Thomas Szasz Quotes About Language
-
Only idiots and infants need things. The language of needs is the native tongue of socialists, therapists, and paternalists of all sorts and is addressed to needy dependents. The language of wants is spoken by self-respecting adults and is addressed to other self-respecting adults.
→ -
The Greeks distinguished between good and bad behavior, language that enhanced or diminished persons. Being intoxicated with scientism, we fail to recognize that the seemingly technical terms used to identify psychiatric illnesses and interventions are simply dyphemisms and euphemisms.
→ -
As the base rhetorician uses language to increase his own power, to produce converts to his own cause, and to create loyal followers of his own person - so the noble rhetorician uses language to wean men away from their inclination to depend on authority, to encourage them to think and speak clearly, and to teach them to be their own masters.
→ -
The language of science—and especially of a science of man—is, necessarily, anti-individualistic, and hence a threat to human freedom and dignity.
→ -
The great shift... is the movement away from the value-laden languages of... the "humanities," and toward the ostensibly value-neutral languages of the "sciences." This attempt to escape from, or to deny, valuation is... especially important in psychology... and the so-called social sciences. Indeed, one could go so far as to say that the specialized languages of these disciplines serve virtually no other purpose than to conceal valuation behind an ostensibly scientific and therefore nonvaluational semantic screen.
→
Related Authors
-
Soren Kierkegaard Philosopher -
Albert Ellis Psychologist -
Virginia Woolf Writer -
E. Fuller Torrey Psychiatrist -
Erving Goffman Sociologist -
Peter Breggin Psychiatrist -
Ludwig Wittgenstein Philosopher -
-
R. D. Laing Psychiatrist -
Ernest Becker Anthropologist -
Leonard Roy Frank Editor -
Karl A. Menninger Psychiatrist -
Allen Frances Psychiatrist -
Karl Kraus Writer -
Harry Stack Sullivan Psychiatrist -
Michel Foucault Philosopher -
Herge Cartoonist -
William James Philosopher -
Kurt Lewin Psychologist -
Otto Rank Psychoanalyst