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
Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The way we interpret and define actions influences the perception of morality more than the actions themselves.
This quote by Thomas Szasz highlights the distinction between actions and the perceptions of those actions. It suggests that individuals focus more on rationalizing their behavior to align with societal definitions of right and wrong, rather than on the intrinsic morality of their actions. This reflects a deeper philosophical inquiry into the nature of morality and self-justification.
Themes
MoralityJustificationBehaviorPerceptionActions
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about moral behavior in ethics class, you could use this quote to illustrate the complexity of human actions.
More from Thomas Szasz
All quotes →Classifying thoughts, feelings and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying whale as fish.
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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.
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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
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.
Thomas SzaszRead
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