Thomas Szasz Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in creation born in the condition that requires immediate surgical correction is the human male.

  Thomas Szasz

  Believe, Practice, Mammals

  63 Copy quote

• Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

  Thomas Szasz

  Medicine, Experts, Mendacity

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (2004). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.162, Transaction Publishers

  32 Copy quote

• A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

  Thomas Szasz

  Family, Children, Maturity

  The Second Sin (1973) "Childhood"

  35 Copy quote

• 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

  54 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• A person cannot make another happy, but he can make him unhappy. This is the main reason why there is more unhappiness than happiness in the world.

  Thomas Szasz

  Unhappy, World, Reason Why

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (2004). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.211, Transaction Publishers

  12 Copy quote

• The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.

  Thomas Szasz

  Stupid, People

  23 Copy quote

• Men are afraid to rock the boat in which they hope to drift safely through life's currents, when, actually, the boat is stuck on a sandbar. They would be better off to rock the boat and try to shake it loose.

  Thomas Szasz

  Men, Rocks, Trying

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (2004). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.140, Transaction Publishers

  18 Copy quote

• Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we make sex less secretive, we may rob it of its power to hold men and women together.

  Thomas Szasz

  Strong, Sex, Powerful

  The Second Sin "Sex" (1973)

  8 Copy quote

• Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play.

  Thomas Szasz

  Sports, Sex, Fun

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1981). “Sex by prescription”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

  23 Copy quote

• Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.

  Thomas Szasz

  Love, Successful, Conceited

  52 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Revenge, Mistake, Inspiration

  The Second Sin (1973) "Social Relations"

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• 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"

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  13 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Szasz

  People, Political, Politics

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

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  30 Copy quote

• 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.

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

• The battle for the world is the battle for definitions.

  Thomas Szasz

  Battle, World, Definitions

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  12 Copy quote

• The Nazis spoke of having a Jewish problem. We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, "Jewish problem" was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews; "drug-abuse problem" is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs.

  Thomas Szasz

  Names, People, Giving

  "The second sin". Book by Thomas Szasz, 1973.

  20 Copy quote

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