T Szasz Quotes & Sayings

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

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

The judge punishes lawbreakers as a burning house injures its occupants. A person may be burned to death while robbing a home or saving a friend. Similarly, from a moral point of view, the judge's work is good or evil, depending on whether the laws he enforces are good or evil. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

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

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is. — 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

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse. — Thomas Szasz

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

Men often have grievances against prominent and powerful persons. Historically, the grievances of the powerless against the powerful have furnished the steam for the engines of revolutions. My point is that in many of the famous medicolegal cases involving the issue of insanity, persons of relatively low social rank openly attacked their superiors. Perhaps their grievances were real and justified, and were vented on the contemporary social symbols of authority, the King and the Queen. Whether or not these grievances justified homicide is not our problem here. I merely wish to suggest that the issue of insanity may have been raised in these trials to obscure the social problems which the crimes intended to dramatize. — Thomas Szasz

Neither he [Ferenczi] nor Freud believed that a person should be exempted from legal punishment
or worse, that he should be punished by compulsory psychiatric "treatments"
because of psychoanalytic information about him. In the light of current thought, this is a startling and sobering fact. — 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

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

The pressure to reduce health care costs is aimed only at the treatment of real diseases. There is no pressure to reduce the costs of treating fictitious diseases. On the contrary, there is pressure to define ever more types of undesirable behaviors as mental disorders or addictions and to spend ever more tax dollars on developing new psychiatric diagnoses and facilities for storing and treating the victims of such diseases, whose members now include alcoholics, drug abusers, smokers, overeaters, self-starvers, gamblers, etc. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

Institutions, no less than persons, may need to be socialized. — 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

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

Scientific knowledge does not contain within itself directions for its humanitarian use. — Thomas Szasz

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

Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected American Society within the last fifty years. — Thomas Szasz

Why don't you have a right to say you are Jesus? And why isn't the proper response to that "congratulations"? — Thomas Szasz

How can depression be real if our eyes arent real? — Thomas Szasz

Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth
that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud. — 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

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

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence. — 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

If you have strongly held opinions, you are opinionated; if you don't, you lack conviction: either way, there is something wrong with you. — Thomas Szasz

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

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

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