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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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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
Emotional
Disturbance
Greatest
Psychologist
Probably
Sickness
Known
Usual
Woman
Define
Self
Esteem
Way
According
Men
Defined
Psychologists

More quotes by Albert Ellis

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I hope to die in the saddle seat.
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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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
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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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You have only to exist as you do and to live your life as best you can.
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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I don't recommend that people speak their minds to their bosses or to somebody who's directly over them. You need to know when to speak your mind and what the penalty will be for doing so. Sometimes it's worth it, and often it's not!
Albert Ellis
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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
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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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When people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.
Albert Ellis
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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.
Albert Ellis
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If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.
Albert Ellis
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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
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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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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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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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Needing leads to bleeding - to almost all inevitable suffering.
Albert Ellis
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Much of what we call emotion is nothing more or less than a certain kind - a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind - of thought.
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
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People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.
Albert Ellis