Curated Quotations

Thomas Szasz

Quotations

  • “Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time serenity, that nothing is.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “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.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “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.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “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.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “Individual psychotherapy – that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship – requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver.” -Thomas…

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  • “No further evidence is needed to show that ‘mental illness’ is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “Punishment is now unfashionable… because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one’s self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “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.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “If you talk to God, you are praying If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • “Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.” -Thomas Szasz

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  • Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum. – Thomas Szasz

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