110+ Thomas Szasz Quotes On Education, Religion And Mental Health

Thomas Szasz was an American Psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry who argued that mental illness was a myth and that psychiatry was a form of social control. He was a strong advocate for civil liberties and the rights of individuals to make their own decisions. Szasz was a controversial figure in the field of mental health, and his theories remain influential to this day. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Thomas Szasz on education, leadership, love.

Top 10 Thomas Szasz Quotes

1. People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.
2. Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
3. The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
4. 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.
5. If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
6. In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
7. When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
8. Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.
9. Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected American Society within the last fifty years.
10. The neurotic has problems; the psychotic has solutions.

Thomas Szasz Short Quotes

• Psychiatry does not commit human rights abuse. It is a human rights abuse.
• We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility
• Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.
• Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.
• Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
• Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play.
• If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.
• There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.
• A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.
• Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.

Thomas Szasz Quotes About Love

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

Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; love by love. — Thomas Szasz

Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity; they loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, thus confronting them with the possibility of insignificance. — Thomas Szasz

We often speak of love when we really should be speaking of the drive to dominate or to master, so as to confirm ourselves as active agents, in control of our own destinies and worthy of respect from others. — Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz Quotes About Religion

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. — Thomas Szasz

Since this is the age of science, not religion, psychiatrists are our rabbis, heroin is our pork, and the addict is the unclean person. — Thomas Szasz

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

The basic ingredients of psychotherapy are religion, rhetoric, and repression, which are themselves mutually overlapping categories. — Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz Quotes About Mental Illness

Mental illness is a myth, whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations. — Thomas Szasz

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

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. — Thomas Szasz

No further evidence is needed to show that 'mental illness' is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious. — Thomas Szasz

There is no such thing as mental illness, hence also no such thing as psychotherapy. — Thomas Szasz

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. — Thomas Szasz

No further evidence is needed to show that mental illness is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious. — Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz Quotes About Person

Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condenses and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons in his environment over the control of the individual's body. — Thomas Szasz

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions. — Thomas Szasz

Men often treat others worse than they treat themselves, but they rarely treat anyone better. It is the height of folly to expect consideration and decency from a person who mistreats himself. — Thomas Szasz

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

All drugs of any interest to any moderately intelligent person in America are now illegal. — Thomas Szasz

The less a person knows about the workings of the social institutions in his society, the more he must trust those who wield power in it; and the more he trusts those who wield such power, the more vulnerable he makes himself to becoming their victim. — Thomas Szasz

By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social control and at the same time disguise their punitive interventions in the semantic and social trappings of medical practice. — Thomas Szasz

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

Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person's self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient's cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification. — Thomas Szasz

The Greeks distinguished between good and bad behavior, language that enhanced or diminished persons. Being intoxicated with scientism, we fail to recognize that the seemingly technical terms used to identify psychiatric illnesses and interventions are simply dyphemisms and euphemisms. — Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz Quotes About People

When a man says that he is Jesus or Napoleon, or that the Martians are after him, or claims something else that seems outrageous to common sense, he is labeled psychotic and locked up in a madhouse. Freedom of speech is only for normal people. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

Mysticism joins and unites; reason divides and separates. People crave belonging more than understanding. Hence the prominent role of mysticism, and the limited role of reason in human affairs. — Thomas Szasz

The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are. — Thomas Szasz

Some people say they haven't yet found themselves. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates. — Thomas Szasz

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

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates. — Thomas Szasz

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

Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around. — Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz Quotes About Children

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

Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

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

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; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all. — Thomas Szasz

Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished. — Thomas Szasz

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

Thomas Szasz Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

The FDA calls certain substances "controlled." But there are no "controlled substances," there are only controlled citizens. — Thomas Szasz

Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure. — Thomas Szasz

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the na?ve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget. — Thomas Szasz

If, nevertheless, textbooks of pharmacology legitimately contain a chapter on drug abuse and drug addiction, then, by the same token, textbooks of gynecology and urology should contain a chapter on prostitution; textbooks of physiology, a chapter on perversion; textbooks of genetics, a chapter on the racial inferiority of Jews and Negroes. — Thomas Szasz

The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic --in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea --known to medical science is work. — Thomas Szasz

The many faces of intimacy: the Victorians could experience it through correspondence, but not through cohabitation; contemporary men and women can experience it through fornication, but not through friendship. — Thomas Szasz

If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order. — Thomas Szasz

I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society it is none of the government's business what ideas a man puts into his mind; likewise, it should be none of its business what drugs he puts into his body. — Thomas Szasz

