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Men are afraid to rock the boat in which they hope to drift safely through life's currents, when, actually, the boat is stuck on a sandbar. They would be better off to rock the boat and try to shake it loose.

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
Men
Rock
Drift
Life
Rocks
Safely
Afraid
Loose
Actually
Shake
Hope
Shakes
Better
Currents
Trying
Boat
Would
Stuck

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Marriages are said to be made in Heaven, which may be why they don't work here on Earth.
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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.
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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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Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
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How can depression be real if our eyes arent real?
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So long as men denounce each other as mentally sick (homosexual, addicted, insane, and so forth) so that the madman can always be considered the Other, never the Self mental illness will remain an easily exploitable concept, and Coercive Psychiatry a flourishing institution.
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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.
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After generations of living under medical tutelage, which provides us with protection (albeit illusory) against dangerous drugs, we have failed to cultivate the self-reliance and self-discipline we must possess as competent adults surrounded by the fruits of our pharmacological-technological age.
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The neurotic has problems the psychotic has solutions.
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If you talk to God, you are praying If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
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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.
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The wise treat self-respect as non-negotiable, and will not trade it for health or wealth or anything else.
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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.
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Sex is a body-contact sport. It is safe to watch but more fun to play.
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There is no psychology there is only biography and autobiography.
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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.
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The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic - in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea - known to medical science is work.
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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.
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The language of science—and especially of a science of man—is, necessarily, anti-individualistic, and hence a threat to human freedom and dignity.
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When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
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