Thomas Szasz Quotes

• Psychiatrists classify a person as neurotic if he suffers from his problems in living, and a psychotic if he makes others suffer.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

• Men are rewarded and punished not for what they do, but rather for how their acts are defined. This is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Humor, Inspirational, Life, Wisdom

  Tags in Excuse

• People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Self, Self-Interest, Growth

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Excuses

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Inspirational, Wisdom

  Tags in Naive, Stupidity, Forget, Forgiveness

• ‘Psychotherapy’ is a private, confidential conversation that has nothing to do with illness, medicine, or healing.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized
• 

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in God, Religion

  Tags in Schizophrenia

• Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Happiness, Living, Adult

• Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Testimony, Masquerading, Psychiatric, Medicine

• 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

  Topics in Society

  Tags in Punishment, Odious, Guilt, Mind, Men

• Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Intelligence

  Tags in Thinking, Courage

• Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Tactic, Permissiveness, Treating, Principle

• If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Schizophrenic, Talks

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Adulthood, Apparent, Childhood, Old Age

• The proverb warns that ‘You should not bite the hand that feeds you.’ But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Self-Reliance, Autonomy, Independence, Feeds, Bite

• 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

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Act, Learning, Self-Esteem

• It is easier to do one’s duty to others than to one’s self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Duty, Easier, Self
• 

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Laughter

  Tags in Longer, Time

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Boredom, Serenity, Time

Thomas Szasz (30)

Birth:	15th April, 1920
Death:	8th September, 2012
Nationality:	Hungarian
Profession:	Critic, Professor, Psychiatrist

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