Karen Horney Quotes

Neurosis is an inner cleavage-the state of being at war with oneself.

My soul is dark with stormy riot: directly traced over to diet.

I am interested in madness. I believe it is the biggest thing in the human race, and the most constant. How do you take away from a man his madness without also taking away his identity? Are we sure it is desirable for a man's spirit not to be at war with itself, or that it is better to be serene and ready to go to dinner than to be excited and unwilling to stop for a cup of coffee, even?

Let me say to begin with: It is not neurotic to have conflict ... Conflicts within ourselves are an integral part of human life.

The voices in my head, which I used to think were just passing through, seem to have taken up residence.

A neurotic can neither enjoy his illusions nor give them up.

My demons and I are not compatible. We never have been and never will be.

There's always going to be a war going on inside of me. That's just, I think, my make-up.

In Paris on a chilling evening late in October of 1985 I first became fully aware that the struggle with the disorder in my mind - a struggle which had engaged me for several months - might have a fatal outcome.

You cannot escape what you have to deal with inside yourself. It will never bring good things. It will only bring madness.

We are not at war (except with our own demons).

Look at it this way: There are many here among us for whom the life force is best represented by the livid twitching of one tortured nerve, or even a full-scale anxiety attack. I do not subscribe to this point of view 100 percent, but I understand it, have lived it. Thus the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation.

I think I am mad sometimes.

It's a most distressing affliction to have a sentimental heart and a skeptical mind.

We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.

While I was girl of the year and superstar and all that crap, everything I did was really...motivated by psychological disturbance.

something is always falling apart in me.

i'm going mad, i told myself. let me not be mad.

People see me on TV and I'm this calm, level headed guy. Honestly, that's the furthest thing from who I am. For a long time I struggled with anger and stress. It was killing me, figuratively and literally.

There came a time in every prolonged effort when he had a moment of near panic, or 'terror in a lonely place', the original semantic content of the word. The lonely place was his own mind.

I may have looked happy but inside I was hopelessly depressed.

People who are extremely inside their head, like he was, are caught in a neurosis that goes round and round. Then something will hook them and take them to their end and they can't control it.

I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong.

I've had my share of dark days of the soul. I try not to focus on it too much so it doesn't get to me.