John Forbes Nash Jr. Quotes

There's a fine line between genius and insanity, as we all know.

Schizoaffective disorder is a big mental mash-up of a disease. It combines just about every disorder, from depression, delusions, and paranoia to mania, schizophrenia and hallucinations. My mother bounced between all of these regularly while raising me alone in our Hollywood home.

A possible link between 'madness' and genius is one of the oldest and most persistent of cultural notions.

Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries.

I've always been interested in obsessive, insane people.

He stares at me, and then leans back in his chair. "He's ill, Jacob." I say nothing. "He's a paragon schnitzophonic." "He's what?!" "Paragon schnitzophonic," repeats Uncle Al. "You mean paranoid schizophrenic?" "Sure. Whatever. But the bottom line is he's mad as a hatter.

Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness.

My experience is that when one is in psychosis, you're on a mission and nothing is going to stop you. At some level your brain is telling you you probably shouldn't be doing this, but you're on a mission.

I only hear my own voice. When you start hearing other voices, then it's time to worry.

Gaiety is a quality of ordinary men. Genius always presupposes some disorder in the machine.

Perhaps he was a bit different from other people, but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?

That Sid Vicious was obviously a schizophrenic, kind of a mean one too.

With mania, is it dangerous to ride that euphoric feeling. You feel very animated and creative; I would fill journals with drawings. It feels good and you want it to last, but it can lead to being delusional. The delusions can be as real as you thinking you can fly.

I must have been heavily schizophrenic all my life. The me who hears what the other me can't play is the dominant one.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.

The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.

You don't watch 'A Beautiful Mind' and say, 'This is how every mathematician is.'

When you are insane, you are busy being insane - all the time.

On A Beautiful Mind, there was a wall of math.

Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad. That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.

In madness, I thought I was the most important person in the world.

I've joked that I would have either become schizophrenic or an actress, but as an actress you can do both.

He was a psychotic. He was a borderline psychotic. He was a terrific, sensational actor, with a magical screen presence, you couldn't keep your eyes off him, but he was paranoid. He was sure everybody was out to get him.

After a year or so I really thought I was Howard Hughes. Here I was at eighteen years old, getting all these checks.