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Resisting madness is the maddest way of being mad.
Norman O. Brown
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Interpretation

What this quote means

To resist the chaos or irrationality of life may itself be a form of madness.

This quote suggests that fighting against the inherent madness of existence can lead to one's own mental turmoil. It implies that acceptance of chaos and irrationality may be a more sane approach than trying to impose order on an unpredictable world, as the struggle itself can exacerbate one's own madness.

Themes

MadnessChaosExistenceAcceptanceIrrationality

In practice

Example use cases

In a philosophy class discussing the nature of reality, one might quote Brown to illustrate the futility of resisting chaos.

More from Norman O. Brown

Mankind today is still making history without having any conscious idea of what it really wants or under what conditions it would stop being unhappy; in fact what it is doing seems to be making itself more unhappy and calling that unhappiness progress.
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I perceive a necessary gap between seeing and being. I would not be able to have said certain things if I had been under the obligation to unify the word and the deed. As it is I can let my words reach out and net impossible things - things that are impossible for me to do. And this is a way to pay the price for saying or seeing things.
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The human body is not a thing or substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new.
Norman O. BrownRead

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