One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest Quotes

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.

But I remember 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

What’s the first image that comes to mind when you think of a mental hospital? Jack Nicholson in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,’ right? We need to change that perception, and places like this one are doing that.

I had those kind of parents where I watched all of these very sophisticated movies: ‘Five Easy Pieces’, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’

They can’t tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed.

I bought the book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I paid to have it made into a play and I played in it for six months. I came back and I tried to make it into a movie, without success.

If you say you’ve had a nervous breakdown or things aren’t right mentally, people run away from you. They think you’re from ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest,’ you know.

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.

But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.

You can’t really be strong until you see a funny side to things.

He knows that there’s no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who’s trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you’re not bothered.

What makes people so impatient is what I can’t figure; all the guy had to do was wait.

This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

In terms of popular cinema, ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ is as near perfection as I can think of.

You’re making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You’re not crazy the way they think. Yes…I see.

But he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.

I aspire to be Jack Nicholson. I love his every single mannerism. I used to try and be him in virtually everything I did, I don’t know why. I watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest when I was about 13, and I dressed like him. I tried to do his accent. I did everything like him. I think it kind of stuck with me.