Some Szasz Quotes.
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.
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.
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.
If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.
Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.
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.
The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.
There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; and love by love.
Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.
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.
Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is morally desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere.
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.
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.
Although we may not know it, 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.
Since the Freudian revolution, and especially since the Second World War, the secret formula has been this: If you want to debase what a person is doing, call his act psychopathological and call him mentally ill; if you want to exalt what a person is, call his act psycho-therapeutic and call him a mental healer.
In the past men created witches: now they create mental patients.
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.
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.
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.
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.
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
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.
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.
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.
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.
He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.
If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.
Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.
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.
The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.
There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; and love by love.
Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.
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.
Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is morally desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere.
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.
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.
Although we may not know it, 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.
Since the Freudian revolution, and especially since the Second World War, the secret formula has been this: If you want to debase what a person is doing, call his act psychopathological and call him mentally ill; if you want to exalt what a person is, call his act psycho-therapeutic and call him a mental healer.
In the past men created witches: now they create mental patients.
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.
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.