Quotes from Thomas Szasz

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

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

If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.

He who forgiveth, and is reconciled unto his enemy, shall receive his reward from God; for he loveth not the unjust doers.

A person cannot make another happy, but he can make him unhappy. This is the main reason why there is more unhappiness than happiness in the world.

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

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

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.

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

Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. In the United States today, opiates are the religion of the people.

Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his body; deprive him of self-respect and you kill his spirit.

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.

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

The language of science—and especially of a science of man—is, necessarily, anti-individualistic, and hence a threat to human freedom and dignity.

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

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

He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.

It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority's falsehood as truth, could be fatal.

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 patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.

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.

Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

We should pledge ourselves to the proposition that the irresponsible life is not worth living.

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

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