Humans can always accept themselves unconditionally.

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

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

When I was 16 I started keeping a diary in which I recorded my disagreements with the famous philosophers. I didn't insist that they were wrong, that I was right and I had to prevail. I just agreed and disagreed with them. I thought there was a high degree of probability that I was right and some other thinkers were wrong. But I wasn't positive about it.

People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can't do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has, and I hope that REBT teaches them how to do it.

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

I would have liked having children to some degree, but frankly I haven't got the time to take the kids to the goddamn ballgame. So it would have had more disadvantages than advantages for them.