Thomas Szasz Quotes

1920–2012 United States

Thomas Szasz (April 15, 1920 – September 8, 2012) was a Professor Emeritus in Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York, and a noted critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry.

United States
Academics
Activists
Libertarians
Psychiatrists

Also known as: Szasz, Myth of Mental Illness, Szaszian

Random Thomas Szasz quote

42 quotes

The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.

The Second Sin (1973)

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

The Second Sin (1973)

In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.

The Manufacture of Madness (1970)

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

The Second Sin (1973)

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

Anti-Freud (1990)

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.

The Second Sin (1973)

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.

The Second Sin (1973)

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.

The Second Sin (1973)

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.

The Second Sin (1973)

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

The Second Sin (1973)

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”?

The Second Sin (1973)

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naïve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

The Second Sin (1973)

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

The Second Sin (1973)

The passion to interpret as madness that with which we disagree seems to have infected the best of contemporary minds.

The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997)

The “treatment” can have only one goal: to convert the heretic to the true faith, to transform the homosexual into a heterosexual.

The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997)

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

The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997)

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

The Second Sin (1973)

Mental illness is a myth. Psychiatrists are not concerned with mental illnesses and their treatments. In actual practice they deal with personal, social and ethical problems in living.

The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct (1974)

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.

The Second Sin (1973)

Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Szasz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.