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Quotes by Thomas Szasz

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
– Thomas Szasz
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
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
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
– Thomas Szasz
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
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
– 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
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
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
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
If you talk to God, you are praying If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
– 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
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
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
– Thomas Szasz
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time serenity, that nothing is.
– 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
A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.
– Thomas Szasz