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

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
Thomas Szasz

The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.
Thomas Szasz

If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
Thomas Szasz

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

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
Thomas Szasz

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

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