Properly Paranoid/Quotes
Done the things I've done, there's no such thing as paranoia.
—Eliot, Leverage
Every time I think I'm paranoid enough, my enemies find a new way to show me different.
—Crimson, City of Heroes
It's one thing to believe that everyone is out to get you. Quite another when it's actually true.
A paranoiac, my friend... is a person who has gone crazy in the most intelligent, well-informed way, the world being what it is.
—Kurt Vonnegut, Look At The Birdie
A paranoiac is a guy who knows a little of what's going on.
Paranoid is what they call people who imagine threats against their life. I have threats against my life.
—Garak, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "For the Cause"
Odo: Aren't you being a little paranoid?
Weyoun: Of course I'm paranoid! Everyone is trying to kill me!—Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Treachery, Faith, and the Great River"
It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you.
—Martin Willett
Just because you're paranoid, don't mean they're not after you
No matter how paranoid you are, you're not paranoid enough.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
—Agent Mulder, The X-Files, episode 2x23 "Soft Light" (aired March 31, 1995)
Marco: I live in a paranoid world. But just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I don't have enemies. I have real enemies. Enemies that would freeze your blood if you only knew.
—Animorphs, "The Predator"
Remember: A Paranoid is simply someone in possession of all the facts.
—Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan
79. Fear everything, it's safer.
Some people think this is paranoia, but it isn't. Paranoids only think everyone is out to get them. Wizards know it.
Paranoia: You only have to be right once for it to be worthwhile.
—Anonymous
How can I be paranoid...when the paranoid mother-fuckers who are making me paranoid are really out there?
They are used to ease irrational fears (which is silly; in Alpha Complex there are no irrational fears.)
I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
—GURPS Illuminati, Written on the cover in dark grey text on black background.
"A suspicious mind is a healthy mind."
—Dark Heresy, inscription within the Bastion Serpentis - base of the Tyrantine Cabal
But something about the whole situation still struck me as fundamentally wrong, and if I've learned one thing in my century or more of attempting to evade all the trouble the galaxy keeps throwing at me, it's to trust that nagging sense of paranoia.
Paranoia is just reality on a finer scale.
—Philo Gant, Strange Days
You know what, Grady? Some people think I'm overly prepared, paranoid, maybe even a little bit crazy... but they never met any pre-Cambrian lifeforms, did they?
"Why?" Gareth bleated. "What's wrong? For three days you've been running away from your own shadows...
"That's right," John agreed, and there was a dangerous edge to his quiet voice. "You ever think what might happen to you if your own shadow caught you? Now ride - and ride silent."—Dragon's Bane
Phoebe: I don't know what you're up to but whatever it is, it is not gonna work.
Cole: Don't you think you're being a little paranoid?
Phoebe: With my demon ex-husband from hell? No, Cole, I don't.
Everyone's always told me that I'm paranoid and need to calm down, but guess what? I'm alive, and everyone who told me that is dead! I have the US military spray-painting my name on the walls, setting laser trip mines, and firing a fucking missile launcher at me, and people have the gall to call me paranoid!
—Gordon Freeman, Freeman's Mind
Paranoid? Probably. But just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face.
—Harry Dresden, Storm Front
Even paranoids have enemies.
—Joseph Berke, psychotherapist
Isn't that the nice part of going mad? You realize you weren't paranoid after all.
—Helen Narbon, Narbonic
Well, I guess it's true; it's not paranoia when someone's really after you.
—Terry Stricter, Bowfinger
You know, the lesson here might be that fear and paranoia is a bad thing, except that's what saved us.
—Ron Stoppable, Kim Possible
I always think everything could be a trap...which is why I'm still alive.
—Prince Humperdinck, The Princess Bride
Even a paranoid can have enemies.
—rumored to have been said by Golda Meir to Henry Kissinger during the 1973 Sinai talks, after he accused her of being paranoid for refusing to grant the Palestinians additional concessions
Michael: Even paranoids have enemies.
Sam: Yeah, you're living proof of that. (Mike stares at him) "Well, you know, a little."—"Wanted Man", Burn Notice
Only a nasty, twisted mind like mine would think that he had been a German agent in Crete, became known to the Allies as a fifth columnist, lost his usefulness to the Germans and was shipped back to Navarone by fast motor-launch under cover of night.
—Dusty Miller, The Guns of Navarone
I have shown that, unless one has an overblown and (as with Greek columns), a very unrealistic representation of some tail risks, one cannot survive – all it takes is a single event for the irreversible exit from among us. Is selective paranoia “irrational” if those individuals and populations who don’t have it end up dying or extinct, respectively?
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, How to be Rational about Rationality
Paranoia makes such a great hobby -- at the very least, one is never bored.—Ancient net.wisdom
I'm not paranoid, I've just got enhanced consciousness.
"This is the Nineties, Bubba, and there is no such thing as Paranoia. It's all true."
When everyone really is out to get you, being paranoid is just good thinking.
Paranoia is reality seen at a finer scale.—from Strange Days
Paranoia is a very comforting state of mind. If you think they're out to get you, it means you think you matter.
Y'know, everyone's always told me that I'm paranoid and I need to calm down, but guess what? I'm alive, and everyone whose said that is dead!