Thomas Szasz Name and picture from twetch — not on-chain. The signature is; the profile is not.

There are no minds. There are persons.

When an American politician running for office says “I want to serve my country,” what he really means is “I want the country to be at my service.”

Types of tyranny:

Economic: The authorities pauperize the people.

Political: The authorities enslave the people.

Psychiatric: The authorities invalidate the people.

The state: a factory, equipped with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, fabricating falsehoods defined as truths.

Communism: Enslaving people, with utopian promises of liberty and equality.
Liberalism: Pauperizing people, with utopian promises of prosperity.
Therapeutism: Pathologizing people, with utopian promises of health.

Science is invaluable for advancing man’s understanding and mastery of the physical universe; but it is worthless for raising, or even maintaining, man’s moral sensibility or helping him cope with ethical problems.

Obesity is to eating as promiscuity is to sex. For the religious, both are sins; for the pharmacrat, diseases; for the libertarian, the unhealthy and unaesthetic consequences of over-exercising the fundamental human right to one’s self.

The price of liberty is vigilance. Mutatis mutandis, the price of independence is self-determination; the price of dignity, self-assertion; and the price of respect, respect for others and self-respect.

The person securely in control of himself frustrates others from controlling him; hence, he is the object of both admiration and envy, awe and hate.

A good life requires that we learn not only to acquire habits but also to break habits.

Men are often afraid to rock the boat in which they hope to drift safely through life’s dangerous currents, when, in fact, the boat is stuck on a sandbar.

The proverb warns that you should not bite the hand that feeds you. But if the hand prevents you from feeding yourself, that’s exactly what you must do.

We gain knowledge by learning, trust by doubt, skill by practice, and love by love.

A young person suffering from “severe” mental disease, such as schizophrenia, is like an empty lot, for which a fine building was planned but never built.

An old person suffering from a degenerative brain disease, such as Alzheimer’s dementia, is like a fine building: once a comfortable home for families that has fallen into hopeless disrepair.

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

Mental illness is a myth whose function is to disguise and thus render more palatable the bitter pill of moral conflicts in human relations.

The whale swims in water and looks like a fish—but is not a fish.

The koala looks like a bear—but is not a bear.

Mental illnesses may look like diseases—but are not diseases.

As God is never a cause and explanation of natural events, mental illness is never a cause or explanation of human behavior.

Question: how do I access the money that I earn on @852 ?

The kind of power psychiatrists now wield is similar to the kind of power priests wielded before the Enlightenment...it comes out of beliefs held by human beings who rely on mystifying symbols and paternalistic authorities rather than on themselves.

Drug laws are our dietary laws: Doctors are our rabbis; heroin, our pork; addicts, our unclean persons.

We should love our children more than they love us, and even when they don’t love us, because their sense of self and self-esteem depends on our love more than ours depends on their love.

Logic Proving what’s false is easy; proving what’s obvious, impossible.

Most people cannot accept that life is a continuous burden and the need to cope with it never ends.

Happiness: tranquil illusion that life is worth living.

Sadness: tranquil recognition that life is not worth living.

Mania: frenzied version of happiness.

Depression: frenzied version of sadness.

Persons whose lives are insignificant look for significance in the past or the future. Some find it in a mythologized religious, racial, or national past; others, in a utopian future for their children, nation, or mankind.

Life is a big empty hole. One of the best ways to fill it is by striving for and achieving excellence in the pursuit of one’s chosen vocation.

Madness was not a problem or a puzzle for the ancients or for Shakespeare. By fostering the false belief that relations among reasonable people are harmonious, the Enlightenment turned madness into a mystery.

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.