Albert Ellis

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change.

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.

I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.

I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.

I'm very happy. I like my work and the various aspects of it - going around the world, teaching the gospel according to St. Albert.

I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them.

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.

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.

Most people would have given up when faced with all the criticism I've received over the years.

I had a great many sex and love cases where people were absolutely devastated when somebody with whom they were compulsively in love didn't love them back. They were killing themselves with anxiety and depression.

If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.

Let's suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse.

As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.

Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional.

In the old days we used to get more referrals, because people had insurance that paid for therapy. Now they belong to HMOs, and we can only be affiliated with a few HMOs.

For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.

Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.

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.