Sanity

Sanity denotes one's mind being in a healthy condition; not deranged; acting rationally.

Quotes

• Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter to us that humanity highly rewards members of one of the most unusual professions on earth, those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. This is very strange if you stop to think of it: that otherwise sane and responsible citizens should devote their professional energies to causing others to make sharp, explosive barking-like exhalations.
  • Steve Allen, Funny People (1981).

• Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage...
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary.

• Racism is not something that is designated as an illness that can be treated by mental health professionals.
  • Renee Binder, doctor and Chairwoman of the American Psychiatric Association's Council on Psychiatry and Law, as quoted in "They Hate. They Kill. Are They Insane?", Alvin F. Poussaint, The New York Times, (1999).

• The criterion of mental health is not one of individual adjustment to a given social order, but a universal one, valid for all men, of giving a satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.
  • Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955).

• Sanity is madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.
  • George Santayana, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900).

• I must confess that I lost faith in the sanity of the world.
  • H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau.

See also

• Insanity