Wonko The Sane Quotes

Your wife," said Arthur, looking around, "mentioned some toothpicks." He said it with a hunted look, as if he was worried that she might suddenly leap out from behind a door and mention them again.

Wonko the Sane laughed. It was a light easy laugh, and sounded like one he had used a lot before and was happy with.

"Ah yes," he said, "that's to do with the day I finally realized that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better."

This was the point at which Arthur began to feel a little nervous again.

"Here," said Wonko the Sane, "we are outside the Asylum." He pointed again at the rough brickwork, the pointing, and the gutters. "Go through that door" - he pointed at the first door through which they had originally entered - "and you go into the Asylum. I've tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there's very little one can do. I never go in there myself. If I ever am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and I shy away."

"That one?" said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.

"Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do."

The sign read:

"Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Ins ~ Douglas Adams

It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane. ~ Douglas Adams

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican. ~ Dan Quayle

Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men. ~ Jose Marti

It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. ~ G.K. Chesterton

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to 'demand' its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant. ~ Hannah Arendt

Vic didn't have a car and probably spent a hundred and sixty hours a week at home. The house smelled of piss-soaked diapers and engine parts, and the sink was always full.
In retrospect Vic was only surprised she didn't go crazy sooner. She was surprised that more young mothers didn't lose it. When your tits had become canteens and the soundtrack to your life was hysterical tears and mad laughter, how could anyone expect you to remain sane? ~ Joe Hill

In the main, and from the beginning of time, mysticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was logic. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Let me get this straight. A mentally ill madman goes on a shooting spree to assassinate a United States Congressperson ... and the lesson learned by liberals is that guns must be taken away from law-abiding citizens? Really? What's the connection between a mentally ill nutcase and perfectly sane, responsible people? There is none. ~ Wayne Allyn Root

People tell me that I am well-grounded. I am sane in the New England sense of the word. ~ Ali MacGraw

Of all the things a man may do, sleep probably contributes most to keeping him sane. It puts brackets about each day. If you do something foolish or painful today, you get irritated if somebody mentions it, today. If it happened yesterday, though, you can nod or chuckle, as the case may be. You've crossed through nothingness or dream to another island in Time. ~ Roger Zelazny

I began to get a feeling ( ... ) of being the only sane man in a nut house. It doesn't make you feel superior but depressed and scared, because there is nobody you can contact. ~ William S. Burroughs

According to our social science, we can be or become wise in all matters of secondary importance, but we have to be resigned to utter ignorance in the most important respect: we cannot have any knowledge regarding the ultimate principles of our choices, i.e. regarding their soundness or unsoundness ... We are then in the position of beings who are sane and sober when engaged in trivial business and who gamble like madmen when confronted with serious issues. ~ Leo Strauss

It had helped to keep her sane, that writing. Then, when time had begun again and real people had entered it, she'd abandoned it here. Now it's a whisper from the past.
Is that what writing amounts to? The voice your ghost would have, if it had a voice? ~ Margaret Atwood

Indeed if one had just seen him at the end of the evening with the dusk and the mist of the fenlands close behind him he might have believed that in the dusk and the mist was an army that followed this gay worn confident man.
Had the army been there Niv was sane.
Had the world accepted that an army was there, still he was sane.
But the lonely fancy that had not fact to feed on, nor the fancy of any other for fellowship, was for its loneliness mad. ~ Lord Dunsany

Tell me that you're happy with your life that you don't crave my touch, my kisses, the way I used to whisper in your ear. Tell me that when you see me, your heart doesn't race, that butterflies don't flutter in your stomach, that the moment you see me, your world isn't right. Because every time I see you, everything is right in my world. I crave you, I need you, and I'll die proving to you that I'm a man that deserves you. When things went to hell for me, you were the only thing that kept me alive. Your memory kept me sane and has driven me to become a man. This time, Julia, I'm not letting you walk away and I'll fight for us. Even if I have to fight for the both of us, I'll fight till my dying breath to show you I deserve you. ~ M.L. Rodriguez

We need to think long and hard about sanity, a word most of us cling to with a steel grip. Does fear of being regarded by others as insane confine me in a cage of "responsible" behavior that limits my freedom and cripples my ability to love? And is it in fact such a wonderful thing to be regarded as sane? After all, the chief administrator of the Holocaust, Adolph Eichmann, was declared "quite sane" by the psychiatrists who examined him before his trial in Jerusalem. Surely the same psychiatrists would have found Saint Basil, Saint Theodore and Saint Xenia all insane - and Saint Francis, and that most revered of all mad men, the Son of Man, the Savior, Jesus of Nazareth. ~ Jim Forest

