Quote

The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own.

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
Ones
Psychologist
Problems
Ecology
Responsibility
Psychology
Happiness
Twenties
Problem
Decide
Best
Blame
Years
Destiny
Life
Decided
Outgrowing

More quotes by 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
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.
Albert Ellis
Image
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
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
Worry itself is one of the most painful conditions.
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
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
Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny.
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
Reality is not so much what happens to us rather, it is how we think about those events that create the reality we experience. In a very real sense, this means that we each create the reality in which we live.
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 are terrified of other people or difficult projects because they tell themselves that they could fail or be rejected. Failure can lead to sorrow, regret, frustration and annoyance-all healthy feelings without which people couldn't exist.
Albert Ellis
Image
If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one's feelings by controlling one's thoughts - or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place.
Albert Ellis
Image
If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.
Albert Ellis
Image
There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.
Albert Ellis
Image
Whenever you avoid alarming situations, you almost always increase your anxiety about them.
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
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
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
Convince yourself that worrying about many situations will make them worse rather than improve them.
Albert Ellis