Thomas Szasz Quotes

All drugs of any interest to any moderately intelligent person in America are now illegal.

Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play.

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.

Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.

The poor need jobs and money, not psychoanalysis. The uneducated need knowledge and skills, not psychoanalysis.

The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.

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

Science can give us power over nature, but it cannot give us power over human nature.

The battle for the world is the battle for definitions.

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

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

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

Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected American Society within the last fifty years.

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

The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.

Psychiatry does not commit human rights abuse. It is a human rights abuse.

The neurotic has problems; the psychotic has solutions.

What people really need and demand from life is not wealth, comfort, or esteem, but games worth playing

Labeling a child as mentally ill is stigmatization, not diagnosis. Giving a child a psychiatric drug is poisoning, not treatment.

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

We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility

In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

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