Thomas Szasz Quotes - Page 3

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The neurotic has problems; the psychotic has solutions.

Thomas Szasz

Psychosis, Doubt, Neurosis

Thomas Szasz (2017). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.141, Routledge

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In the 60s people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal. In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.

Thomas Szasz

Animal, People, World

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If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.

Thomas Szasz

God, Madness, Schizophrenia

The Second Sin (1973) "Schizophrenia"

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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 Szasz

Age, Majority, Taught

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Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

Thomas Szasz

Revenge, Mistake, Inspiration

The Second Sin (1973) "Social Relations"

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People dream of making the virtuous powerful, so they can depend upon them. Since they cannot do that, people choose to make the powerful virtuous, glorifying in becoming victimized by them.

Thomas Szasz

Dream, Powerful, People

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Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.

Thomas Szasz

Believe, Doe, Belief

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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

Suicide, Suicidal, Mean

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Whenever masses of people, especially educated people, know something - and when what they know is something they greatly fear because they believe it affects virtually everything they do or want to do - then most likely we stand in the presence of a vast falsehood.

Thomas Szasz

Believe, People, Want

Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences”, p.11, Syracuse University Press

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Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.

Thomas Szasz

People, Political, Politics

Thomas Stephen Szasz (1976). “Heresies”, Anchor Books

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Prostitution is said to be the world's oldest profession. It is, indeed, a model of all professional work: the worker relinquishes control over himself... in exchange for money. Because of the passivity it entails, this is a difficult and, for many, a distasteful role.

Thomas Szasz

Passivity Is, Roles, World

"The Second Sin". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1973.

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When the psychiatrist approves of a person's actions, he judges that person to have acted with "free choice"; when he disapproves,he judges him to have acted without "free choice." It is small wonder that people find "free choice" a confusing idea: "free choice" appears to refer to what the person being judged (often called the "patient") does, whereas it is actually what the person making the judgment (often a psychiatrist or other mental health worker) thinks.

Thomas Szasz

Thinking, Ideas, People

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Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. In the United States today, opiates are the religion of the people.

Thomas Szasz

People, United States, Opiates

"The Second Sin (Drugs)". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1973.

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Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it

Thomas Szasz

Commitment, Slavery, Problem

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'Psychotherapy' is a private, confidential conversation that has nothing to do with illness, medicine, or healing.

Thomas Szasz

Healing, Medicine, Illness

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As the dominant social ethic changed from a religious to a secular one, the problem of heresy disappeared, and the problem of madness arose and became of great social significance. In the next chapter I shall examine the creation of social deviants, and shall show that as formerly priests had manufactured heretics, so physicians, as the new guardians of social conduct and morality, began to manufacture madmen.

Thomas Szasz

Religious, Next, Physicians

"The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1970.

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Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.

Thomas Szasz

Happiness, Patience, Attitude

Thomas Stephen Szasz (1973). “The second sin”, Anchor

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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 Szasz

Children, Independent, Self

"The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1990.

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The battle for the world is the battle for definitions.

Thomas Szasz

Battle, World, Definitions

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Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.

Thomas Szasz

Men, Punishment, Why Me

Thomas Stephen Szasz (1990). “The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary”, Open Court Publishing Company

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For Jews, the Messiah has never come; for Christians, He has come but once; for modern man, He appears and disappears with increasing rapidity. The saviors of modern man, the "scientists" who promise salvation through the "discoveries" of ethology and sociology, psychology and psychiatry, and all the other bogus religions, issue forth periodically, as if selected by some Messiah-of-the-Month Club.

Thomas Szasz

Christian, Men, Issues

"The Second Sin (Science and Scientism)". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1973.

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Autonomy... is freedom to develop one's self - to increase one's knowledge, improve one's skills, and achieve responsibility for one's conduct. And it is freedom to lead one's own life, to choose among alternative courses of action so long as no injury to others results.

Thomas Szasz

Responsibility, Self, Skills

Thomas Szasz (1988). “The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Theory and Method of Autonomous Psychotherapy”, p.22, Syracuse University Press

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There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject, or smoke various substances that alter their feelings and thoughts - and the traditional persecution of men for their religion... What all of these persecutions have in common is that the victims are harassed by the majority not because they engage in overtly aggressive or destructive acts... but because their conduct or appearance offends a group intolerant to and threatened by human differences.

Thomas Szasz

Men, Differences, Feelings

"The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1970.

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So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth) so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution.

Thomas Szasz

Men, Self, Long

Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement”, p.170, Syracuse University Press

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Classifying thoughts, feelings and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying whale as fish.

Thomas Szasz

Errors, Whales, Feelings

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Born: April 15, 1920
Died: September 8, 2012
Occupation: Psychiatrist
Cite this Page: Citation

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