Albert Ellis

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

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

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

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.

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.

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.

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

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

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