On men:"I see middle-aged men, who gave their lives loyally to this company or that corporation, ruthlessly put out to grass. Their children have flown and their spouses are otherwise occupied. It is the women who now play the golf, who have jobs and friends at work. It is the men who cower in the empty nest."
During the 2002 abortion debate:"The overwhelming majority of abortions on Irish women are carried out for social and economic reasons. Those who powerfully demand that women should have the right to choose to abort their unborn babies should not enrol psychiatry or psychiatric justifications for their cause."
On Freud: "A religious prophet speaking in a secular language."
On psychoanalysis:"The most stupendous confidence trick of the century."
"Full-time psychiatry would kill me. It's very draining and giving. People who are psychiatrically unwell are very demanding."
On smacking his eldest child:"I had a short fuse and psychiatry has forced me to lengthen it."