Wit & Attitude Quote by Thomas Szasz

Szasz slices forgiveness into three temperaments and, in doing so, smuggles in his lifelong suspicion of therapeutic pieties. The line reads like a clinical triage chart: “stupid,” “naive,” “wise” aren’t just insults or compliments, they’re diagnoses of how people manage injury, memory, and power. The sting is deliberate. By putting “forgive” in all three clauses, he reframes forgiveness not as saintly transcendence but as a strategic act that can be bungled, weaponized, or mastered.

The “stupid” person “neither forgive nor forget” because grievance becomes identity; memory hardens into a story that justifies permanent retaliation. The “naive” “forgive and forget” because they treat forgiveness as amnesia, confusing moral cleanliness with self-erasure. That’s the subtext: forgetting isn’t virtue, it’s vulnerability. It invites repetition of harm, especially in relationships and institutions where incentives don’t change.

Then comes the Szaszian ideal: “wise forgive but do not forget.” It preserves agency. Forgiveness here isn’t denial of damage; it’s the refusal to stay emotionally conscripted by the past while still keeping a clear record of reality. In the context of Szasz’s broader work critiquing coercion and euphemism in psychiatry and social control, the line also reads as a warning against enforced reconciliation. You can release the rage without surrendering the evidence. Memory becomes boundary-setting, not brooding: a moral ledger kept not to punish forever, but to prevent being fooled twice.