Quote

I believe the time has come to acknowledge that the practice of routine circumcision rests on the absurd premise that the only mammal in creation born in the condition that requires immediate surgical correction is the human male.

Thomas Szasz

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Thomas Szasz
Age: 92 †
Born: 1920
Born: April 15
Died: 2012
Died: September 8
Academic
Human Rights Activist
Psychiatrist
University Teacher
Writer
Buda Pest
Humans
Males
Corrections
Come
Condition
Premises
Believe
Requires
Rests
Mammal
Time
Creation
Immediate
Circumcision
Conditions
Routine
Surgical
Practice
Absurd
Correction
Born
Male
Mammals
Human
Acknowledge
Premise

More quotes by Thomas Szasz

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Like the devout theologian seeing the Devil lurking everywhere, Menninger, the devout Freudian, sees aggression.
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There is no psychology there is only biography and autobiography.
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The stupid neither forgive nor forget the naive forgive and forget the wise forgive but do not forget.
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In English-speaking countries, the connection between heresy and homosexuality is expressed through the use of a single word to denote both concepts: buggery. ... Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (Third Edition) defines buggery as heresy, sodomy.
Thomas Szasz
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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.
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How can depression be real if our eyes arent real?
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The less a person knows about the workings of the social institutions in his society, the more he must trust those who wield power in it and the more he trusts those who wield such power, the more vulnerable he makes himself to becoming their victim.
Thomas Szasz
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The Christian ethic did not raise the worth of female life much above the Jewish: nor did the clinical ethic raise it much above the clerical. This is why most of those identified as witches by male inquisitors were women and why most of those diagnosed as hysterics by male psychiatrists were also women.
Thomas Szasz
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If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.
Thomas Szasz
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Science can give us power over nature, but it cannot give us power over human nature.
Thomas Szasz
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The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.
Thomas Szasz
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He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
Thomas Szasz
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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.
Thomas Szasz
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Men love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity they loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, thus confronting them with the possibility of insignificance.
Thomas Szasz
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Delusion: belief said to be false by someone who does not share it.
Thomas Szasz
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Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. In the United States today, opiates are the religion of the people.
Thomas Szasz
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Suicide is a fundamental human right. This does not mean that it is desirable. It only means that society does not have the moral right to interfere, by force, with a persons decision to commit this act. The result is a far-reaching infantilization and dehumanization of the suicidal person.
Thomas Szasz
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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
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Only idiots and infants need things. The language of needs is the native tongue of socialists, therapists, and paternalists of all sorts and is addressed to needy dependents. The language of wants is spoken by self-respecting adults and is addressed to other self-respecting adults.
Thomas Szasz
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Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.
Thomas Szasz