Albert Ellis Quotes - Page 4

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.

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

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.

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

My rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) was one of the very few therapies that was originated partly or largely because I wanted to be brief and efficient. And therefore right from the start I was active and directive. I tried to show people some central masturbatory core to their philosophy and to get them to work at changing it cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally.

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The Freudian tradition will never completely die because it has a few good points. For example, people have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware. Most of cognitive therapy has now adopted a similar idea. On the other hand, the relationship part of psychoanalysis - where you must have a deep, emotional relationship with the client - will, I think, get kicked in the teeth one of these days.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

There are three musts that hold us back: "I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy." And I sometimes think that as long as we keep the second must, which is socially learned, then some screwballs 100 years from now will manufacture atomic bombs in their bathtub and maybe annihilate the whole human race because they demand that the rest of the world must agree with their dogmas. When we don't agree, they may zap us.

I hope to die in the saddle seat.