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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

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

“REBT, then, helps you not only to understand what you "are" but to change what you harmfully think, feel, and do. It accepts your desires, wishes, preferences, goals, and values, then tries to help you achieve them. But REBT shows you how to separate your preferences from your insistences-and thus keep from sabotaging your own goals. It gives you insight into what you are now doing rather than into what you (and your damned parents!) have done.”

— Albert Ellis

“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

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

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.

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

“People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.”

— Albert Ellis

“Science, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, is flexible and nondogmatic. It sticks to facts and to reality (which always can change) and to logical thinking (which does not contradict itself and hold two opposite views at the same time). But it also avoids rigid all-or-none and either/or thinking and sees that reality is often two sided and includes contradictory events and characteristics. Thus, in my relations with you, I am not a totally good person or a bad person but a person who sometimes treats you well and sometimes treats you badly. Instead of viewing world events in a rigid, absolute way, science assumes that such events, and especially human affairs, usually follow the laws of probability.”

— Albert Ellis

You create severe anxiety when you jump from inclination to musturbation.

— Albert Ellis

“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

“To help people achieve the three basic REBT philosophies of unconditional self-acceptance, unconditional other-acceptance, and unconditional life-acceptance, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral methods, which are described in this monograph, are used.”

— Albert Ellis

“We had better rate our important parts-our thoughts, feelings, and actions-to see how they helped or hindered us. But-damn it!-we didn't have to rate our self, our being, our essence. Our self or personhood was too complex to be given a global rating. We could say, for practical reasons, it was "good"-meaning it helped us to live and enjoy. Or we could say that it just didn't have to be rated at all. Use our self but not rate it!”

— Albert Ellis

“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

“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

Annabel, one of my clients who cherished her perfectionism because she felt that it made her a fine writer and an excellent mother, was having a hard time with some of David Burns's teachings against perfectionism in his book, Feeling Good. Dr. Burns, she thought, told her to give up all ideal goals and stick only to realistic and average ones. Then she couldn't be disappointed or depressed.

— Albert Ellis

“Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views which they take of them”

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

“You mainly feel the way you think.”

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis

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

— Albert Ellis

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.

— Albert Ellis

Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.

— Albert Ellis

“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.”

— Albert Ellis