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Madness and creativity are often linked, perhaps more in the minds of
those who would oppose new ideas than in the minds of creative people.
Useful madness is the craziness of being different, of doing things and
thinking up ideas that more traditional folks would abhor.
See also
artists, being different*, chaos, contradiction, deviation*, dreaming,
foolishness*, mind, perception, wisdom
Quotes
‘The creative person is both more primitive and more cultivated, more
destructive, a lot madder and a lot saner, than the average person.’
— Frank Barron
‘All inventors, they say, are a little mad. I reckon that only completely
sane people are willing to admit they are slightly crazy.’
— Trevor Baylis
‘Visionaries and dreamers have always been dusted with a little oddity.’
— Trevor Baylis
‘The notion that inventors are anorak-wearing crackpots with glasses held
together with Sellotape is beguiling but wrong.’
— Trevor Baylis
‘We all know your idea is crazy. The question is whether it is crazy enough.’
— Niels Bohr
‘The extreme limit of wisdom--that
is what the public calls madness.’
— Jean Cocteau
‘There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.’
— Salvador Dali
‘Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane
every night of our lives.’
— William C. Dement
‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and
expecting a new result.’
— Albert Einstein
‘If at first the idea is not totally absurd then there is no hope for it.’
— Albert Einstein
‘The truly creative person is one who can think crazy.’
— Frank Goble
‘Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through.’
— R. D. Laing
‘A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be
free.’
— Nikos Kazantzakis
‘Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it
is the rule.’
— Friedrich Nietzsche
‘What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.’
— Augustus Saint-Gaudens
‘Regarded in isolation, an idea may be quite insignificant, and venturesome
in the extreme, but it may acquire importance from an idea which follows it;
perhaps, in a certain collocation with other ideas, which may seem equally
absurd, it may be capable of furnishing a very serviceable link.’
— Friedrich von Schiller
‘The "silly question" is the first intimation of some totally new
development.’
— Alfred North Whitehead
‘In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many
instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor
is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application
of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.’
— Oscar Wilde
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