Quote

Thinking rationally is often different from positive thinking, in that it is a realistic assessment of the situation, with a view towards rectifying the problem if possible.

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
Views
Brain
Rationally
Situation
Assessment
Possible
Realistic
Often
Towards
Problem
Positive
Different
Thinking
View

More quotes by 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
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
We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.
Albert Ellis
Image
I had used eclectic therapy and behavior therapy on myself at the age of 19 to get over my fear of public speaking and of approaching young women in public.
Albert Ellis
Image
Neurosis is just a high-class word for whining.
Albert Ellis
Image
If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.
Albert Ellis
Image
Humans can always accept themselves unconditionally.
Albert Ellis
Image
When people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.
Albert Ellis
Image
We'd better work hard on getting rid of that must - Other people must do what I want them to do! It's what makes people hostile, nasty, mean and combative, and it leads to feuds, wars and genocide. We'd better do something about that.
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.
Albert Ellis
Image
People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.
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
Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.
Albert Ellis
Image
I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it.
Albert Ellis
Image
I hope to die in the saddle seat.
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
If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally - about anything. Yes, anything.
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
People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.
Albert Ellis