Oscar Levant? Zsa Zsa Gabor? John Dryden? Colin Wilson? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: A self-deprecating comedian once delivered an acerbic remark about insanity. Here are two versions:
(1) There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.
(2) There is a fine line between sanity and insanity. I’ve managed to cross that line.
The concert pianist and game show panelist Oscar Levant has received credit for these statements. Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match found by QI appeared in the 1959 book “International Celebrity Register” which contained hundreds of short biographical sketches of popular figures. The profile of Oscar Levant contained the following. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
If he is in rare moments loathsome, it may well be because there is some truth in his own theory: “There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.”
The second version of the quotation appeared in Oscar Levant’s 1965 book “The Memoirs of an Amnesiac” as detailed further below. Hence, there is evidence that he used both versions of the quip.
Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Commentators have written about the thin line between intelligence and madness for centuries. In 1681 the famous English literary figure John Dryden published an edition of the poem “Absalom and Achitophel” which contained the following two lines:2
Great Wits are sure to Madness neer ally’d;
And thin Partitions do their Bounds divide:
In 1901 “Scientific American” printed the following passage:3
It has been recognized since Plato’s time that the line between genius and insanity is very fine and in many cases difficult to determine. One of the philosophers maintained that the grave, only, separated the genius from the madman.
In 1923 “The Lancet” medical journal of London printed the following:4
The distinction between sanity and insanity, between grades of mental incapacity, and its bearing on responsibility for antisocial acts, has become less easy to draw as our knowledge of mental processes widens.
In 1959 Oscar Levant received credit for the quip in the “International Celebrity Register” as mentioned at the beginning of this article:
“There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.”
In 1960 the television talk show host Jack Paar published the memoir “I Kid You Not”. Paar suggested that the first line in the quotation was spoken by actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, and the second line was spoken by Oscar Levant:5
He declared that Zsa Zsa Gabor had “discovered the secret of perpetual middle age” and that she was “doing social work among the very rich.” I reminded Oscar that Zsa Zsa had said that Oscar was brilliant but that “there is a fine line between genius and insanity.” “I’ve managed to overcome that fine line,” he growled.
In 1964 the “Austin American-Statesman” of Texas reported that Oscar Levant was planning to publish a new book called “Duet for Three Heads” the following year. The article repeated the version of the quotation from “International Celebrity Register”:6
Levant has said of himself: “There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased that line.”
In 1965 Oscar Levant did publish a book, but the name on the manuscript draft was changed. The final publication title was “The Memoirs of an Amnesiac”. Levant discussed his appearance on Jack Paar’s television show, and he presented a different version of the quotation:7
That year, 1958, Jack Paar brought the Tonight show to Hollywood and I was on it twice. My remarks were almost all neurotic one-liners. I welcomed Paar “on behalf of all the out-patients among the mentally deranged of Southern California,” and explained that there is a fine line between sanity and insanity. “I’ve managed to cross that line,” I added.
I told Paar that my appeal was to a select few and they were in danger of being arrested.
In February gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen referred to the draft title of the book while presenting an instance that differed from the quotation in the published book:8
Frightening thought by Oscar Levant in his “Duet for Three Heads:” “There is a thin line between genius and insanity and I have erased it.”
In August 1965 a full-page advertisement for “The Memoirs of an Amnesiac” appeared in “The New York Times”. Oddly, the ad contained a version of the quotation that differed from the instance in the book:9
“There is a thin line between genius and insanity; I have erased that line.”
In 1966 the English philosopher and novelist Colin Wilson published “Introduction To the New Existentialism” which included the following passage:10
For the ‘new existentialism’ is a revolution in psychology. It is the recognition that the usual distinction between sanity and insanity is a false one. We are all insane; the difference between Napoleon and a madman who believes he is Napoleon is a difference in degree, not in kind; both are acting on a limited set of assumptions.
Also, in 1966 social philosopher Norman O. Brown published “Love’s Body” which included the following assertions:11
The mad truth: the boundary between sanity and insanity is a false one. The proper outcome of psychoanalysis is the abolition of the boundary, the healing of the split, the integration of the human race. The proper posture is to listen to and learn from lunatics, as in former times . . .
In 1973 “National Lampoon” magazine published an advertisement for a new album by the U.S. rock band Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show which included the following quip:12
There is a thin line between genius and madness. And Dr. Hook erases it.
In 2006 the “Treasury of Wit & Wisdom” from the Reader’s Digest included an entry attributed to Levant. The quotation used the phrase “erased this line” instead of “erased that line”:13
There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line. — Oscar Levant
In conclusion, Oscar Levant deserves credit for both versions of the quotation mentioned in the inquiry above. The first version was ascribed to Levant in 1959, and the second version was written by Levant in 1965.
Image Notes: Illustration of thin lines from Erik Eastman of Unsplash.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to the anonymous person whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration.
- 1959, International Celebrity Register: U. S. Edition, Editor-in-Chief Cleveland Amory, Profile of Oscar Levant, Start Page 434, Quote Page 434, Column 2, First Edition, Celebrity Register Ltd., New York. (“loathsome” is misspelled as “loathesome”) (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1681, Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem by John Dryden, Second Edition – Augmented and Revised, Quote Page 11, Dublin, Ireland. (ProQuest EEBO Huntington Library) ↩︎
- 1901 August 3, Scientific American Supplement, Number 1335, Art Canons—Historic and Prehistoric by Prof. Thomas Wilson (Department of Prehistoric Anthropology U.S. National Museum), Quote Page 21393, Column 2, Scientific American, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1923 December 1, The Lancet, Responsibility of the Criminal Lunatic, Quote Page 1197, Column 2, Published by The Proprietors at the Offices of The Lancet, London. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1960, I Kid You Not by Jack Paar with John Reddy, Quote Page 172, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with hardcopy) ↩︎
- 1964 May 3, Austin American-Statesman, Section: Show World, Oscar Levant Triple Duet, Quote Page 22, Column 4, Austin, Texas. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1965, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac by Oscar Levant, Quote Page 295, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York. (Verified with hardcopy) ↩︎
- 1965 February 23, Philadelphia Daily News, ‘Gilligan’s Island’ Rocked by Feud by Dorothy Kilgallen, Quote Page 39, Column 1, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 1965 August 8, New York Times, Section: The New York Times Book Review, (Advertisement for “The Memoirs of an Amnesiac” by Oscar Levant), Quote Page 9, Column 2, New York. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1966 Copyright, Introduction To the New Existentialism by Colin Wilson, Part 2: The New Existentialism, Chapter 6: The Power of the Spectre, Quote Page 173, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, Massachusetts. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1966, Love’s Body by Norman O. Brown, Chapter 8: Boundary, Quote Page 160, Random, House, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1973 February, National Lampoon, (Advertisement for the album “Sloppy Seconds” by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show from Columbia Records), Quote Page 23, Published by National Lampoon Inc., New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 2006, Treasury of Wit & Wisdom: 4,000 of the Funniest, Cleverest, Most Insightful Things Ever Said, Compiled by Jeff Bredenberg, Topic: Mental Problems, Quote Page 184, The Reader’s Digest Association, Pleasantville, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