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

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
Inspirational
Believe
Things
People
Optimistic
Optimism
Believing
Upset
Rather

More quotes by Albert Ellis

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And just as two wrongs don't make a right, rage against offenders is probably the worst way to try to correct them.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Unless, of course, you insist on identifying yourself with the people and things you love and thereby seriously disturb yourself.
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Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.
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There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational.
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People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.
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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.
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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.
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So I'd better stop my whining and help myself cope better with even the worst Adversities.
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Stop shoulding on yourself
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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.
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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
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You mainly feel the way you think.
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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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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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
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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