Thomas Szasz Quotes

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

That's how disagreements always ended with Hugh Hefner; he would just stomp off, and you were left to pick the pieces of your self-worth up off the floor. I'd invested every part of myself in the mansion and had nothing waiting for me outside those gates. I felt so trapped and so vulnerable to his criticisms.

The heart is the path to wisdom because it dares to be vulnerable in the presence of power

Might does not make right but it sure makes what is.

To love at all is to be vulnerable.

The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria.

No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?

No human being, man, woman, or child, may safely be entrusted to the power of another; for no human being may safely be trusted with absolute power.

What matters is that someone—that you—know me that well. When a person can see into your soul, it's hard. It forces you to be open. Vulnerable. It's much easier being with someone who's just more of a casual friend.

It’s not easy to ask… asking makes you vulnerable.

When you trust someone, you don't need to know everything.

You may have your suspicions, your fears, you may even believe there is something, somewhere, terribly, drastically wrong, but because someone else is in charge, because there is a part of the system above you which you don't know, you don't question it, you even distrust your own doubts.

I smiled. She smiled. I believed the smile.

Not to fear a person with power--to profess, instead, one's love--is to deny that that person has power.

We should view our government the way we should a friendly, cuddly lion. Just because he's friendly and cuddly shouldn't blind us to the fact that he's still got teeth and claws.

Poor fish of Rodondo! in your victimized confidence, you are of the number of those who inconsiderately trust, while they do not understand, human nature.

Power is only too happy to make football bear a diabolical responsibility for stupefying the masses.

And maybe that was love. Being so vulnerable and allowing someone else in so far they could hurt you, but they also give you everything.

To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify. And we will have to allow them the choice, without fear of death: that they may come and do likewise or that they may come and that we will follow them, that a little child will lead us back to the child we will always be, vulnerable and wanting and hurting for love and for beauty.

By being vulnerable, either with yourself or in the presence of another person, that’s where all growth and ultimate well-being comes from.

So she stood naked in front of the young man and at this moment stopped playing the game.

Authenticity is also about the courage and the vulnerability to say, "Yeah, I'll try it. I feel pretty uncomfortable and I feel a little vulnerable, but I'll try it!"

To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.

A lot of authority figures want to be good. I sense that, and yet at the same time I sense that authority, after a while, always leads to some kind of oppression. When the minority report comes in, what you do is run the minority out of town with a flaming cross. It's just the way things are.

Caring about anyone leaves you vulnerable.