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

He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish. — Thomas Szasz

Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver. — Thomas Szasz

The poor need jobs and money, not psychoanalysis. The uneducated need knowledge and skills, not psychoanalysis. — Thomas Szasz

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

We have, in our day, witnessed the birth of the Therapeutic State. This is perhaps the major implication of psychiatry as an institution of social control. — Thomas Szasz

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. — Thomas Szasz

We should pledge ourselves to the proposition that the irresponsible life is not worth living. — Thomas Szasz

In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients. — Thomas Szasz

As the base rhetorician uses language to increase his own power, to produce converts to his own cause, and to create loyal followers of his own person - so the noble rhetorician uses language to wean men away from their inclination to depend on authority, to encourage them to think and speak clearly, and to teach them to be their own masters. — Thomas Szasz

The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can only be a victim, never a martyr. — Thomas Szasz

Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry could be one or the other, but it cannot--despite the pretensions and protestations of psichiatrists--be both. — Thomas Szasz

The proverb warns; Don't bite the hand that feeds you. But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself. — Thomas Szasz

'Statistics' show that 66% of clients are cured with psychotherapy; what statistics don't show is that 72% are cured without it. — Thomas Szasz

He who forgiveth, and is reconciled unto his enemy, shall receive his reward from God; for he loveth not the unjust doers. — Thomas Szasz

Psychiatrists look for twisted molecules and defective genes as the causes of schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is the name of a disease. If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would they then look for the chemical and genetic "causes" of these "conditions"? — Thomas Szasz

The language of science—and especially of a science of man—is, necessarily, anti-individualistic, and hence a threat to human freedom and dignity. — Thomas Szasz

Only idiots and infants need things. The language of needs is the native tongue of socialists, therapists, and paternalists of all sorts and is addressed to needy dependents. The language of wants is spoken by self-respecting adults and is addressed to other self-respecting adults. — Thomas Szasz

After generations of living under medical tutelage, which provides us with protection (albeit illusory) against "dangerous drugs", we have failed to cultivate the self-reliance and self-discipline we must possess as competent adults surrounded by the fruits of our pharmacological-technological age. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

The disease concept of homosexuality as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. ... Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics. — Thomas Szasz

Like the devout theologian seeing the Devil lurking everywhere, Menninger, the devout Freudian, sees aggression. — Thomas Szasz

The Christian ethic did not raise the worth of female life much above the Jewish: nor did the clinical ethic raise it much above the clerical. This is why most of those identified as witches by male inquisitors were women; and why most of those diagnosed as hysterics by male psychiatrists were also women. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

Science can give us power over nature, but it cannot give us power over human nature. — Thomas Szasz

Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his body; deprive him of self-respect and you kill his spirit. — Thomas Szasz

Aided and abetted by corrupt analysts, patients who have nothing better to do with their lives often use the psychoanalytic situation to transform insignificant childhood hurts into private shrines at which they worship unceasingly the enormity of the offenses committed against them. This solution is immensely flattering to the patients -- as are all forms of unmerited self-aggrandizement; it is immensely profitable for the analysts -- as are all forms pandering to people's vanity; and it is often immensely unpleasant for nearly everyone else in the patient's life. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

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

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. In either case, the crucial issue is our control of the other: the more we lose control over him, and the more he assumes control over himself, the more, in case of conflict, we are likely to consider him mad rather than just bad. — Thomas Szasz

Had the white settlers in North America called the natives 'Americans' instead of 'Indians', the early Americans could not have said that the 'only good Indian is a dead Indian' and could not have deprived them so easily of their lands and lands and lives. Robbing people of their proper names is often the first step in robbing them of their property, liberty, and life. — Thomas Szasz

Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has really changed is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The social style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality. — Thomas Szasz

Man cannot long survive without air, water, and sleep. Next in importance comes food. And close on its heels, solitude. — Thomas Szasz

Marriages are said to be made in Heaven, which may be why they don't work here on Earth. — Thomas Szasz

In English-speaking countries, the connection between heresy and homosexuality is expressed through the use of a single word to denote both concepts: buggery. ... Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (Third Edition) defines "buggery" as "heresy, sodomy. — Thomas Szasz

Life Lessons by Thomas Szasz

1. Thomas Szasz taught us to question authority and to think critically about accepted beliefs. He encouraged us to take responsibility for our own actions and to recognize that our mental health is a personal responsibility.
2. He also emphasized the importance of understanding our own motivations and the power of our own thoughts and ideas.
3. Finally, Szasz taught us to be mindful of our own biases and to strive for understanding and empathy when interacting with others.