madness

1. The quality or condition of being insane. See synonyms at insanity.
2. Great folly: It was sheer madness to attempt the drive during a blizzard.
3. Fury; rage.
4. Enthusiasm; excitement.

noun

1. Serious mental illness or disorder impairing a person's capacity to function normally and safely: brainsickness, craziness, dementia, derangement, disturbance, insaneness, insanity, lunacy, mental illness, psychopathy, unbalance. Psychiatry mania. Psychology aberration, alienation. See sane/insane.
2. Foolish behavior: absurdity, folly, foolery, foolishness, idiocy, imbecility, insanity, lunacy, nonsense, preposterousness, senselessness, silliness, tomfoolery, zaniness. Informal craziness. See ability/inability.

Definition: folly
Antonyms: common sense, good sense

n

Definition: insanity
Antonyms: sanity

Quotes:

"The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation." - R. D. Laing

"Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death." - R. D. Laing

"The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason." - Hermann Broch

"O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper. I would not be mad." - William Shakespeare

"I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them." - Ezra Pound

"What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?" - George Orwell

See more famous quotes about Madness