Here’s a collection of quotes on the foundations of REBT/CBT. http://albertellis.org

1. 1
Quotes on the foundations of
REBT/CBT

2. 2
“Good morning is not a greeting, it's a decision.”
Anon

3. 3
“People are not disturbed by things, but by the view
they take of them”.
Epictetus

4. 4
“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of
which never happened.”
Michel de Montaigne

5. 5
"When confronted with a situation which we cannot
change, we are then challenged to change ourselves."
Viktor Frankl

6. 6
"Most folks are about as happy as they make up their
minds to be.”
Abraham Lincoln

7. 7
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so.”
William Shakespeare

8. 8
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all
within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
Marcus Aurelius

9. 9
“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

10. 10
“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking
and planning.”
Winston Churchill

11. 11
“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard,
solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for
easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing
pains some people more than having to think.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

12. 12
“We cannot solve our problems with the same
thinking we used when we created them”.
Albert Einstein

13. 13
"How ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at
anything which happens in life!"
Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor from 161 to 180.)

14. 14
“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it
that matters.”
Epictetus

15. 15
“Have no fear of perfection- you'll never reach it.”
Salvador Dali

16. 16
"You can't always get what you want, but if you try
sometimes you just might find you get what you
need."
The Rolling Stones

17. 17
“There is nothing to fear except fear itself.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Nothing is to be feared but fear itself. Nothing
grievous but to yield to grief."
Francis Bacon

18. 18
"As a person thinks, so she or he is ...“
Proverbs 23:7

19. 19
“Your focus becomes your experience.”
William James

20. 20
“You can‟t control the unexpected, but you can control
your response to it.”
Aikido Principle

21. 21
“The ancestor of every action is a thought.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

22. 22
"Whether you think you can or can't, you're right.”
Henry Ford

23. 23
"What we think, we become.”
Buddha

24. 24
“We become what we think about all day long.”
Emerson

25. 25
"You can't prevent the birds of sorrow from flying
over your head, but you can prevent them from
building nests in your hair.”
Ancient Chinese Proverb

26. 26
"Flexibility is the hallmark of good mental health."
Rod Martel

27. 27
“For as he thinks in his heart so is he ....”
Proverbs. 23:7

28. 28
“I thought on my ways and turned my feet.”
Psalms. 119:59

29. 29
“... Be transformed by the renewing of your mind....”
Romans. 12:2

30. 30
“For I have learned to find resources in myself
whatever my circumstances.”
Phil. 4:11

31. 31
“There are no facts, only interpretations, including
this one.”
Gianni Vattimo

32. 32
“When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it.”
Lawrence Peter (Yogi) Berra

33. 33
“The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.”
Alfred Adler

34. A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress
management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water,
everyone expected they'd be asked the "half empty or half
full" question. Instead, she inquired: "How heavy is this
glass of water?"
Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It
depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it's
not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in
my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and
paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn't
change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."
She continued, "The stresses and worries in life are like
that glass of water. Think about them for a while and
nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they
begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you
will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything."
“Remember to put the glass down.”
34

35. 35
Irrational Music Lyrics
“All you need is love.”
The Beatles

36. 36
Irrational Music Lyrics
“I want you to want me, I need you to need me.”
Cheap Trick

37. 37
“Tone can be as important as text.”
Former New York Mayor, Ed Koch

38. 38
“No one can make you feel inferior without your
consent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

39. 39
“You do not try to solve a problem that you think
should not exist.”
Ray DiGiuseppe

40. 40
“What we see, hear, feel, speak about or infer, is
never it, but only our human abstraction about „it.”
Korzybski, 1951

41. 41
“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”
Winston Churchill

42. 42
“You cannot stop the waves, but you can learn to
surf.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn

43. 43
“We must be willing to let go of the life we have
planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
E. M. Forster

44. 44
“You, and you alone, are 100 percent responsible for
your own successes, opportunities, and happiness.”
Linda Galindo

45. 45
“If you don't have time to do it right, when will you
have the time to do it over?”
John Wooden

46. 46
“If "Plan A" doesn't work, the alphabet has 25 more
letters.”
Anon

47. 47
“Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve
your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It is not
the mountain ahead that wears you out – it is the
grain of sand in your shoe.”
Robert Service

48. 48
“If I am not part of the problem, there is no solution.”
Anon

49. 49
“Judge the sin not the sinner.”
The Bible

50. 50
"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing:
the last of the human freedoms...to choose one's
attitude in any given set of circumstances.“
Victor E. Frankl

51. 51
"The real act of discovery consists not in finding new
lands, but in seeing with new eyes.“
Marcel Proust

52. 52
"What matters is our attitude toward facts rather
than the facts themselves. This also applies to the
facts of our inner life.”
Viktor Frankl

