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 SzaszRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on how adulthood is fleeting, especially in today's fast-paced society.
Thomas Szasz's quote emphasizes the brevity of adulthood in contrast to childhood and old age, suggesting that contemporary industrial societies prioritize efficiency and productivity, which in turn minimizes the time spent in the adult phase of life. This notion raises questions about the value and experience of adulthood amid societal pressures and expectations.
Themes
AdulthoodChildhoodSocietyTimeIndustrial
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about embracing adulthood without losing the childlike wonder, one might quote Szasz.
More from Thomas Szasz
All quotes βClassifying thoughts, feelings and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying whale as fish.
Thomas SzaszRead
Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condense and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons in his environment over the control of the individual's body.
Thomas SzaszRead
In the past, men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Thomas SzaszRead
Self-respect is to the soul as oxygen is to the body. Deprive a person of oxygen, and you kill his body; deprive him of self-respect and you kill his spirit.
Thomas SzaszRead
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
Thomas SzaszRead
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There are some who, for varying reasons, would appease Red China. They are blind to history's clear lesson, for history teaches with unmistakable emphasis that appeasement but begets new and bloodier war. It points to no single instance where this end has justified that means, where appeasement has led to more than a sham peace. Like blackmail, it lays the basis for new and successively greater demands until, as in blackmail, violence becomes the only other alternative.
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Two months ago I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, `That's their business, not mine.' Now I know how wrong. I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.
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Near the gates and within two cities there will be scourges the like of which was never seen: famine within plague, people put out by steel, crying to the great immortal God for relief.
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Extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. This is our true state; this is what makes us incapable of certain knowledge and of absolute ignorance... This is our natural condition, and yet most contrary to our inclination; we burn with desire to find solid ground and an ultimate sure foundation whereon to build a tower reaching to the Infinite. But our whole groundwork cracks, and the earth opens to abysses.
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O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
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True karate is this: that in daily life one's mind and body be trained and developed in a spirit of humility, and that in critical times, one be devoted utterly to the cause of justice.
Gichin FunakoshiRead