Addiction quotes
635 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside addiction — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"[Addiction's] not about placating the bad dog - it's about feeding the good dog. You still have to feed the bad dog, but only enough so that the ASPCA doesn't bring you up on charges."
"Suckers think that you cure greed with money, addiction with substances, expert problems with experts, banking with bankers, economics with economists, and debt crises with debt spending"
"And before my Soul took me to task I was hard of hearing; I heard only tumult and uproar. But now I am all ears listening to the silence and its choirs singing the hymns of time, intoning the praises of the firmament, revealing the secrets of the invisible."
"The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house."
"If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house."
"Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen."
"People should watch out for three things: avoid a major addiction, don't get so deeply into debt that it controls your life, and don't start a family before you're ready to settle down."
"The book can produce an addiction as fierce as heroin or nicotine, forcing us to spend much of our lives, like junkies, in book shops and libraries, those literary counterparts to the opium den."
"Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it."
"I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence."
"The addiction isn't your problem - it is what you use to cope with your problem."
"We cannot, in a moment, get rid of habits of a lifetime."
"When I have a creative insight, there is a high. I think back in the day, I made music as much as I did because it made me feel so good. I think you could argue that there is a creative addiction - but, you know, the healthy kind."
"I'm a former bulimic myself and it's a horrible, horrible addiction."
"When we scratch the wound and give into our addictions we do not allow the wound to heal."
"Addiction is craving fulfillment from something that cannot provide fulfillment. In this sense it is not different than the basic mechanism of ignorance that keeps everyone in bondage. With substance addiction the mind/body sets up a vicious cycle that perpetuates the dependence."
"Every worthy act is difficult. Ascent is always difficult. Descent is easy and often slippery."
"It is not I who become addicted, it is my body."
"Environment is of supreme importance. It is greater than will power."
"I started producing work with an ecstatic addiction."
