn rush, Cash?" Day grumbled, obviously not liking God's driving either.

God ignored his passengers and swerved over four lanes, cutting off an eighteen-wheeler and just missing the barrier as he took the exit ramp at seventy.

"Got a real heavy foot there, don't you Lieutenant?" Syn gritted through clenched teeth.

God let out a grunt as sharp green eyes caught Syn's reflection in the rearview mirror.

Please just watch the fucking road. ~ A.E. Via

A children's writer should, ideally, be a dedicated semi-lunatic, a kind of poet with a marvelous idea, who, preferably, when not committing the marvellous idea to paper, does something else of a quite different kind, so as to acquire new and rich experience. ~ Joan Aiken

"There was no public to humiliate him here. They already knew he was a lunatic. They expected it. He could burst into howls of insanity, and they would only smile those gentle smiles at him and wrestle him into the chains." ~ Laura Kinsale

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention. ~ Gregory Maguire

To the landscape architect a rock garden ... appears ... the work of a lunatic. ~ Louise Wilder

If she says goodbye perhaps adieu. Adieu - like those old time songs she sang. Always adieu (and all songs say it). If she too says it, or weeps, I'll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She's mad but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me. ~ Jean Rhys

It was soon evident in my lodgings that I had become a dangerous lunatic, and there would be nothing left to destroy if strong measures were not taken. So I was turned out of the house, but it was only into the garden, where I was allowed to build a small darkroom of oilcloth. ~ Henry Peach Robinson

I won't do anything Sara; this is not me trying to get into your pants, or to rekindle what we had. This is just me concerned over a friend I know for a long time and don't want to lose to a crazed lunatic. ~ Nicole Kiefer

I'm a lunatic wandering around for scraps. ~ Daniel Handler

He wants to be perceived as a hero to people who have been bullied and not as a deranged lunatic who committed mass murder without rational explanation . . . ~ Mark M. Bello

How it irks me to have to take her hand, allow her to pull my dress over my head, undo my corsets and strip them off my, and have her see my blue veined swollen flesh and the hairy triangle that still proclaims with lunatic insistence a non-existent womanhood. ~ Margaret Laurence

The Devil is a spiritual lunatic, but, like many lunatics, he is extremely plausible and cunning. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

You can't jump in the box, you lunatic.
"I'm so playing with the box."
[ ... ]
"Kids never want the toy, only the box ~ H.M. Ward

Washington is the only lunatic asylum in the world run by its own inmates. ~ W. Lee O'Daniel

I'm adding 'canine' to my searches," I said. "And 'instinct.'" "Whatever. I'm adding 'lunatic. ~ Kathy Reichs

I'm a Christian-libertarian-environmentalist-capitalist-lunatic. It's a humorous way for me to describe that I'm not stereotypical. ~ Joel Salatin

Jesus Christ was either a liar, a lunatic, or He was who He said He was ~ C.S. Lewis

There was the cell where Fr. Eulalio, a thriving lunatic of eighty-six who was castigating himself for unchristian pride at having all the vowels in his name, and greatly revered for his continuous weeping, went blind in an ecstasy of such howling proportions that his canonization was assured. ~ William Gaddis

Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic," Richard told me. "And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious. ~ John Irving

Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic ... The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being. ~ Geneen Roth

Emotions are the lowest form of consciousness. Emotional actions are the most contracted, narrowing, dangerous form of behavior.

The romantic poetry and fiction of the last 200 years has quite blinded us to the fact that emotions are an active and harmful form of stupor.

Any peasant can tell you that. Beware of emotions. Any child can tell you that. Watch out for the emotional person. He is a lurching lunatic.

Emotions are caused by biochemical secretions in the body to serve during the state of acute emergency. An emotional person is a blind, crazed maniac. Emotions are addictive and narcotic and stupefacient.

Do not trust anyone who comes on emotional.

What are the emotions? In a book entitled Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality, written when I was a psychologist, I presented classifications of emotions and detailed descriptions of their moderate and extreme manifestations. Emotions are all based on fear. [...]

The emotional person cannot think; he cannot perform any effective game action (except in acts of physical aggression and strength). The emotional person is turned off sensually. His body is a churning robot. [...]

The only state in which we can learn, harmonize, grow, merge, join, understand is the absence of emotion. This is called bliss or ecstasy, attained through centering the emotions. [...]

