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
Time
Creation
Immediate
Circumcision
Conditions
Routine
Surgical
Practice
Absurd
Correction
Born
Male
Mammals
Human
Acknowledge
Premise
Humans
Males
Corrections
Come
Condition
Premises
Believe
Requires
Rests
Mammal

More quotes by Thomas Szasz

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Like the devout theologian seeing the Devil lurking everywhere, Menninger, the devout Freudian, sees aggression.
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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The stupid neither forgive nor forget the naive forgive and forget the wise forgive but do not forget.
Thomas Szasz
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We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility
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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I favor free trade in drugs for the same reason the Founding Fathers favored free trade in ideas: in a free society it is none of the government's business what ideas a man puts into his mind likewise, it should be none of its business what drugs he puts into his body.
Thomas Szasz
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Psychiatrists look for twisted molecules and defective genes as the causes of schizophrenia, because schizophrenia is the name of a disease. If Christianity or Communism were called diseases, would they then look for the chemical and genetic causes of these conditions?
Thomas Szasz
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People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.
Thomas Szasz
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Knowledge is gained by learning trust by doubt skill by practice and love by love.
Thomas Szasz
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The neurotic has problems the psychotic has solutions.
Thomas Szasz
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Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
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Prostitution is said to be the world's oldest profession. It is, indeed, a model of all professional work: the worker relinquishes control over himself... in exchange for money. Because of the passivity it entails, this is a difficult and, for many, a distasteful role.
Thomas Szasz
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In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Thomas Szasz
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When a man says that he is Jesus or Napoleon, or that the Martians are after him, or claims something else that seems outrageous to common sense, he is labeled psychotic and locked up in a madhouse. Freedom of speech is only for normal people.
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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Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person's self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient's cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification.
Thomas Szasz
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Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.
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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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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The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.
Thomas Szasz