“The system isn't stupid, but the people in it are.”
“Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.”
“Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.”
“In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.”
“There is no psychology; there is only biography and autobiography.”
“Knowledge is gained by learning; trust by doubt; skill by practice; love by love.”
“When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.”
“If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are a schizophrenic.”
“In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.”
“A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong.”
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the nanve forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.”
“He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.”
“Some people say they haven't yet found themselves. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.”
“The proverb warns; ''Don't bite the hand that feeds you.'' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”
“Permissiveness is the principle of treating children as if they were adults; and the tactic of making sure they never reach that stage.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“It is easier to do one's duty to others than to one's self. If you do your duty to others, you are considered reliable. If you do your duty to yourself, you are considered selfish.”
“The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic --in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea --known to medical science is work.”
“Men often treat others worse than they treat themselves, but they rarely treat anyone better. It is the height of folly to expect consideration and decency from a person who mistreats himself.”
“Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it.”
“We often speak of love when we really should be speaking of the drive to dominate or to master, so as to confirm ourselves as active agents, in control of our own destinies and worthy of respect from others.”
“The many faces of intimacy: the Victorians could experience it through correspondence, but not through cohabitation; contemporary men and women can experience it through fornication, but not through friendship.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Addiction, obesity, starvation (anorexia nervosa) are political problems, not psychiatric: each condenses and expresses a contest between the individual and some other person or persons in his environment over the control of the individual's body.”
“Narcissist: psychoanalytic term for the person who loves himself more than his analyst; considered to be the manifestation of a dire mental disease whose successful treatment depends on the patient learning to love the analyst more and himself less.”
“Psychoanalysis is an attempt to examine a person's self-justifications. Hence it can be undertaken only with the patient's cooperation and can succeed only when the patient has something to gain by abandoning or modifying his system of self-justification.”
“Men are afraid to rock the boat in which they hope to drift safely through life's currents, when, actually, the boat is stuck on a sandbar. They would be better off to rock the boat and try to shake it loose, or, better still, jump in the water and swim for the shore.”