A biography for Albert Ellishasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic.”
“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.”
“Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency.”
“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.”
“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“We teach people that they upset themselves. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.”
“People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.”
“For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.”
“If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.”