"Why do children want to grow up? Because……" — Thomas Szasz
"Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents?"
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Thomas Szasz
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85 Quotes by Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz has 85 quotes on this site.
A few more worth reading:
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I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a…
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Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity;…
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I submit that the traditional definition of psychiatry, which is still vogue, places it alongside such things as alchemy and…
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We often speak of love when we really should be speaking of the drive to dominate or to master, so…
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If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is…
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Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his…
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We achieve active mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling…
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Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condense and expresses a contest between the individual and…
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Had the white settlers in North America called the natives 'Americans' instead of 'Indians', the early Americans could not have…
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Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a…
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Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play.
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Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a…
See all 85 quotes by Thomas Szasz »
More Adolescents Quotes
This quote is filed under Adolescents Quotes,
one of 59 quotes in that category. Here are a few more:
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With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral…
— Omar N. Bradley
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Almost everything is double like that for adolescents; their lies are true and their truths are lies, and their hearts…
— Ursula K. Le Guin
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God knows that a mother needs fortitude and courage and tolerance and flexibility and patience and firmness and nearly every…
— Phyllis McGinley
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The missionary experience is part of Christian formation and it is important for adolescents and young people to be able…
— Pope Benedict XVI
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Adolescents need freedom to choose, but not so much freedom that they cannot, in fact, make a choice.
— Erik Erikson
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Adolescents sense a secret, unique greatness in thems.elves that seeks expression. They gesture towards the heart when trying to express…
— Joseph Chilton Pearce
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Integrity is not something that grownups have and adolescents can aspire to. Integrity is something that all of us, at…
— Harold S. Kushner
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It was a standard fantasy when you fell in love to imagine you could go back in time and find…
— Norman Rush
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Instruction in sex is as important as instruction in food; yet not only are our adolescents not taught the physiology…
— George Bernard Shaw
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In America today, the percentage of children and adolescents who are defined as overweight is more than double what it…
— Lois Capps
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The international community faces ever growing phenomena that transcend borders. I am specifically referring to terrorism, transnational organized crime, the…
— Unknown Author
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I don't write about adolescence. I write about war. For adolescents.
— Suzanne Collins
See all 59 Adolescents Quotes »