Thomas Szasz Quotes
Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.
Man cannot long survive without air, water, and sleep. Next in importance comes food. And close on its heels, solitude.
The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.
'Statistics' show that 66% of clients are cured with psychotherapy; what statistics don't show is that 72% are cured without it.
Like fast-food chains, child psychiatric inpatient units and the wholesale psychiatric drugging of children, in and out of hospitals, are recent...and remarkably popular products and practices.
Mental illness, of course, is not literally a "thing" - or physical object - and hence it can "exist" only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist.
He who forgiveth, and is reconciled unto his enemy, shall receive his reward from God; for he loveth not the unjust doers.
The basic ingredients of psychotherapy are religion, rhetoric, and repression, which are themselves mutually overlapping categories.
The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can only be a victim, never a martyr.
Classifying thoughts, feelings and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying whale as fish.
'Psychotherapy' is a private, confidential conversation that has nothing to do with illness, medicine, or healing.
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.
I submit that the traditional definition of psychiatry, which is still vogue, places it alongside such things as alchemy and astrology, and commits it to the category of pseudo-science.
We shall therefore compare the concept of homosexuality as heresy, prevalent in the days of the witch-hunts, with the concept of homosexuality as mental illness, prevalent today.
Like the devout theologian seeing the Devil lurking everywhere, Menninger, the devout Freudian, sees aggression.
Thousands of years ago--in times we are fond of calling "primitive" (since this renders us "modern" without having to exert ourselves further to earn this qualification)...
He who does not want to understand the Other has no right to say that what the Other does or says makes no sense.
There are two kinds of 'disabled' persons: Those who dwell on what they have lost and those who concentrate on what they have left.
Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth--that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud.
We cannot institutionalize helping the "victims" of personal disasters.
The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
The sense of national emergency engendered by war transforms the destruction of dissident opinion into patriotism.
The proverb warns that "You should not bite the hand that feeds you." But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
The stupid neither forgive nor forget the naive forgive and forget the wise forgive but do not forget.
Psychiatrists classify a person as neurotic if he suffers from his problems in living and a psychotic if he makes others suffer.
The proverb warns that "You should not bite that hand that feeds you." But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
The stupid neither forgive nor forget the naive forgive and forget the wise forgive but do not forget.