Quote

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

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
Irrational
Usually
Means
Mean
Work
Something
Unrealistic

More quotes by Albert Ellis

Image
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.
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
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
Image
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
Image
To err is human to forgive people and yourself for poor behavior is to be sensible and realistic.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
Convince yourself that worrying about many situations will make them worse rather than improve them.
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
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
Image
Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.
Albert Ellis
Image
Lack of forgiveness of others breeds lack of self-forgiveness.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
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.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
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