Thomas Szasz - Quodid

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Picture of Thomas Szasz

Thomas Stephen Szasz ( SAHSS; Hungarian: Szász Tamás István [saːs]; 15 April 1920 – 8 September 2012) was a Hungarian-American academic and psychiatrist. He served for most of his career as professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University. A distinguished lifetime fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a life member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, he was best known as a social critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry, as what he saw as the social control aims of medicine in modern society, as well as scientism.

Quotes from Thomas Szasz

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

—Thomas Szasz

wisdom memory forgiveness forgetting stupidity forgiving naivety

Being considered or labeled mentally disordered—abnormal, crazy, mad, psychotic, sick, it matters not what variant is used—is the most profoundly discrediting classification that can be imposed on a person today. Mental illness casts the "patient" out of our social order just as surely as heresy cast the "witch" out of medieval society. That, indeed, is the very purpose of stigma terms.

—Thomas Szasz

society stigma illness mental illness

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

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.

—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… adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can do drugs, have sex, make babies, and get money.… For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents?

—Thomas Szasz

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

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.

—Thomas Szasz

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

—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 stuck on a sandbar. They would be better off to rock the boat and try to shake it loose.

—Thomas Szasz

If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.

—Thomas Szasz