Skip to content

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

— Thomas Szasz The Second Sin (1973)

Another quote →

Topics

More quotes by Thomas Szasz

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)

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)

All Thomas Szasz quotes →

You may also like

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Szasz (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.