Pretty good

Thomas Szasz is a thoughtful psychiatrist. I suspect that like all
people who know they're good, he's given to hyperbole. Here is a list of
notable quotes (not compiled by me):

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only
to be right but also to be wrong.

A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.

Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political
problems, not psychiatric: each condenses and expresses a contest
between the individual and some other person or persons in his
environment over the control of the individual's body.

Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It
is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period
to a minimum.

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity,
that nothing is.

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

Doubt is to certainty as neurosis is to psychosis. The neurotic is in
doubt and has fears about persons and things; the psychotic has
convictions and makes claims about them. In short, the neurotic has
problems, the psychotic has solutions.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an
injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are
aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily.

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.

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.

He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does
not truly accept and respect life itself.

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

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human
kingdom, define or be defined.

In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat
children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are
thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively
constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults.

Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the
standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The
problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it.

It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do
your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to
yourself, you are considered selfish.

Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; and
love by love.

Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth
century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.

Men often treat others worse than they treat themselves, but they rarely
treat anyone better. It is the height of folly to expect consideration
and decency from a person who mistreats himself.

Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more
than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental
disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to
love the analyst more and himself less.

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.

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.

Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

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.

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.

The proverb warns that 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.'
But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.

The proverb warns; "Don't bite the hand that feeds you." But maybe you
should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.

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

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

There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.