"Even when people act nastily to you, don't condemn them or retaliate."

"You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it."

"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."

"In a sense, the religious person must have no real views of his own and it is presumptuous of him, in fact, to have any. In regard to sex-love affairs, to marriage and family relations, to business, to politics, and to virtually everything else that is important in his life, he must try to discover what his god and his clergy would like him to do; and he must primarily do their bidding."

"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."

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

"Failure doesn't have anything to do with your intrinsic value as a person."

"Strong feelings are fine; it's the overreactions that mess us up."

"Being assertive does not mean attacking or ignoring others feelings. It means that you are willing to hold up for yourself fairly-without attacking others."

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

"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."

"Convince yourself that worrying about many situations will make them worse rather than improve them."

"Stop shoulding on yourself"

"We can actually put the essence of neurosis in a single word: blaming - or damning."

"If the Martians ever find out how human beings think, they'll kill themselves laughing."

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

"Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world."

"Needing leads to bleeding - to almost all inevitable suffering."

"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."

"Worrying about dying will hardly help you live."

"Whining about your own, others', or the world's failings is a main element in what we usually call neurosis."

"We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today."

"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, ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny."

"There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational."

"Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth."

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

"Much of what we call emotion is nothing more or less than a certain kind - a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind - of thought."

"Freudian therapists do a lot of listening and very little persuading, and that was one of the reasons I eventually gave up being an analyst. You had to be too passive and not speak up, and you couldn't give homework to clients. While I was still an analyst, I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit psychoanalysis after practicing it for six years."

"People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware."

"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."

"Unless, of course, you insist on identifying yourself with the people and things you love; and thereby seriously disturb yourself."

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

"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."

"The individual is taught that there is nothing that he as a total person is to feel ashamed of or self-hating for."

"Whenever you avoid alarming situations, you almost always increase your anxiety about them."

"We teach people that they upset themselves. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today."

"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."

"If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic."

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

"You have only to exist as you do and to live your life as best you can."

"The goal of all life is to have a ball."

"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."

"Most things worth having require some sacrifice, usually more than you expect."

"Insight will help you very little."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"My rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) was one of the very few therapies that was originated partly or largely because I wanted to be brief and efficient. And therefore right from the start I was active and directive. I tried to show people some central masturbatory core to their philosophy and to get them to work at changing it cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally."

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."

"What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal."