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We shall therefore compare the concept of homosexuality as heresy, prevalent in the days of the witch-hunts, with the concept of homosexuality as mental illness, prevalent today.

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
Therefore
Hunts
Shall
Homosexuality
Days
Witch
Today
Compare
Concept
Illness
Mental
Prevalent
Concepts
Heresy

More quotes by 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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There is no such thing as mental illness, hence also no such thing as psychotherapy.
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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There is no psychology there is only biography and autobiography.
Thomas Szasz
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The poor need jobs and money, not psychoanalysis. The uneducated need knowledge and skills, not psychoanalysis.
Thomas Szasz
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When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
Thomas Szasz
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In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Thomas Szasz
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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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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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Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his body deprive him of self-respect and you kill his spirit.
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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Knowledge is gained by learning trust by doubt skill by practice and love by love.
Thomas Szasz
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The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.
Thomas Szasz
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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.
Thomas Szasz
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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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Individual psychotherapy - that is, engaging a distressed fellow human in a disciplined conversation and human relationship - requires that the therapist have the proper temperament and philosophy of life for such work. By that I mean that the therapist must be patient, modest, and a perceptive listener, rather than a talker and advice-giver.
Thomas Szasz
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Marriages are said to be made in Heaven, which may be why they don't work here on Earth.
Thomas Szasz
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Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
Thomas Szasz
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If you talk to God, you are praying If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
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