Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they make a good excuse.
Thousands of years ago–in times we are fond of calling “primitive” (since this renders us “modern” without having to exert ourselves further to earn this qualification)…
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.
In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.
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.
It is the lot of mankind to feel not only insecure but also bored. To combat that experience, people long to be passively entertained, which requires less effort than assuming responsibility for self-improvement.
A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.
The cruelty intrinsic to the workhouse system was excused by the need to discourage idleness, much as the malice intrinsic to the mental hospital system has been excused by the need to provide treatment.
He who does not want to understand the Other has no right to say that what the Other does or says makes no sense.
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.
There are two kinds of ‘disabled’ persons: Those who dwell on what they have lost and those who concentrate on what they have left.
Malcolm X and Edmund Burke shared an appreciation of this important insight, this painful truth–that the state wants men to be weak and timid, not strong and proud.
Our legal system does not grant adults a right to liberty, because they already possess that right; it only revokes the right to liberty (for certain offenses) or restores it (if the deprivation did not conform to due process).
In a secular democracy, a person is supposed to be punished only when he breaks the law; never because he is evil. That is, after all, what distinguishes a democracy from a theocracy.
The young and the old are defenseless against relatives who want to get rid of them by casting them in the role of mental patient,and against psychiatrists whose livelihood depends on defining them as mentally ill.
The fatal weakness of most psychiatric historiographies lies in the historians’ failure to give sufficient weight to the role of coercion in psychiatry and to acknowledge that mad-doctoring had nothing to do with healing.
We cannot institutionalize helping the “victims” of personal disasters.
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 sense of national emergency engendered by war transforms the destruction of dissident opinion into patriotism.
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 stupid neither forgive nor forget the naive forgive and forget the wise forgive but do not forget.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
Happiness is … usually attributed by adults to children and by children to adults.
Psychiatrists classify a person as neurotic if he suffers from his problems in living and a psychotic if he makes others suffer.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
If you talk to God you are praying if God talks to you you have schizophrenia.
The self is not something that one finds. It is something one creates.
The proverb warns that “You should not bite that hand that feeds you.” But maybe you should if it prevents you from feeding yourself.
He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
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.
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.
A teacher should have maximal authority, and minimal power.
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.
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.
The stupid neither forgive nor forget the naive forgive and forget the wise forgive but do not forget.