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 love liberty because it protects them from control and humiliation by others, thus affording them the possibility of dignity; they loathe liberty because it throws them back on their own abilities and resources, thus confronting them with the possibility of insignificance.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Liberty is both cherished and feared, as it offers dignity but also forces accountability on individuals.
This quote by Thomas Szasz reflects on the dual nature of liberty. On one hand, it is beloved because it provides protection from external control and aids in the preservation of human dignity. However, it can also be daunting, as true freedom demands self-reliance and the realization that individuals must depend on their own abilities, which may lead to feelings of insignificance when faced with the weight of personal responsibility. This tension highlights the complexity of human emotions concerning freedom and personal agency.
Themes
LibertyDignityResponsibilityFreedomPersonal Growth
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the importance of self-reliance in personal development.
More from Thomas Szasz
All quotes →Classifying 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
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
Similar quotes
The measure of charity may be taken from the want of desires. As desires diminish in the soul, charity increases in it; and when it no longer feels any desire, then it possesses perfect charity.
Saint AugustineRead
I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.
Mark TwainRead
It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
Albert EinsteinRead
How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!
Michel De MontaigneRead
The alcohol smell is on my fingers, cold and remote, piercing like a steel pin going in. It smells like white enamel basins. When I look up at the stars in the nighttime, cold and white and sharp, I think they must smell like that.
Margaret AtwoodRead
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Gore VidalRead