Quote

If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing.

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
Beings
Laughing
Find
Ever
Human
Humans
Think
Martians
Thinking
Kill

More quotes by Albert Ellis

Image
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
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
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
Image
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.
Albert Ellis
Image
The easy way out is often just that-the 'easy' way out of the most rewarding lifestyle.
Albert Ellis
Image
In fact most of what we call anxiety is overconcern about what someone thinks of you.
Albert Ellis
Image
People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
So I'd better stop my whining and help myself cope better with even the worst Adversities.
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
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
Image
Neurosis is just a high-class word for whining.
Albert Ellis
Image
Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.
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
Unless, of course, you insist on identifying yourself with the people and things you love and thereby seriously disturb yourself.
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
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
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
Image
People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.
Albert Ellis