"Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional."

"The goal...is not to change your desires and wishes but to persuade you to stop demanding that you absolutely must have what you wish-from yourself, from others, and from the world. You can by all means keep your wishes, preferences, and desires, but unless you prefer to remain needlessly anxious, not your grandiose demands."

"In a sense, the religious person must have no real views of his own and it is presumptuous of him, in fact, to have any. In regard to sex-love affairs, to marriage and family relations, to business, to politics, and to virtually everything else that is important in his life, he must try to discover what his god and his clergy would like him to do; and he must primarily do their bidding."

"Acceptance is not love. You love a person because he or she has lovable traits, but you accept everybody just because they're alive and human."

"You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it."

"Even when people act nastily to you, don't condemn them or retaliate."

"You never truly need what you want. That is the main and thoroughgoing key to serenity."

"Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor."

"The emotionally sound person should be able to take risks, to ask himself what he really would like to do in life, and then to try to do this, even though he has to risk defeat or failure. He should be adventurous (though not necessarily foolhardy); be willing to try almost anything once, just to see how he likes it; and look forward to some breaks in his usual life routines."

"The art of love... is largely the art of persistence."

"To err is human; to forgive people and yourself for poor behavior is to be sensible and realistic."

"The great majority of the things we now make ourselves panicked about are self-created 'dangers' that exist almost entirely in our own imaginations."

"The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery."

"Whatever may be, I am still largely the creator and ruler of my emotional destiny."

"If people stopped looking on their emotions as ethereal, almost inhuman processes, and realistically viewed them as being largely composed of perceptions, thoughts, evaluations, and internalized sentences, they would find it quite possible to work calmly and concertedly at changing them."

"Religious creeds encourage some of the craziest kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and favor severe manifestations of neurosis, borderline personality states, and sometimes even psychosis."

"Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor."

"If human emotions largely result from thinking, then one may appreciably control one's feelings by controlling one's thoughts - or by changing the internalized sentences, or self-talk, with which one largely created the feeling in the first place."

"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own."

"Neurosis is just a high-class word for whining."

"Even injustice has it's good points. It gives me the challenge of being as happy as I can in an unfair world."

"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."

"By honestly acknowledging your past errors, but never damning yourself for them, you can learn to use your past for your own future benefit."

"It is only in your mind that you have to excel, at anything or everything. Of course, it would be very nice to excel at most things. Indeed, we recommend that you try and do your best. But realistically, you are entitled to do the bare minimum to get by. All your accomplishments are just a bonus, something to enjoy, not requirements. You don't have to do anything to prove that you are worthy of existing."