Life's Pleasures Quote by Thomas Szasz

Szasz flips Darwin into a media critique: animals survive by teeth; humans survive by language. The pivot from “eat” to “define” is the tell. He’s not praising our moral evolution so much as accusing our species of upgrading predation into paperwork. In his world, the real bite isn’t a jaw; it’s a label that sticks.

The line lands because it treats “definition” as an act of power, not a neutral description. To define someone is to pre-load the verdict: sane or insane, responsible or sick, criminal or patient. Once a definition hardens, institutions follow. Courts defer. Families rearrange their expectations. Employers and schools translate the label into opportunity or exclusion. Szasz’s subtext is that modern coercion often arrives with a clipboard and a caring tone.

Context matters: Szasz became famous by attacking mainstream psychiatry, especially its authority to classify and confine. In The Myth of Mental Illness and related work, he argued that psychiatric diagnoses frequently operate like moral and political judgments dressed up as medical facts. So “define or be defined” isn’t self-help advice about personal branding; it’s a warning about bureaucratic capture. If you don’t narrate yourself, a hospital chart, a DSM category, or a judge’s phrase will do it for you.

The irony is that definition is unavoidable. Humans need categories to coordinate reality. Szasz’s sting is aimed at the moment categories become cages - when naming stops being understanding and starts being control.