Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth.
Albert EllisRead
If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that human thought processes are so peculiar that they would amuse extraterrestrial beings to the point of laughter.
Albert Ellis humorously implies that if Martians were to observe human thinking and behavior, they would find it so irrational and absurd that it would lead them to fits of laughter. This reflects not only on the peculiarities of human nature but also comments on how humans often view themselves through a critical lens. The quote encapsulates the irony of human existence by suggesting that our complexity might be amusingly incomprehensible to outsiders.
In practice
During a speech about the quirks of human nature at a comedy club.
Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth.
Religious creeds encourage some of the craziest kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and favor severe manifestations of neurosis, borderline personality states, and sometimes even psychosis.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Some men there are love not a gaping pig, some that are mad if they behold a cat, and others when the bagpipe sings I the nose cannot contain their urine.
If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.
Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!
I was doing sketches that were funny but socially irresponsible. I felt I was deliberately being encouraged and I was overwhelmed.
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.
Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people.
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