Albert Ellis Quotations

The art of love is largely the art of persistence.

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.

Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world.

As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.

People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.

You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.

I would have liked having children to some degree, but frankly I haven't got the time to take the kids to the goddamn ballgame.

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.

Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.

For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.

People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.

We teach people that they upset themselves. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.

There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.

By not caring too much about what people think, I'm able to think for myself and propagate ideas which are very often unpopular. And I succeed.

I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it.

Let's suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse.

If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.

I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition.

Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.

I think the future of psychotherapy and psychology is in the school system. We need to teach every child how to rarely seriously disturb himself or herself and how to overcome disturbance when it occurs.

I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.

If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.

I'm very happy. I like my work and the various aspects of it - going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert.

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

I had a great many sex and love cases where people were absolutely devastated when somebody with whom they were compulsively in love didn't love them back. They were killing themselves with anxiety and depression.

I had used eclectic therapy and behavior therapy on myself at the age of 19 to get over my fear of public speaking and of approaching young women in public.

Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.

I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.

I hope to die in the saddle seat.

Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.

Most people would have given up when faced with all the criticism I've received over the years.

In the old days we used to get more referrals, because people had insurance that paid for therapy. Now they belong to HMOs, and we can only be affiliated with a few HMOs.

I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit after practicing it for six years.

He would have been a security problem for any jail he would have been at. The judge was cognizant of that.

We're a nonprofit organization, and it usually costs $100 an hour for individual therapy. Participating in a group costs $120 a month.

The psychotics, naturally, don't think straight. Severe personality disorders take much longer to treat than people who are neurotic.

People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.

You have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting.

Reality is not so much what happens to us; rather, it is how we think about those events that create the reality we experience. In a very real sense, this means that we each create the reality in which we live.

Stop shoulding on yourself

Even when people act nastily to you, don't condemn them or retaliate.

Neurosis is just a high-class word for whining.

Failure doesn't have anything to do with your intrinsic value as a person.

If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally - about anything. Yes, anything.

By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.

If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one's feelings by controlling one's thoughts - or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place.

The goal...is not to change your desires and wishes but to persuade you to stop demanding that you absolutely must have what you wish-from yourself, from others, and from the world. You can by all means keep your wishes, preferences, and desires, but unless you prefer to remain needlessly anxious, not your grandiose demands.

Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

You mainly feel the way you think.

The trouble with most therapy is that it helps you feel better. But you don't get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action.

The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.

To err is human; to forgive people and yourself for poor behavior is to be sensible and realistic.

Even injustice has it's good points. It gives me the challenge of being as happy as I can in an unfair world.

In a sense, the religious person must have no real views of his own and it is presumptuous of him, in fact, to have any. In regard to sex-love affairs, to marriage and family relations, to business, to politics, and to virtually everything else that is important in his life, he must try to discover what his god and his clergy would like him to do; and he must primarily do their bidding.

Religious creeds encourage some of the craziest kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and favor severe manifestations of neurosis, borderline personality states, and sometimes even psychosis.

Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny.

In fact most of what we call anxiety is overconcern about what someone thinks of you.

We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming - or damning.

You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.

It is only in your mind that you have to excel, at anything or everything. Of course, it would be very nice to excel at most things. Indeed, we recommend that you try and do your best. But realistically, you are entitled to do the bare minimum to get by. All your accomplishments are just a bonus, something to enjoy, not requirements. You don't have to do anything to prove that you are worthy of existing.

Thinking rationally is often different from "positive thinking," in that it is a realistic assessment of the situation, with a view towards rectifying the problem if possible.

The emotionally sound person should be able to take risks, to ask himself what he really would like to do in life, and then to try to do this, even though he has to risk defeat or failure. He should be adventurous (though not necessarily foolhardy); be willing to try almost anything once, just to see how he likes it; and look forward to some breaks in his usual life routines.

Convince yourself that worrying about many situations will make them worse rather than improve them.

You have only to exist as you do and to live your life as best you can.

If people stopped looking on their emotions as ethereal, almost inhuman processes, and realistically viewed them as being largely composed of perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, and internalized sentences, they would find it quite possible to work calmly and concertedly at changing them.

Being assertive does not mean attacking or ignoring others feelings. It means that you are willing to hold up for yourself fairly-without attacking others.

The great majority of the things we now make ourselves panicked about are self-created 'dangers' that exist almost entirely in our own imaginations.

Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.

Fat is a barrier, a bellicose statement to others that, to some, justifies hostility in kind. The world says to the fat person, "Your fatness is an affront to me, so we have the right to treat you as offensively as you appear." Fat is not merely viewed as another type of tissue, but as a diagnostic sign, a personal statement, and a measure of personality. Too little fat and we see you as being antisocial, fearful and sexless. Too much fat and we see you as slothful, stupid, and sexually hung up.

The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer.

Worrying about dying will hardly help you live.

Needing leads to bleeding - to almost all inevitable suffering.

The goal of all life is to have a ball.

Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth.

Whenever you avoid alarming situations, you almost always increase your anxiety about them.

Whining about your own, others', or the world's failings is a main element in what we usually call neurosis.

Lack of forgiveness of others breeds lack of self-forgiveness.

Much of what we call emotion is nothing more or less than a certain kind - a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind - of thought.

The individual is taught that there is nothing that he as a total person is to feel ashamed of or self-hating for.

If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.

Strong feelings are fine; it's the overreactions that mess us up.

People are terrified of other people or difficult projects because they tell themselves that they could fail or be rejected. Failure can lead to sorrow, regret, frustration and annoyance-all healthy feelings without which people couldn't exist.

Most things worth having require some sacrifice, usually more than you expect.

Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.

The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor probably ever will be, any absolute certainties, and should realize that it is not at all horrible, indeed—such a probabilistic, uncertain world.

And just as two wrongs don't make a right, rage against offenders is probably the worst way to try to correct them.

Religious fanaticism has clearly produced, and in all probability will continue to produce, enormous amounts of bickering, fighting, violence, bloodshed, homicide, feuds, wars, and genocide.

So I'd better stop my whining and help myself cope better with even the worst Adversities.

Attempts to help humans eliminate all self-ratings and views self-esteem as a self-defeating concept that encourages them to make conditional evaluations of self. Instead, it teaches people unconditional self-acceptance.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can't do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has, and I hope that REBT teaches them how to do it.

Is self-esteem a sickness? That's according to the way you define it. In the usual way it is defined by people and by psychologists, I'd say that it is probably the greatest emotional disturbance known to man and woman.

This, perhaps, goes to show that conditional self-esteem, as I have said for many years, is an insidious, real sickness, so much so that even Buddhists carelessly sneak it in and sometimes encourage their clients to achieve it.

I regret that I've been so busy with clinical work that I haven't been able to spend much time on experiments and outcome studies.

Unless, of course, you insist on identifying yourself with the people and things you love; and thereby seriously disturb yourself.

The easy way out is often just that-the 'easy' way out of the most rewarding lifestyle.

We teach people to be flexible, scientific and logical in their thinking and therefore to be less prone to brainwashing by the therapist.

I'm very happy. I like my work and the various aspects of it-going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert.

I just got fed up. I was ready to blow up. This country is about enforcing our laws and if we don't, we'll have chaos worse than we already do.