Thomas Szasz Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

  24 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

• 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)

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  34 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

• Science can give us power over nature, but it cannot give us power over human nature.

  Thomas Szasz

  Giving, Human Nature, Humans

  15 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Healing, Medicine, Illness

  10 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

• 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

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Errors, Whales, Feelings

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Stupid, People

  23 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

• 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

• 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.

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  Thomas Szasz

  Astrology, Pseudo, Definitions

  9 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Believe, Doe, Belief

  13 Copy quote

• 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 Szasz

  Meaningful, Anger, Responsibility

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

  18 Copy quote

• If someone does something we disapprove of, we regard him as bad if we believe we can deter him from persisting in his conduct, but we regard him as mad if we believe we cannot.

  Thomas Szasz

  Believe, Mad, Doe

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

  10 Copy quote

• A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.

  Thomas Szasz

  Education, Teacher, Retirement

  'The Second Sin' (1973) 'Education'

  13 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

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