"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"Worrying about dying will hardly help you live."

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

"Stop shoulding on yourself"

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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