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Quote by Thomas Szasz

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The second sin

This book delves into complex characters and their struggles with sin and its consequences, offering a nuanced examination of human behavior and the quest for forgiveness. more

Author

Thomas Szasz
Thomas Szasz

Thomas Szasz, born on April 15, 1920 in Hungary, was a renowned American psychiatrist, writer, and philosopher. He is known for his critical views on psychiatry and liberalism, particularly his skepticism about the nature of mental illness and his emphasis on individual freedom. more

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“As the base rhetorician uses language to increase his own power, to produce converts to his own cause, and to create loyal followers of his own person - so the noble rhetorician uses language to wean men away from their inclination to depend on authority, to encourage them to think and speak clearly, and to teach them to be their own masters.”

ThinkingMenPersonsUseSpeakLanguageCausesTeachProduceMastersDependsAuthorityIncreaseNobleFollowersLoyalInclination
Author:Thomas Szasz
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“Like Karl Kraus [Wittgenstein], was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby mostly offended his ear - particularly when they happened to speak philosophically; and like Karl Kraus, he suspected that the institutions could not but be corrupt if the idiom of the race was confused, presumptuous, and vacuous, a fabric of nonsense, untruth, deception, and self-deception.”

IfsMenSelfSpeakRaceSawsHappenedEarsInstitutionsDeceptionConfusedNonsenseFabricOffendedSelf DeceptionUntruthIdiomPresumptuousVacuousPasserby
Author:Thomas Szasz
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“By pretending that convention is Nature, that disobeying a personal prohibition is a medical illness, they establish themselves as agents of social control and at the same time disguise their punitive interventions in the semantic and social trappings of medical practice.”

SocialPracticeIllnessMedicalAgentsPretendingConventionsDisguiseInterventionProhibitionSocial ControlDisobeying
Book:The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
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“The disease concept of homosexuality as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. ... Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics.”

FactsIndividualGroupsCryDrugDiseaseConceptsSuicideSalvationAddictionIllnessMental IllnessTherapyProtestRhetoricHomosexualityHomosexualAlcoholismDrug AddictionHereticDrug AddictPersecuted
Book:The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
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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.”

MenLongSelfConceptsSickInstitutionsIllnessMental IllnessInsaneHomosexualPsychiatryMadmenFlourishing
Book:The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement
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“The Plagiarism of orators is the art, or an ingenious and easy mode, which some adroitly employ to change, or disguise, all sorts of speeches of their own composition, or that of other authors, for their pleasure, or their utility; in such a manner that it becomes impossible even for the author himself to recognise his own work, his own genius, and his own style, so skilfully shall the whole be disguised.”

ArtWholeEasyPleasureImpossibleStyleGeniusSpeechCompositionDisguiseUtilityRecogniseIngeniousPlagiarismOrators
Author:Isaac D'Israeli
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