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

Lack of forgiveness of others breeds lack of self-forgiveness.

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.

When I started to get disillusioned with psychoanalysis I reread philosophy and was reminded of the constructivist notion that Epictetus had proposed 2,000 years ago: "People are disturbed not by events that happen to them, but by their view of them." I could see how that applied to many of my clients.

In fact most of what we call anxiety is overconcern about what someone thinks of you.

If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally - about anything. Yes, anything.

The trouble with most therapy is that it helps you feel better. But you don't get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action.