Brown may have used this quote in 2001 but it was it in a 365 day "Quote" calendar in 1994.More in this article on Quote Investigator website. 25 of the PDF), at the end of the fourth paragraph (which begins "We have a disease progressive, incurable and fatal").
#RITA MAE BROWN PDF#
The earliest known appearance of a similar quote is the "approval version" of the Narcotics Anonymous "Basic Text" released in November 1981, which included the quote " Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results." A PDF scan of the 1981 approval version can be found here, with the quote appearing on p. 68, but it appears she was just paraphrasing a quote that had already been written elsewhere.