53. 53
"What matters is to make the best of any given
situation.”
Viktor Frankl

54. 54
"A human being, by the very attitude he chooses, is
capable of finding and fulfilling meaning in even a
hopeless situation.”
Viktor Frankl

55. 55
"Meaning rests on the attitude the patient chooses
toward suffering.”
Viktor Frankl

56. 56
"Neurotic fatalism is only another disguised form of
escape from responsibility."
Viktor Frankl

57. 57
"A human being is not one thing among others:
Things are determining each other, but man is selfdetermining."
Viktor Frankl

58. 58
"In the widest sense, logotherapy is treatment of the
patient's attitude toward his unchangeable fate."
Viktor Frankl

59. 59
"The Statue of Liberty on the east coast should be
supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the
west coast.”
Viktor Frankl

60. 60
“Fear is when ten guys with knives are after you,
anxiety is when you are safely at home thinking they
might come.”
Anon

61. 61
“It‟s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your
head.”
Sally Kempton

62. 62
“…when I was young nothing could hold me back. No,
sir! I thought I could change the world. It took me a
hundred years to figure out I can‟t change the world. I
can only change Bessie. And, honey, that ain‟t easy
either!”
Bessie Delaney

63. 63
“Heaven never helps the person who will not act.”
Sophocles

64. 64
“The truth is what is. And what should be is a
fantasy…a terrible fantasy.”
Lenny Bruce

65. 65
“God grant me the courage to change the things I can
change, the serenity to accept the things I cannot
change, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Reinhold Niebuhr

66. 66
“Nothing is written in stone.”
Anon

67. 67
“Pilots have a saying, in order to learn how to fly in
the wind, you have to fly in the wind!”
Anon

68. 68
“Let me (or us) seek acceptance of life as I find it,
even though I may not approve of what I find,
wisdom to see what would be good to change,
willingness to act, willingness to follow through, and
gratitude for the opportunity to try to live my life as
best I can.”
Hank Robb

69. 69
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear,
but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who
does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
Nelson Mandela

70. 70
“There is nothing like returning to a place that
remains unchanged to find the ways in which you
yourself have altered.”
Nelson Mandela

71. 71
“It always seems impossible until it is done.”
Nelson Mandela

72. 72
“Nothing is ever good or bad, but thinking makes it
so.”
William Shakespeare

73. 73
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future,
concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
Buddha

74. 74
“If you can admit life is rotten, rotten, rotten, then
you can begin to enjoy it.”
Bertrand Russell

75. 75
“Pain is a part of life – but misery is a choice.”
Anon

76. 76
“There are no absolutes…
…well, there aren‟t many.”
Albert Ellis

77. 77
“If you haven‟t made any mistakes lately, you‟re
either dead or playing things extraordinarily safe.”
Windy Dryden

78. 78
“The only way to learn to live well is to practice living
well every day.”
Shoma Morita

79. 79
“That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

80. 80
“To err is human, but it feels divine.”
Mae West

81. 81
“You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't
given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it.”
Albert Ellis

82. 82
“Life is under no obligation to give us what we
expect.”
Margaret Mitchell

83. 83
“Fear is worse than the ordeal itself.”
Yiddish folk saying

84. 84
“DSM: Despair = Suffering – Meaning.”
John Viterito

85. 85
“A man that studies revenge keeps his wounds
green.”
Francis Bacon

86. 86
“The door to your house only opens from the inside.”
Anon

87. 87
“The universe is not hostile, nor is it friendly. It‟s
simply indifferent.”
John Haynes Holmes

88. 88
“Everything that happens happens as it should, and
if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.”
Marcus Aurelius

89. 89
“Loss can close you up or open you up.”
Dianne Feinstein

90. 90
“Peace begins when expectations end.”
Anon

91. 91
“Age is something that doesn‟t matter, unless you are
a cheese.”
Billie Burke

92. 92
“Give people the right to be wrong. They will exercise
this right whether you give it to them or not.”
Windy Dryden

93. 93
“Oh I see. The universe must be run so that I always
get what I want. I should run the f****** universe!
Well, lots of luck on that one! Maybe you‟ll be the
first to achieve it.”
Albert Ellis

94. 94
“A man who fears suffering is already suffering what
he fears.”
Michel de Montaigne

95. 95
“I hear, and I forget.
I see, and I remember.
I do, and I understand.”
Chinese proverb

96. 96
“The goal of all life is death.”
Sigmund Freud
“The goal of all life is to have a @#*% ball”
Albert Ellis

97. 97
Care about what other people think and you will
always be their prisoner.
Lao Tzu

98. 98
"Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather,
the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair."
Rollo May

99. 99
What it take to have a good relationships is for the
holes in his head to match the rocks in hers.
Albert Ellis