Thomas Szasz

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

— Thomas Szasz

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.

— Thomas Szasz

Psychiatry does not commit human rights abuse. It is a human rights abuse.

— Thomas Szasz

Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play.

— Thomas Szasz

The battle for the world is the battle for definitions.

— Thomas Szasz

Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.

— Thomas Szasz

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

— Thomas Szasz

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

— Thomas Szasz

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

— Thomas Szasz

Men often treat others worse than they treat themselves, but they rarely treat anyone better. It is the height of folly to…

— Thomas Szasz

I submit that the traditional definition of psychiatry, which is still vogue, places it alongside such things as alchemy and astrology, and…

— Thomas Szasz

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

— Thomas Szasz

Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his body; deprive…

— Thomas Szasz

“The proverb warnes you'',''dont bite the hand that feeds you,''but maybe you should,''if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”

— 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

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the na�ve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

— Thomas Szasz

So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth) so that the madman can always…

— Thomas Szasz

No further evidence is needed to show that 'mental illness' is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to…

— Thomas Szasz

Men are afraid to rock the boat in which they hope to drift safely through life's currents, when, actually, the boat is…

— Thomas Szasz

Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condense and expresses a contest between the individual and some other…

— Thomas Szasz

Autonomy... is freedom to develop one's self - to increase one's knowledge, improve one's skills, and achieve responsibility for one's conduct. And…

— Thomas Szasz

If, nevertheless, textbooks of pharmacology legitimately contain a chapter on drug abuse and drug addiction, then, by the same token, textbooks of…

— Thomas Szasz

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the…

— Thomas Szasz

I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society…

— Thomas Szasz

We achieve active mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick…

— Thomas Szasz

Aided and abetted by corrupt analysts, patients who have nothing better to do with their lives often use the psychoanalytic situation to…

— Thomas Szasz

If someone does something we disapprove of, we regard him as bad if we believe we can deter him from persisting in…

— Thomas Szasz

As the dominant social ethic changed from a religious to a secular one, the problem of heresy disappeared, and the problem of…

— Thomas Szasz

There is a fundamental similarity between the persecution of individuals who engage in consenting homosexual activity in private, or who ingest, inject,…

— Thomas Szasz

Like Karl Kraus [Wittgenstein], was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby…

— Thomas Szasz

Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition…

— Thomas Szasz

The two greatest enemies of the individual in the modern world are communism and psychiatry. Each wages a relentless war against that…

— Thomas Szasz

How can depression be real if our eyes arent real?

— Thomas Szasz

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

— Thomas Szasz

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

— Thomas Szasz

Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.

— Thomas Szasz

Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.

— Thomas Szasz

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

— Thomas Szasz

Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

— Thomas Szasz

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

— Thomas Szasz