19 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic.
The Second Sin (1973)
Anxiety is the unwillingness to play even when you know the odds are for you.
Courage is the willingness to play even when you know the odds are against you.
The Second Sin (1973)
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.
The Second Sin (1973)
For Jews, the Messiah has never come; for Christians, He has come but once; for modern man, He appears and disappears with increasing rapidity. The saviors of modern man, the "scientists" who promise salvation through the "discoveries" of ethology and sociology, psychology and psychiatry, and all the other bogus religions, issue forth periodically, as if selected by some Messiah-of-the-Month Club.
The Second Sin (1973)
Judges and prosecutors, lawyers and psychiatrists, all protest their passionate desire to know why a person accused of a crime did what he did. But their actions completely belie their words: their efforts are now directed toward letting everyone speak in court but the defendant himself -- especially if he is accused of a political or psychiatric crime.
The Second Sin (1973)
Although both the natural and moral sciences seek to understand the objects of their observation, in natural science the purpose of this is to be able to control them better, whereas in moral science it is, or ought to be, to be better able to leave them alone. The morally proper aim of psychology, then, is self-control.
The Second Sin (1973)