I was disappointed, not because we had lost the war but because our people had allowed it to go on for so many years, instead of heeding the few voices of protest against all that mass insanity and slaughter.

I had grown up in a humanist atmosphere, and war to me was never anything but horror, mutilation and senseless destruction, and I knew that many great and wise people felt the same way about it.

Peace was declared, but not all of us were drunk with joy or stricken blind.

I thought the war would never end. And perhaps it never did, either.

I was disappointed, not because we had lost the war but because our people had allowed it to go on for so many years, instead of heeding the few voices of protest against all that mass insanity and slaughter.

It's an old ploy of the bourgeoisie. They keep a standing 'art' to defend their collapsing culture.

I don't even like to talk about it. I hated being a number and not merely because I was a very small one. I let them bellow at me for just as long as it took me to find enough pluck to bellow back at them.

The cult of individuality and personality, which promotes painters and poets only to promote itself, is really a business. The greater the 'genius' of the personage, the greater the profit.

The bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie have armed themselves against the rising proletariat with, among other things, 'culture.'

I stood up as best I could to their disgusting stupidity and brutality, but I did not, of course, manage to beat them at their own game. It was a fight to the bitter end, one in which I was not defending ideals or beliefs but simply my own self.

In 1916 I was discharged from military service, or rather, given a sort of leave of absence on the understanding that I might be recalled within a few months. And so I was a free man, at least for a while.

In the end, they pardoned me and packed me off to a home for the shell-shocked. Shortly before the end of the war, I was discharged a second time, once again with the observation that I was subject to recall at any time.

The war was a mirror; it reflected man's every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity.

Very little changed fundamentally, except that the proud German soldier had turned into a defeated bundle of misery and the great German army had disintegrated.

What can I say about the First World War, a war in which I served as an infantryman, a war I hated at the start and to which I never warmed as it proceeded?

I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me.

I voluntarily inflicted a certain level of insanity on myself.

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.

In the late '70s I started to search for the perfect sound - whatever that might be, before that I was mainly interested in drugs, insanity and the rock'n'roll lifestyle.

To stand up on a stage alone with an acoustic guitar requires bravery bordering on heroism. Bordering on insanity.

Look, we're all saddled with things that make us better or worse. This world is a crazy place, and I've chosen to make my work about that insanity.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

I was disappointed, not because we had lost the war but because our people had allowed it to go on for so many years, instead of heeding the few voices of protest against all that mass insanity and slaughter.

There's a big difference between sanity and insanity.

I can choose to accelerate my disease to an alcoholic death or incurable insanity, or I can choose to live within my thoroughly human condition.

I want a world without war, a world without insanity. I want to see people do well. I don't even think it's as much as what I want for myself. It's more what I want for the people around me. That's what I want.

Acting is a way of living out one's insanity.

People in the business will stay with you through drugs and alcohol and divorces and insanity and everything else, but you have a failure, pal, and they don't want to know nothing about you!

What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.

Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it.

Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.

Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.

Genius is one of the many forms of insanity.

Everything in Italy that is particularly elegant and grand borders upon insanity and absurdity or at least is reminiscent of childhood.

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

The whole decathlon is ridiculous, but the 1,500 meters is insanity.

Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.

I am told that the clinical definition of insanity is the tenancy to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.

Surrealism had a great effect on me because then I realised that the imagery in my mind wasn't insanity. Surrealism to me is reality.

We're much more controlled now. We were kids back then, we each had our own demons. It was insanity.

Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity.

Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.

It's insanity for a party that believes in freedom to allow some Republicans to seize an agenda that is totally alien to the agenda that was established in the election.

Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.

Control your life through insanity.

Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can't even think straight.

I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.

Religion is induced insanity.

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.