Thomas Szasz Quotes About Children

Quotes about: Children

• 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.

  Thomas Szasz

  Positive, Education, Children

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (2004). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.40, Transaction Publishers

• Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.

  Thomas Szasz

  Children, Giving, Drug

  Thomas Szasz's remarks at the 35th Anniversary and Human Rights Award Dinner of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International at Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California, www.szasz.com. February 28, 2004.

• Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents?

  Thomas Szasz

  Inspirational, Baby, Sex

• 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 Szasz

  Children, Parent, Today

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

• 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"

• 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.

• Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.

  Thomas Szasz

  Children, Adults, Principles

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

• 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

  Funny, Happiness, Wisdom

  The Second Sin "Emotions" (1973)

• 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.

  Thomas Szasz

  Children, Practice, Fast Food

• Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.

  Thomas Szasz

  Children, Psychology, Psychiatry

• Competence in heterosexuality, or at least the appearance or pretense of such competence, is as much a public affair as a privateone. Thus, going steady is a high school diploma in heterosexuality; engagement a BA; marriage an MA; and children a Ph.D.

  Thomas Szasz

  Children, School, Heterosexuality

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