Thomas Szasz Quotes

87 quotes in 1333 categories

• I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society it is none…
• Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity; they loathe liberty because it…
• I submit that the traditional definition of psychiatry, which is still vogue, places it alongside such things as alchemy and astrology, and commits it to…
• We often speak of love when we really should be speaking of the drive to dominate or to master, so as to confirm ourselves as…
• If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be…
• Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his body; deprive him of self-respect…
• We achieve active mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying…
• Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condense and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons…
• Had the white settlers in North America called the natives 'Americans' instead of 'Indians', the early Americans could not have said that the 'only good…
• Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we make…
• Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play.
• Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.
• The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic - in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea - known…
• Man cannot long survive without air, water, and sleep. Next in importance comes food. And close on its heels, solitude.
• Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.
• The FDA calls certain substances "controlled." But there are no "controlled substances," there are only controlled citizens.
• Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.
• Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment,…
• We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility
• Insanity is the only sane reaction to an insane society.

Browse Thomas Szasz Quotes by Category