Quote

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

Albert Ellis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Unaware
Motives
Motive
Thoughts

More quotes by Albert Ellis

Image
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
Image
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
Image
Worrying about dying will hardly help you live.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I teach people to be flexible, scientific and logical in their thinking and therefore to be less prone to brainwashing by the therapist.
Albert Ellis
Image
Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.
Albert Ellis
Image
If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.
Albert Ellis
Image
You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world.
Albert Ellis
Image
Humans can always accept themselves unconditionally.
Albert Ellis
Image
If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.
Albert Ellis
Image
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