Quote

The Nazis spoke of having a Jewish problem. We now speak of having a drug-abuse problem. Actually, Jewish problem was the name the Germans gave to their persecution of the Jews drug-abuse problem is the name we give to the persecution of people who use certain drugs.

Thomas Szasz

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Szasz
Age: 92 †
Born: 1920
Born: April 15
Died: 2012
Died: September 8
Academic
Human Rights Activist
Psychiatrist
University Teacher
Writer
Buda Pest
Use
Jew
Nazis
Speak
Drugs
Germans
Certain
Abuse
Persecution
Give
Drug
Nazi
Problem
Gave
Spokes
Giving
Name
Spoke
People
Names
Jews
Actually
Jewish

More quotes by Thomas Szasz

Image
Science can give us power over nature, but it cannot give us power over human nature.
Thomas Szasz
Image
Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children, and by children to adults.
Thomas Szasz
Image
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
Image
Work is pushing matter around. Politics is pushing people around.
Thomas Szasz
Image
Traditionally, sex has been a very private, secretive activity. Herein perhaps lies its powerful force for uniting people in a strong bond. As we make sex less secretive, we may rob it of its power to hold men and women together.
Thomas Szasz
Image
Knowledge is gained by learning trust by doubt skill by practice and love by love.
Thomas Szasz
Image
Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.
Thomas Szasz
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Szasz
Image
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.
Thomas Szasz
Image
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
Image
Child psychology and child psychiatry cannot be reformed. They must be abolished.
Thomas Szasz
Image
The stupid neither forgive nor forget the naive forgive and forget the wise forgive but do not forget.
Thomas Szasz
Image
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
Image
There is no such thing as mental illness, hence also no such thing as psychotherapy.
Thomas Szasz
Image
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
Image
Competence in heterosexuality, or at least the appearance or pretense of such competence, is as much a public affair as a privateone. Thus, going steady is a high school diploma in heterosexuality engagement a BA marriage an MA and children a Ph.D.
Thomas Szasz
Image
We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility
Thomas Szasz
Image
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.
Thomas Szasz