162 Quotes by Thomas Szasz

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

Not until "human nature" itself progresses morally will the majority of people prefer peaceful and boring market relations to the violent and exciting relations between coercer and coerced, predator and victim.

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

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

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.

Is psychiatry a medical enterprise concerned with treating diseases, or a humanistic enterprise concerned with helping persons with their personal problems? Psychiatry could be one or the other, but it cannot--despite the pretensions and protestations of psichiatrists--be both.

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.

In the history of the twentieth century, the principal dramatis personae were National and International Socialisms, better known as Nazism and Communism. Their citizens evaded the duty of self-responsibility by claiming to be "following orders." Following orders -attributed to or issued by God, the State, Science, Medicine-is always the easy way out. Refusing to do so requires self-reliance and resisting temptations and threats.