Thomas Szasz
From BillionQuotes
Thomas Szasz (born April 15, 1920 in Budapest, Hungary) was a Professor Emeritus in Psychiatry at the State University of New York Health Science Center in Syracuse, New York. Szasz is a critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry. In 1969, Szasz co-founded, and was the first director of, Scientology's anti-psychiatry front group Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
- "The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget."
- "Classifying thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error."
- "Among animals, it's 'eat or be eaten'; among humans, it's 'define or be defined.'"
- "When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him."
- "The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity."
- "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."
- "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 Second Sin (1973) "Emotions"
- "The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself. In the typical Western two men fight desperately for the possession of a gun that has been thrown to the ground: whoever reaches the weapon first shoots and lives; his adversary is shot and dies. In ordinary life, the struggle is not for guns but for words; whoever first defines the situation is the victor; his adversary, the victim. For example, in the family, husband and wife, mother and child do not get along; who defines whom as troublesome or mentally sick?...[the one] who first seizes the word imposes reality on the other; [the one] who defines thus dominates and lives; and [the one] who is defined is subjugated and may be killed."
- "If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic."
- The Second Sin, Anchor/Doubleday, Garden City, NY. 1973, Page 113
