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

Albert Ellis

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Albert Ellis
Age: 93 †
Born: 1913
Born: September 27
Died: 2007
Died: July 24
Behaviour Therapist
Cognitive Scientist
Non-Fiction Writer
Psychologist
Sex Educator
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
People
Contribute
Depression
Upset
Perspective
Inspirational

More quotes by Albert Ellis

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I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair that's the human condition.
Albert Ellis
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If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.
Albert Ellis
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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
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Worrying about dying will hardly help you live.
Albert Ellis
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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
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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
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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.
Albert Ellis
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You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.
Albert Ellis
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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.
Albert Ellis
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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
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The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.
Albert Ellis
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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
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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
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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
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I'm one of the best-loved psychologists in the United States, but I'm also probably the most hated one.
Albert Ellis
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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
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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
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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
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You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.
Albert Ellis
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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