Category: Thought

Che serà, serà:
What will be, shall be.

Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus, Act I, scene i, lines 47 – 58.

Why is self-​control, autonomy, such a threat to authority? Because the person who controls himself, who is his own master, has no need for an authority to be his master. This, then, renders authority unemployed. What is he to do if he cannot control others? To be sure, he could mind his own business. But this is a fatuous answer, for those who are satisfied to mind their own business do not aspire to become authorities.

Thomas Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry (1974; Revised edition, 1985) p. 175.

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.

Leszek Kołakowski, Metaphysical Horror (1988).

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.

Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973), “Science and Scientism,” p. 115.

The destructive work of totalitarian machinery, whether or not this word is used, is usually supported by a special kind of primitive social philosophy. It proclaims not only that the common good of ‘society’ has priority over the interests of individuals, but that the very existence of individuals as persons is reducible to the existence of the social ‘whole’; in other words, personal existence is, in a strange sense, unreal. This is a convenient foundation for any ideology of slavery.

Leszek Kołakowski, “Totalitarianism and the Virtue of the Lie,” as quoted in Is God Happy? Selected Essays(2013), Basic Books, p. 57.

Our adversaries are not demons, witches, fate, or mental illness. We have no enemy whom we can fight, exorcise, or dispel by “cure.” What we do have are problems in living — whether these be biologic, economic, political, or sociopsychological.

Thomas Szasz, ”The Myth of Mental Illness” in American Psychologist, Vol. 15 (1960), p. 115.