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.
Albert EllisThe great majority of the things we now make ourselves panicked about are self-created 'dangers' that exist almost entirely in our own imaginations.
Albert EllisYou never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity.
Albert EllisPeople 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.
Albert EllisThe 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, indeedโsuch a probabilistic, uncertain world.
Albert Ellis