Thomas Szasz

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

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

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

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

“The self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates.”

“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.”

“Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the...”

“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.”

“There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.”

“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 o...”

“Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and phil...”

“'Psychotherapy' is a private, confidential conversation that has nothing to do with illness, medicine, or healing.”

“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 indivi...”

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

“Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.”

“Mental illness, of course, is not literally a 'thing' - or physical object - and hence it can 'exist' only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist.”

“There is no such thing as mental illness, hence also no such thing as psychotherapy.”

“A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.”

“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.”