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Creation
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People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates.
-Thomas Szasz
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Discovery
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Some people say they haven't yet found themselves. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.
-Thomas Szasz
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Doubt
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Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has problems, the psychotic has solutions.
-Thomas Szasz
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Duty
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It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.
-Thomas Szasz
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Education
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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; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.
-Thomas Szasz
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Excuses
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Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
-Thomas Szasz
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Forgiveness
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The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the na?ve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
-Thomas Szasz
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Happiness
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Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
-Thomas Szasz
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Help
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The proverb warns; Don't bite the hand that feeds you. But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
-Thomas Szasz
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Hospitals
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We achieve active mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.
-Thomas Szasz
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Knowledge
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Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; love by love.
-Thomas Szasz
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Love
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We often speak of love when we really should be speaking of the drive to dominate or to master, so as to confirm ourselves as active agents, in control of our own destinies and worthy of respect from others.
-Thomas Szasz
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Madness
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If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.
-Thomas Szasz
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In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.
-Thomas Szasz
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Mankind, Man
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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.
-Thomas Szasz
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Maturity
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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.
-Thomas Szasz
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A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
-Thomas Szasz
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Men & Women
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The many faces of intimacy: the Victorians could experience it through correspondence, but not through cohabitation; contemporary men and women can experience it through fornication, but not through friendship.
-Thomas Szasz
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Mental Illness
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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.
-Thomas Szasz
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Organization
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The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.
-Thomas Szasz
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Parenting
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Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.
-Thomas Szasz
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People
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Men often treat others worse than they treat themselves, but they rarely treat anyone better. It is the height of folly to expect consideration and decency from a person who mistreats himself.
-Thomas Szasz
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Perception
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In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
-Thomas Szasz
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Psychiatry
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Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.
-Thomas Szasz
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Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it.
-Thomas Szasz
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Books by and about Thomas Szasz