The exact words
The line comes in the middle of one of the most famous conversations in children’s literature. Alice has just escaped from the Duchess’s chaotic, pepper-filled kitchen, carrying a baby that turns into a pig in her arms, and she finds the Cheshire Cat grinning at her from a tree. She asks him which way she ought to go, and he answers that it depends on where she wants to get to. When she says she doesn’t much care, he replies, quite reasonably, that then it doesn’t matter which way she goes. Only after this does she ask what sort of people live nearby, and learn that in one direction lives a Hatter and in the other a March Hare, and that both are mad.
What the Cat is really saying
Alice’s objection, that she doesn’t want to go among mad people, gets the Cat’s best line: you can’t help that, because everyone here is mad. When she asks how he knows that she is mad, he gives her a perfect piece of circular reasoning: she must be, or she wouldn’t have come. He then proves his own madness by comparing himself to a dog, which growls when angry and wags its tail when pleased, while he does the reverse.
Carroll was a logician, and the joke is that the Cat’s arguments sound exactly like real proofs while resting on nonsense. That is the spirit of the whole book. Wonderland’s characters are not raving; they follow rules strictly, but the rules are absurd. The Cat’s “we’re all mad here” works as a kind of welcome sign to that world, and readers have embraced it as a cheerful way of saying that nobody is entirely normal.
Why people misremember it
The Cat’s lines have been reworked so many times that the book’s wording is easy to lose. The 2010 film gave the Mad Hatter and Alice a new exchange about being “entirely bonkers,” and that line is now printed on mugs and posters as if Carroll wrote it. The original is shorter and odder, and it is worth quoting exactly: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
What people get wrong
“Have I gone mad?” “I'm afraid so. You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
That exchange, quoted on countless posters, is from Tim Burton's 2010 film, not from Carroll's book. In the book the Cat's point is a piece of playful logic rather than a compliment. Alice must be mad because she came to Wonderland, and the Cat must be mad because he growls when he's pleased and wags his tail when he's angry, the opposite of a dog.
Timeline
- July 1862Charles Dodgson, an Oxford mathematics lecturer, makes up the first version of the story for Alice Liddell and her sisters on a rowing trip up the Thames.
- 1864He gives Alice a handwritten version, Alice's Adventures Under Ground. The Cheshire Cat is not in it yet; Dodgson adds him, along with the Mad Tea-Party, when he expands the book for publication.
- 1865Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is published under the pen name Lewis Carroll, with illustrations by John Tenniel. The Cat's grin and his “we're all mad here” become instant favourites.
- 1951 and 2010Disney's animated film and Tim Burton's live-action film both use the Cat and the theme of madness, and the 2010 film adds new lines about madness that are now often quoted as if they were Carroll's.
Use it in a speech
Questions people ask
Who says “we're all mad here”?
The Cheshire Cat, speaking to Alice in Chapter 6 of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).
Is “all the best people are mad” in the book?
No. The line “You're entirely bonkers. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are” comes from the 2010 film Alice in Wonderland.
Why does the Cat say Alice is mad?
Because she came to Wonderland. His reasoning is that only a mad person would have come there.
Cite this quote
These cite the original source directly, so you can use them in an essay or paper. Always check your teacher's required style.