I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people. ~ Daniel Dennett

She was the only thing that kept him sane. ~ Dianne Duvall

Socialism's failure in the former Soviet Union and in the other socialist countries stands as a clean and unquestionable warning as to which path any rational and sane people should never follow again. Government planning brought poverty and ruin ... Unfortunately, America is not absorbing the lessons that should be learned from the socialist experience and, instead, is following the same path of destruction. ~ Richard Ebeling

But maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart. ~ Haruki Murakami

There is no god." I've said that sentence on Glenn Beck's TV show in front of his live audience at his studio in the Texas Bible Belt. I've told Republicans that I like immigrants. I've told Democrats that I dig rich people. I've told sane people that I like lawyers. But ~ Penn Jillette

Organized religion is sane and not silly when read as myth and poetry rather than science and law. Religion speaks nonsense when taken literally, but reveals some of the deepest truths of humankind when understood mythically, poetically, and even allegorically-that is when it is read with an active and creative imagination. ~ Rami M. Shapiro

Many things have been written, including by me, linking humor and pain. Mostly, in my case, the humor part keeps me sane. If I spent all my hours writing things like "Fatal Distraction," I'd become a brooding, erratic melancholic. I'd be Raskolnikov. ~ Dave Barry

The sane world is horrible. The Pillar was right. Living among the sane is insane. ~ Cameron Jace

I've been saved again and again by angels all around me. Not just from the insane stupidity of banging blow, but from becoming an aimless flounderer. A person who maybe talked a good line about doing shit but never ever put in the word to see things through. I could've easily dug myself into a hole, become someone who never got a clear picture off cause and effect, holistic health, or emotional well-being. I bow before the guardian angels that always showed me a light and a way up. My sanctuaries of friendship, books, basketball, music, and nature kept me sane. ~ Flea

I think not focusing on money makes you sane because in the long run it can probably drive you crazy. ~ Kevin Systrom

Whatever the reason for wanting to escape, sane or insane, zoo detractors should realize that animals don't escape to somewhere but from something. ~ Yann Martel

The logic of a madman is a sane man's confusion. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

No sane paleontologist would ever claim that he or she had discovered "The Ancestor." Think about it this way: What is the chance that while walking through any random cemetery on our planet I would discover an actual ancestor of mine? Diminishingly small. What I would discover is that all people buried in these cemeteries
no mater whether that cemetery is in China, Botswana, or Italy
are related to me to different degrees. I can find this out by looking at their DNA with many of the forensic techniques in use in crime labs today. I'd see that some of the denizens of the cemeteries are distantly related to me, others are related more closely. This tree would be a very powerful window into my past and my family history. It would also have a practical application because I could use this tree to understand my predilection to get certain diseases and other facts of my biology. The same is true when we infer relationship among species. ~ Neil Shubin

I think it's only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see why a sane person would want to go there. ~ Bill Bryson

It's common knowledge that in the entertainment industry there's a lot of craziness that goes down, and it's really hard for anyone to stay sane. It's not a very natural environment to be in for too long. It's not very healthy. ~ Natasha Bedingfield

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

Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus, he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus, he believes that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Obama ran as sane and decent, as though we were electing a mood, and not necessarily a set of policies. Unfortunately, Obama has governed the same way - and misread the mood, which is all there is, really, because being crazy and stupid is all we're really good at politically any more. ~ Charlie Pierce

E-Liz-A-Beth, you'll take me to Noctem Falls won't you?" Meryn begged giving her puppy dog eyes.

"Of course I will. We can go there after DragonCon next year," she promised.

"Oh no. She talked you into that convention thing." Aiden glared at his mate.

"It's perfectly safe. Think of it this way. It's an event where thousands of people just like Meryn get together for a couple days and live it up," Elizabeth explained. All five men paled.

"Thousands of people," Colton whispered.

"Just like Meryn?" Keelan asked.

Elizabeth looked around. The men had that deer in the headlights looks. "Maybe not just like her."

"Thank goodness. One Meryn in the world is enough," Colton teased, looking relieved.

"It's because I'm a 'Limited Edition'. Y'all should be grateful for even knowing me," Meryn huffed.

