Alice > Alice's Quotes

“Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it. ”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“Rules? PISS ON YOUR FUCKING RULES!”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“High high in the hills , high in a pine tree bed.
She's tracing the wind with that old hand, counting the clouds with that old chant,
Three geese in a flock
one flew east
one flew west
one flew over the cuckoo's nest”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“This world . . . belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf is the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it?”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wonder if I can ever act any other way again. But I remembered one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“But the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“What the Chronics are - or most of us - are machines with flaws inside that can't be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot. ”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“To Vik Lovell who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs ...”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“More was revealed in a human face than a human being can bear face to face.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“The world news might not be therapeutic.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“I had to keep on acting deaf if i wanted to hear at all.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“Take what you can use and let the rest go by.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by guys that got off the train. The houses looked so much alike that, time and time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses and different families. Nobody ever noticed.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“And then some guy wandering as lost as you would all of a sudden be right before your eyes, his face bigger and clearer than you ever saw a man’s face before in your life. Your eyes were working so hard to see in that fog that when something did come in sight every detail was ten times as clear as usual, so clear both of you had to look away. When a man showed up you didn’t want to look at his face and he didn’t want to look at yours, because it’s painful to see somebody so clear that it’s like looking inside him, but then neither did you want to look away and lose him completely. You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“It wasn't the practices, I don't think, it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me--and the great voice of millions chanting, 'Shame. Shame. Shame.' It's society's way of dealing with someone different.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“The flock gets sight of a spot of blood on some chicken and they all go to peckin' at it, see, till they rip the chicken to shreds, blood and bones and feathers. But usually a couple of the flock gets spotted in the fracas, then it's their turn. And a few more gets spots and gets pecked to death, and more and more. Oh, a peckin' party can wipe out the whole flock in a matter of a few hours, buddy, I seen it. A mighty awesome sight. The only way to prevent it—with chickens—is to clip blinders on them. So's they can't see.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984