110+ Albert Ellis Quotes On Ethics, Trust And Ethics And Values

Albert Ellis was an American psychologist and psychotherapist who developed Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). He is widely regarded as the founder of cognitive-behavioral therapies and his theories are still in use today. His approach to psychotherapy is based on the idea that our emotions are determined by our beliefs and attitudes rather than by external events. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Albert Ellis on ethics, life, leadership.

Top 10 Albert Ellis Quotes

1. There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.
2. You mainly feel the way you think.
3. The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own.
4. By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit.
5. The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.
6. Neurosis is just a high-class word for whining.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. To err is human; to forgive people and yourself for poor behavior is to be sensible and realistic.

Albert Ellis Short Quotes

• Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.
• Failure doesn't have anything to do with your intrinsic value as a person.
• Strong feelings are fine; it's the overreactions that mess us up.
• Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.
• We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming - or damning.
• If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.
• Lack of forgiveness of others breeds lack of self-forgiveness.
• So I'd better stop my whining and help myself cope better with even the worst Adversities.
• If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.
• Whenever you avoid alarming situations, you almost always increase your anxiety about them.

Albert Ellis Quotes About Life

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

You have only to exist as you do and to live your life as best you can. — Albert Ellis

The goal of all life is to have a ball. — Albert Ellis

Albert Ellis Quotes About Love

The art of love is largely the art of persistence. — Albert Ellis

The art of love ... is largely the art of persistence. — Albert Ellis

Unless, of course, you insist on identifying yourself with the people and things you love; and thereby seriously disturb yourself. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

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

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

The world consists mainly of love slobs who need other people's approval. Most people don't live their own lives very well. — Albert Ellis

Albert Ellis Quotes About Thought

You have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware. — Albert Ellis

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. — 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

Albert Ellis Quotes About People

When people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed. — 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

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

We'd better work hard on getting rid of that must - Other people must do what I want them to do!" It's what makes people hostile, nasty, mean and combative, and it leads to feuds, wars and genocide. We'd better do something about that. — Albert Ellis

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. — 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

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

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. — Albert Ellis

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! — Albert Ellis

People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection. — Albert Ellis

Albert Ellis Quotes About Rational

Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world. — Albert Ellis

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

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. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

Albert Ellis Quotes About Largely

You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it. — Albert Ellis

Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny. — Albert Ellis

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

Albert Ellis Quotes About World

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

The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor probably ever will be, any absolute certainties, and should realize that it is not at all horrible, indeed—such a probabilistic, uncertain world. — 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

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. — Albert Ellis

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

Albert Ellis Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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. — 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

The goal...is not to change your desires and wishes but to persuade you to stop demanding that you absolutely must have what you wish-from yourself, from others, and from the world. You can by all means keep your wishes, preferences, and desires, but unless you prefer to remain needlessly anxious, not your grandiose demands. — Albert Ellis

I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit after practicing it for six years. — 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

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

The individual is taught that there is nothing that he as a total person is to feel ashamed of or self-hating for. — Albert Ellis

The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel, the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, or law-abiding citizen. He will become a compulsive wrong-doer. — Albert Ellis

Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs. — 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

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

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. — 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

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. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

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

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. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

Humans can always accept themselves unconditionally. — Albert Ellis

When I started to get disillusioned with psychoanalysis I reread philosophy and was reminded of the constructivist notion that Epictetus had proposed 2,000 years ago: "People are disturbed not by events that happen to them, but by their view of them." I could see how that applied to many of my clients. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

I hope to die in the saddle seat. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today. — Albert Ellis

You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity. — Albert Ellis

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

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

The great majority of the things we now make ourselves panicked about are self-created 'dangers' that exist almost entirely in our own imaginations. — Albert Ellis

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

Needing leads to bleeding - to almost all inevitable suffering. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

Worrying about dying will hardly help you live. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

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

Most things worth having require some sacrifice, usually more than you expect. — Albert Ellis

Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions. — Albert Ellis

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. — 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

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. — Albert Ellis

Stop shoulding on yourself — 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

Reality is not so much what happens to us; rather, it is how we think about those events that create the reality we experience. In a very real sense, this means that we each create the reality in which we live. — Albert Ellis

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

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

When I was 16 I started keeping a diary in which I recorded my disagreements with the famous philosophers. I didn't insist that they were wrong, that I was right and I had to prevail. I just agreed and disagreed with them. I thought there was a high degree of probability that I was right and some other thinkers were wrong. But I wasn't positive about it. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

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

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

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. — Albert Ellis

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. — Albert Ellis

Life Lessons by Albert Ellis

1. Albert Ellis taught us to take responsibility for our own actions and emotions, and to focus on the present rather than dwelling on the past.
2. He encouraged us to challenge our irrational beliefs, and to replace them with more realistic and positive ones.
3. He also taught us to accept ourselves and others, and to be more tolerant and understanding of different perspectives.