Albert Ellis > Quotes

“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.”
― Albert Ellis

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

“Even injustice has it's good points. It gives me the challenge of being as happy as I can in an unfair world.”
― Albert Ellis, PhD

“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.”
― Albert Ellis

“The art of love... is largely the art of persistence. ”
― Albert Ellis

“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.”
― Albert Ellis

“Stop shoulding on yourself”
― Dr. Albert Ellis

“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.”
― Albert Ellis, Art & Science of Rational Eating

“If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.”
― Albert Ellis

“Too many people are unaware that it is not outer events or circumstances that will create happiness; rather, it is our perception of events and of ourselves that will create, or uncreate, positive emotions.”
― Albert Ellis, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

“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.”
― Albert Ellis

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

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

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

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

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

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

The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”
― Albert Ellis

“Much of what we call emotion is nothing more or less than a certain kind - a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind - of thought.”
― Albert Ellis, Rational Psychotherapy and Individual Psychology

“If you prefer to perform well and want to be accepted by others, you are concerned that you will fail and be rejected. Your healthy concern encourages you to act competently and nicely. But if you devoutly believe that you absolutely, under all conditions, must perform well and that you have to be accepted by others, you will then tend to make yourself—yes, make yourself—panicked if you don’t perform as well as you supposedly must.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“The expense of making yourself panicked, enraged, and self-pitying is enormous. In time and money lost. In needless effort spent. In uncalled-for mental anguish. In sabotaging others’ happiness. In foolishly frittering away potential joy during the one life—yes, the one life—you’ll probably ever have.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“What luck! If the theories of Epictetus, Karen Horney (who first talked about the “tyranny of the shoulds”), Alfred Korzybski (the founder of general semantics), and REBT are correct, you almost always bring on your emotional problems by rigidly adopting one of the basic methods of crooked thinking—musturbation. Therefore, if you understand how you upset yourself by slipping into irrational shoulds, oughts, demands, and commands, unconsciously sneaking them into your thinking, you can just about always stop disturbing yourself about anything.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“For many years now I have had the quaint idea that all humans-yes, the whole six billion of them on this planet-are out of their fucking minds.”
― Albert Ellis, The Road to Tolerance: The Philosophy of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

“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.”
― Albert Ellis, Rational Psychotherapy and Individual Psychology

“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”
― Albert Ellis

“You and many outstanding inventors and writers have striven for the ideal and have thereby helped yourself do remarkably well. REBT, therefore, does not oppose competition or striving for outstanding achievement. It advocates task-perfection, not self-perfection.” “What does that mean?” “It means that you can try to be as good, or even as perfect, as you can—at any project or task. You can try to make it ideal. But you are not a good person if it is perfect. You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so.” “How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?” “You don’t! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly—never a bad person.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.”
― Albert Ellis

“Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA) instead of Conditional Self-Esteem (CSE). You rate and evaluate your thoughts, feelings, and actions in relation to your main Goals of remaining alive and reasonably happy to see whether they aid these Goals. When they aid them, you rate that as “good” or “effective,” and when they sabotage your Goals you rate that as “bad” or “ineffective.” But you always—yes, always—accept and respect yourself, your personhood, your being, whether or not you perform well and whether or not other people approve of you and your behaviors.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Assume that most times when you feel anxious, depressed, or angry you are not only strongly desiring but also commanding that something go well and that you get what you want. Cherchez le should, cherchez le must! Look for your should, look for your must! Don’t give up until you find it. If you have trouble finding it, seek the help of a friend, relative, or REBT therapist who will help you find it. Persist!”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“You mainly make yourself needlessly and neurotically miserable by strongly holding absolutist irrational Beliefs (iBs), especially by rigidly believing unconditional shoulds, oughts, and musts.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views which they take of them”
― Albert Ellis, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

“Because when you don’t perform remarkably well the next time, back to slobhood you will go! And even when you do perform well, you will be anxious about not doing so next time. So you had better like your fine performance—but not deify yourself for doing it.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“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.”
― Albert Ellis

“Whenever you have strong negative feelings because unfortunate things are actually happening to you or you imagine that they might occur, see whether these feelings healthfully follow from your wishes and desires to have better things occur. Or are you creating them by going beyond your preferences and inventing powerful shoulds, oughts, musts, demands, commands, and necessities? If so, you are turning concern and caution into overconcern, severe anxiety, and panic. Observe the real difference in your feelings!”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“The concept of deservingness for one’s “sins” implies that certain acts are unquestionably under all conditions “sinful.” And this is impossible to prove.”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!

“you have discovered some of your unscientific beliefs with which you are creating emotional problems and making yourself act against your own interests, use the scientific method to challenge and dispute them. Ask yourself: Is this belief realistic? Is it opposed to the facts of life? Is this belief logical? Is it contradictory to itself or to my other beliefs? Can I prove this belief? Can I falsify it? Does this belief prove that the universe has a law of deservingness or undeservingness? If I act well, do I completely deserve a good life, and if I act badly, do I totally deserve a bad existence? If I continue to strongly hold the belief (and to have the feelings and do the acts it often creates), will I perform well, get the results I want to get, and lead a happier life? Or will holding it tend to make me less happy?”
― Albert Ellis, How To Stubbornly Refuse To Make Yourself Miserable About Anything – Yes, Anything!