Best 110 quotes of Albert Ellis on MyQuotes

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.

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

As a matter of fact, 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.

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.

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.

Beginning in the 1960s, many studies showed that people who hold what we call irrational beliefs are significantly more disturbed than when they don't hold them, and the more strongly they hold them, the more disturbed they tend to be.

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.

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

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.

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 with them because, again, I don't care too much what other people think.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency. Had I not been a therapist, I would have been an efficiency expert.

Freudian therapists do a lot of listening and very little persuading, and that was one of the reasons I eventually gave up being an analyst. You had to be too passive and not speak up, and you couldn't give homework to clients. While I was still an analyst, I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit psychoanalysis after practicing it for six years.

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.

I don't recommend that people speak their minds to their bosses or to somebody who's directly over them. You need to know when to speak your mind and what the penalty will be for doing so. Sometimes it's worth it, and often it's not!

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I'm one of the best-loved psychologists in the United States, but I'm also probably the most hated one.

I'm very happy. I like my work and I like the various aspects of it - going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert - I like that. And seeing clients, doing group therapy, writing books.

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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 started to call myself a "rational therapist" in January 1955; later I used the term "rational emotive." Now I call myself a "rational emotive behavior therapist." But from the start, I always included philosophic techniques as well as experiential, emotional and behavioral techniques.

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

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

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 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. In that sense, psychotherapy belongs in the schools.

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.

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. Then I found that it intensively went into every irrelevancy under the sun - and that it didn't work. People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.

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.

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.

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. So it would have had more disadvantages than advantages for them.

I would like to be remembered as one of the individuals who founded, ideologically and practically, cognitive behavior therapy and who pioneered multimodal or integrated therapy.