Thomas Szasz Quotes

• 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

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Happiness, Living, Adult

• 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.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Act, Learning, Self-Esteem

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Neurotic, Psychotic, Convictions, Doubt

• Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Intelligence

  Tags in Thinking, Courage

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

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Boredom, Serenity, Time

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Adulthood, Apparent, Childhood, Old Age

• A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Power

  Tags in Authority, Minimal, Teachers

• 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 individual responsibility.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Society

  Tags in Punishment, Odious, Guilt, Mind, Men

• 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.

  Thomas Szasz

  Topics in Religion, Society

  Tags in School

• 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

  Topics in Children

  Tags in Adulthood

Thomas Szasz (30)

Birth:	15th April, 1920
Death:	8th September, 2012
Nationality:	Hungarian
Profession:	Critic, Professor, Psychiatrist

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