A Quote by Thomas Szasz

The disease concept of homosexuality as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. ... Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics.

Thomas Szasz

Quote Topics

Addiction Alcoholism Concept Disease Drowned Drug Drug Addict Drug Addiction Fact Group Homosexuality Illnesses Individuals Just Mental Mental Illness Out Persecuted Protest Rhetoric Salvation So-Called Socially Suicide Therapy

Quote Author

Thomas Szasz
American - Psychologist
April 15, 1920 - September 8, 2012

Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.

Craig Ferguson

People still think of AIDS as a shame-based disease, it's a sexually transmitted disease, and you're either gay or you're a prostitute or an intravenous drug user. And so a lot of people are still very bigoted about this disease. It's such a treatable disease. It's so - the end is in sight for this disease, medically.

Elton John

Moreover he saw a skull floating on the surface of the water and he said unto it: Because you drowned others they drowned you; and those that drowned you will eventually be drowned.

Hillel the Elder

We shall therefore compare the concept of homosexuality as heresy, prevalent in the days of the witch-hunts, with the concept of homosexuality as mental illness, prevalent today.

Thomas Szasz

[T]he truth is that drug addicts have a disease. It only takes a short time in the streets to realize that out-of-control addiction is a medical problem, not a form of recreational or criminal behavior. And the more society treats drug addiction as a crime, the more money drug dealers will make "relieving" the suffering of the addicts.

Jay-Z

Addiction is a symptom of not growing up. I know people think it's a disease... If you have a brain tumor, if you have cancer, that's a disease. To say that an addiction is a disease is not fair to the real diseases of the world.

C.C. DeVille

Many physical illnesses are associated with depression and anxiety, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, stroke, kidney disease, lung disease, dementia and cancer.

Liz Miller

The ever quickening advances of science made possible by the success of the Human Genome Project will also soon let us see the essences of mental disease. Only after we understand them at the genetic level can we rationally seek out appropriate therapies for such illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disease.

James D. Watson

I'm tired of hearing sin called sickness and alcoholism a disease. It is the only disease I know of that we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year to spread.

Vance Havner

The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

Charlie Chaplin

Every effective drug provokes in the human body a sort of disease of its own, and the stronger the drug, the more characteristic, and the more marked and more violent the disease. We should imitate nature, which sometimes cures a chronic affliction with another supervening disease, and prescribe for the illness we wish to cure, especially if chronic, a drug with power to provoke another, artificial disease, as similar as possible, and the former disease will be cured: fight like with like.

Samuel Hahnemann

There's no recovery from alcoholism, it is an incurable disease. And it also is a disease that tells you, you don't have a disease.

Malachy McCourt

Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.

Thomas Bernhard

Everybody tells you over and over again that addiction is a disease. But when I read Nic's book I understood not just that this is a disease, but what the disease means.

David Sheff

My favorite moments are the moments everyone cries over. I see people in the audience crying, and I go, 'I did that, too. I don't just do the jokes. I also do the cries.' Jokes and cries, jokes and cries. That's all I'm here for, people.