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Thomas Szasz Quotes

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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..."

"In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults."

"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."
Society

"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."
Society

"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."

"Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure."

"A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

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

"Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; and love by love."

"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."

"Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence."

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

"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."

"The proverb warns; "Don't bite the hand that feeds you." But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself."

"Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condenses and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons in his environment over the control of the individual's body."

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