Thomas Szasz > Quotes

“Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.”
― Thomas Szasz

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”
― Thomas Szasz

“The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.”
― Thomas Szasz

“The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity. ”
― Thomas Szasz

“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia”
― Thomas S. Szasz

“Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.”
― Thomas Szasz

“When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him..”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. ”
― Thomas Szasz

“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Parents teach children discipline for two different, indeed diametrically opposed, reasons: to render the child submissive to them and to make him independent of them. Only a self-disciplined person can be obedient; and only such a person can be autonomous.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults. ”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority’s falsehood as truth, could be fatal.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

“Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. ”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Classifying thoughts, feelings and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying whale as fish.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.”
― Thomas Szasz

“Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere, by force, with a persons decision to commit this act. The result is a far-reaching infantilization and dehumanization of the suicidal person.”
― Thomas Szasz

“The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling, and mothers who murder their infants that they are not responsible for killing. To prove their point — and to capitalize on their self-destructive and destructive behavior — smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and insanity acquitees are suing tobacco companies, liquor companies, gambling casinos, and physicians.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry could be one or the other, but it cannot--despite the pretensions and protestations of psichiatrists--be both.”
― Thomas Szasz

“A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, The Second Sin

“Why don't you have a right to say you are Jesus? And why isn't the proper response to that "congratulations"?”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Psychiatrists look for twisted molecules and defective genes as the causes of schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is the name of a disease. If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would they then look for the chemical and genetic “causes” of these “conditions”?”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, The Second Sin

“It seems to me that-at least in our scientific theories of behavior-we have failed to accept the simple fact that human relations are inherently fraught with difficulties and that to make them even relatively harmonious requires much patience and hard work.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct

“The young and the old are defenseless against relatives who want to get rid of them by casting them in the role of mental patient,and against psychiatrists whose livelihood depends on defining them as mentally ill.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted

“Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation from others, and thus affords them the possibility of dignity. They loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, and thus confronts them with the possibility of insignificance.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz

“Although both home and mental illness are complex, modern ideas, we have fallen into the habit of using phrases such as "housing the homeless" and "treating the mentally ill" as if we knew what counts as housing a homeless person or what it means to treat mental illness. But we do not. We have deceived ourselves that having a home and being mentally healthy are our natural conditions, and that we become homeless or mentally ill as a result of "losing" our homes or our minds. The opposite is the case. We are born without a home and without reason, and have to exert ourselves and are fortunate if we succeed in building a secure home and a sound mind.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society's Unwanted