"We are, my love. We are." Aiden scowled at his men over Meryn's head.

"We wouldn't trade you for a sane version any day," Colton reassured her.

Meryn smiled then frowned. "What do you mean 'sane version'? ~ Alanea Alder

[On art:] I believe that it not only enriches the spiritual life, but that it makes one more sane and sympathetic, more observant and understanding, regardless of whatever age it springs from, whatever subjects it represents. ~ Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

Love is the only thing that keeps me sane ... ~ Sue Townsend

Lucius paused, turning on his heel to face me. "I grow weary of your ignorance." He moved closer to me, leaning down and peering into my eyes. "Because your parents refuse to inform you, I will deliver the news myself,and I shall make this simple for you." He pointed to his chest and announced, as though talking to a child, "I am a vampire." He pointed to my chest. "You are a vampire. And we are to be married, the moment you come of age. This has been decreed since our births."
I couldn't even process the "getting married" part, or the thing about "decreed." He'd lost me at "vampire."
Nuts. Lucius Vladescu is completely nuts. And I'm alone with him, in an empty barn.
So I did what any sane person would do. I jammed the pitchfork in the general direction of his foot and ran like hell for the house, ignoring his yowl of pain. ~ Beth Fantaskey

One feels guilty on behalf of Western civilisation. What damage are we doing, blindly and swiftly, to those races who are being taught that because we are materially richer we must be emulated without question? What compels us to infect everyone else with our own sick urgency to change, soften and standardise? How can we have the effrontery to lord it over peoples who retain what we have lost - a sane awareness that what matters most is immeasurable? ~ Dervla Murphy

To say a man does mad things because he is mad is merely unintelligent and stupid. A madman is as logical and reasoned in his action as a sane man--given his peculiar biased point of view. For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loin cloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme. But once you know that the man himself is firmly convinced that he is Mahatma Gandhi, then his conduct becomes perfectly reasonable and logical. ~ Agatha Christie

Insanity," said Hatta, still mesmerized by his royal purple hair. "That always seemed the strangest word because it actually means out of sanity. Shouldn't someone who's in sanity be very sane? In means out. Curious."
"And they think we're the mad ones," laughed the smiling Cheshire Cat. ~ Daniel Coleman

So we gave the afternoon some sanity after all and I wonder, Uncle Andrew, is life sane, as we tried to make it? Or is it insanity, as it was yesterday on the Gerard plantation? And why don't more people try to make it sane?
Or if it is full of sanity for them, why do they try to rip that sanity to pieces and impose their form of insanity? Can you help me understand? ~ Ann Rinaldi

In a sane world, love and sex would not divide by gender. We could love like and unlike beings, love them for a variety of reasons. The battered adjectives for homosexuality
queer, lesbian, gay
would disappear and we would only have people making love in different ways, with different body parts. We are too far gone with overpopulation to insist that procreation be an immutable part of desire. Desire needs only itself, not the proof of a baby. We would do well to baby each other instead of making all these unwanted babies that no one has time to nurture or to love.
At this point in my life, I am blessed by my friendships with women. I make no distinction between my gay and straight women friends. I hat the very terms, feeling that any of us could be anything
if we were to unlock the full range of possibilities within. ~ Erica Jong

Persons living in this modern world who do not know the basic facts that determine their very existence, functioning, and surroundings, are living in a dream world. Such persons are, in a very real sense, not sane. ~ Gerald Holton

The playfulness and joy of a dog, its unconditional love and readiness to celebrate life at any moment often contrast sharply with the inner state of the dog's owner - depressed, anxious, burdened by problems, lost in thought, not present in the only place and only time there is: Here and Now. One wonders: living with this person, how does the dog manage to remain so sane, so joyous? ~ Eckhart Tolle

If you come across an insane person who's talking gibberish, you can't make any sense of it at all and that would be one way that enlightenment is different. If you read Dogen, a lot of his stuff is very strange and is coming from a different place than what we're used to, but at the same time, it's not senseless ramblings and that's part of what attracted me to Dogen. I didn't get it, but it was sane. It's not some guy raving about UFO's or Moses living in his bathtub, it's was actually something sane that I just didn't get, if that makes sense? ~ Brad Warner

And in what fairy tale would John ever be any sane person's idea of Prince Charming anyway? He was the opposite of charming. More like Prince Terrifying. ~ Meg Cabot