Conscious love is not an emotion; it is serene merging with yourself, with other ~ Timothy Leary

I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain. ~ John Gimlette

The man was a lunatic who somehow could tap into sanity when he looked her in the eye. What did that man make her? A human straightjacket? ~ Mary Connealy

Our family was on the lunatic fringe. My mother was always completely irrepressible. My father made crowd noises into a microphone. ~ Annie Dillard

If I want to read S.J. Perelman's Chicken Inspector No. 23 for the third time instead of some anguished, politically correct saga of a girl growing up in a trailer park in Kingman, Arizona, with an alcoholic mother who makes her straighten her naturally curly hair and won't let her date a Navajo boy or pursue her goal of becoming (naturally) a writer, I will. And I will laugh like a lunatic while doing it. ~ Mel White

As we watched the Neo-Nazis march through Charlottesville chanting 'The
Jews will not replace us' on their way to defend a statue of a man that fought a
war to keep slavery, we are confronted by the lunatic contradictions of white-
supremacist identity. While claiming to be supreme, these people clearly do not
believe what they are selling, for if Aryans are inherently superior there would
be no need at all to worry about Jews or niggers 'replacing' them. Surely an
innate Aryan supremacy should make them by definition irreplaceable? This
constant articulation of supremacy and victimhood has long been a cornerstone
of white-supremacist discourse. ~ Akala

A man is called a good fellow for doing things which, if done by a woman, would land her in a lunatic asylum. ~ H.L. Mencken

Depending on the contemporary mood, Orwell oscillates from Saint George to George the Seer to George the Sage. What other thinker has been both so fervidly claimed and derided by both the left and right? Who else except Kafka do we credit with having seen the sinister future? When the NSA spying scandal broke in June, Amazon sales of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four vaulted more than 6000 percent. The connection of Big Brother with the NSA might have been hysterical and spurious, but it was also testament to our sentimental, kneejerk affection for Orwell, to the fact that he remains the default scribe whenever our paranoia is fondled by the ominous machinations of realpolitik. The utter clarity and goodness of his intellect seem something of a miracle when one considers how many of his fellow writers botched the most pressing moral and political tests of their time. He could smell bullshit and blood a continent away: When a passel of leftist intellectuals was hailing the Soviet Union as humankind's only hope, Orwell was persistent in pointing out that Stalin was a monocratic lunatic. ~ William Giraldi

You call my candidate a horse thief, and I call yours a lunatic, and we both of us know it's just till election day. It's an American custom, like eating corn on the cob. And, afterwards, we settle down quite peaceably and agree we've got a pretty good country - until next election. ~ Stephen Vincent Benet

After three hours, I come back to the waiting room. It is a cosmetic surgery office, so a little like a hotel lobby, underheated and expensively decorated, with candy in little dishes, emerald-green plush chairs, and upscale fashion magazines artfully displayed against the wall.
A young woman comes in, frantic to get a pimple "zapped" before she sees her family over the holidays. An older woman comes in with her daughter for a follow-up visit to a face-lift. She is wearing a scarf and dark glasses. The nurse examines her bruises right out in the waiting room.
And you are in the operating room having your body and your gender legally altered. I feel like laughing, but I know it makes me sound like a lunatic. ~ Joan Nestle

They began to invent humourless, glum jokes of their own and disastrous rumours about the destruction awaiting them at Bologna.
Yossarian sidled up drunkenly to Colonel Korn at the officers' club one night to kid with him about the new Lepage gun that the Germans had moved in.
'What Lepage gun?' Colonle Korn inquired with curiousity.
'The new three-hundred-and-forty-four-millimeter Lepage glue gun,' Yossarian answered. 'It glues a whole formation of planes together in mid-air.'
Colonel Korn jerked his elbow free from Yossarian's clutching fingers in startled affront. 'Let go of me, you idiot!' he cried out furiously, glaring with vindictive approval as Nately leaped upon Yossarian's back and pulled him away.
'Who is that lunatic anyway?'
Colonel Cathcart chortled merrily. 'That's the man you made me give a medal to after Ferrara. You had me promote him to captain, too, remember? It serves you right.'
Nately was lighter than Yossarian and had great difficulty maneuvering Yossarian's luching bulk across the room to an unoccupied table. 'Are you crazy?' Nately kept hissing with trepidation. 'That was Colonel Korn. Are you crazy?'
Yossarian wanted another drink and promised to leave quietly if Nately bought him one. Then he made Nately bring him two more. When Nately finally coaxed him to the door, Captain Black came stomping in from outside, banging his sloshing shoes down hard on the wood floor and spilling water from his eaves like a hig ~ Joseph Heller