American psychologist Albert Ellis created Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) in 1955. He graduated from Columbia University and the American Board of Professional Psychology (ABPP) with an M.A. and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. Additionally, he established the Albert Ellis Institute in New York City and served as its president for many years. He is widely regarded as the creator of cognitive-behavioral treatments as well as one of the pioneers of the cognitive revolutionary paradigm change in psychotherapy. He was regarded as the second most important psychotherapist in history, after Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers, according to a 1982 professional poll of psychologists in the USA and Canada.

Albert Ellis Quotes

01. “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.”
― Albert Ellis

02. “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

03. “Even injustice has it’s good points. It gives me the challenge of being as happy as I can in an unfair world.”
― Albert Ellis

04. “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

05. “The art of love… is largely the art of persistence. ”
― Albert Ellis

06.“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

07. “Stop shoulding on yourself”
― Albert Ellis

08. “Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. 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

09. “If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they’ll kill themselves laughing.”
― Albert Ellis

10. “Too many people are unaware that it is not outer events or circumstances that will create happiness; rather, it is our perception of events and of ourselves that will create, or uncreate, positive emotions.”
― Albert Ellis

11. “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

12. “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

13. “The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”
― Albert Ellis

14. “For many years now I have had the quaint idea that all humans-yes, the whole six billion of them on this planet-are out of their fucking minds.”
― Albert Ellis

15. “People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.”
― Albert Ellis

16. “You mainly make yourself needlessly and neurotically miserable by strongly holding absolutist irrational Beliefs (iBs), especially by rigidly believing unconditional shoulds, oughts, and musts.”
― Albert Ellis

17. “The concept of deservingness for one’s “sins” implies that certain acts are unquestionably under all conditions “sinful.” And this is impossible to prove.”
― Albert Ellis

18. “Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views which they take of them”
― Albert Ellis

19. “Anger is the only negative emotion that people all over the world usually want to keep.”
― Albert Ellis

20. “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

21. “Choice gives you doubts and uncertainties. Therefore, you are always somewhat anxious”
― Albert Ellis

22. “Keep my desires and goals in mind. Don’t insist that they must or must not be fulfilled. Let me work unfrantically to achieve them. REBT”
― Albert Ellis

23. “Evolution is arranged so that a species survives, not so that it will be happy while it survives.”
― Albert Ellis

24. “insight will help you very little.”
― Albert Ellis

25. “أنا أسّر بإقناع الآخرين بوجهة نظري، لكنني قادر على تقبل أن يعارضني الآخرون في الرأي من دون أن يجعل ذلك منهم أشخاص سيئين.”
― Albert Ellis

26. “REBT’s Insight No. 1 holds that you have both healthy and unhealthy emotions”
― Albert Ellis

27. “you create severe anxiety when you jump from inclination to “musturbation.”
― Albert Ellis

28. “Insight is another name for awareness.”
― Albert Ellis

29. “You create both healthy and unhealthy feelings when your goals and desires are blocked.”
― Albert Ellis

30. “Be yourself for a while, even it’s hurt.”
― Albert Ellis

31. “people often want to remain angry. This represents a very important difference between anger and other troublesome emotions.”
― Albert Ellis

32. “Anger can be likened to an architect’s blueprint. The availability of a blueprint does not cause a building to be constructed, but it does make construction easier.”
― Albert Ellis

33. “Persist at using the scientific method of questioning and challenging your irrational Beliefs until you begin to give them up, increase your effectiveness, and enjoy yourself more.”
― Albert Ellis

34. “But we can choose to change ourselves remarkably.”
― Albert Ellis

35. “The relationships that are damaged are often your best.”
― Albert Ellis