Albert Ellis Quotes

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.

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well . And the world must be easy.

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

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.

If someone can enjoy marching to music in rank and file, I can feel only contempt for him; he has received his large brain by mistake, a spinal cord would have been enough.

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

Stop shoulding on yourself

Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be, and outside of its domain value, elly judgments of all kinds remain necessary.

The 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, indeed—such a probabilistic, uncertain world.

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

Too many people are unaware that it is not outer events or circumstances that will create happiness; rather, it is our perception of events and of ourselves that will create, or uncreate, positive emotions.

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

Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.

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.

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 economy, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. Albert Ellis

For many years now I have had the quaint idea that all humans-yes, the whole six billion of them on this planet-are out of their fucking minds.

Albert Ellis: “The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour”. Apart

The art of love is largely the art of persistence.

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.

People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us.

The expense of making yourself panicked, enraged, and self-pitying is enormous. In time and money lost. In needless effort spent. In uncalled-for mental anguish. In sabotaging others’ happiness. In foolishly frittering away potential joy during the one life—yes, the one life—you’ll probably ever have.

You mainly make yourself needlessly and neurotically miserable by strongly holding absolutist irrational Beliefs (iBs), especially by rigidly believing unconditional shoulds, oughts, and musts.

Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views which they take of them

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

If you prefer to perform well and want to be accepted by others, you are concerned that you will fail and be rejected. Your healthy concern encourages you to act competently and nicely. But if you devoutly believe that you absolutely, under all conditions, must perform well and that you have to be accepted by others, you will then tend to make yourself—yes, make yourself—panicked if you don’t perform as well as you supposedly must.

For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency. If something is irrational, that means it won't work. It's usually unrealistic. People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware. Rational beliefs bring us closer to getting good results in the real world. Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional. The art of love is largely the art of persistence.

You have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting.

Because when you don’t perform remarkably well the next time, back to slobhood you will go! And even when you do perform well, you will be anxious about not doing so next time. So you had better like your fine performance—but not deify yourself for doing it.

If she learned anything in school she learned this, courtesy of Albert Ellis, father of the cognitive-behavioral paradigm shift in psychotherapy. Other people are not here to fulfill our needs or meet our expectations, nor will they always treat us well. Failure to accept this will generate feelings of anger and resentment. Peace of mind comes with taking people as they are and emphasizing the positive.

Anger is the only negative emotion that people all over the world usually want to keep.

What luck! If the theories of Epictetus, Karen Horney (who first talked about the “tyranny of the shoulds”), Alfred Korzybski (the founder of general semantics), and REBT are correct, you almost always bring on your emotional problems by rigidly adopting one of the basic methods of crooked thinking—musturbation. Therefore, if you understand how you upset yourself by slipping into irrational shoulds, oughts, demands, and commands, unconsciously sneaking them into your thinking, you can just about always stop disturbing yourself about anything.

Assume that most times when you feel anxious, depressed, or angry you are not only strongly desiring but also commanding that something go well and that you get what you want. Cherchez le should, cherchez le must! Look for your should, look for your must! Don’t give up until you find it. If you have trouble finding it, seek the help of a friend, relative, or REBT therapist who will help you find it. Persist!

There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.

To help people achieve the three basic REBT philosophies of unconditional self-acceptance, unconditional other-acceptance, and unconditional life-acceptance, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral methods, which are described in this monograph, are used.

You and many outstanding inventors and writers have striven for the ideal and have thereby helped yourself do remarkably well. REBT, therefore, does not oppose competition or striving for outstanding achievement. It advocates task-perfection, not self-perfection.” “What does that mean?” “It means that you can try to be as good, or even as perfect, as you can—at any project or task. You can try to make it ideal. But you are not a good person if it is perfect. You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so.” “How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?” “You don’t! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly—never a bad person.

Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA) instead of Conditional Self-Esteem (CSE). You rate and evaluate your thoughts, feelings, and actions in relation to your main Goals of remaining alive and reasonably happy to see whether they aid these Goals. When they aid them, you rate that as “good” or “effective,” and when they sabotage your Goals you rate that as “bad” or “ineffective.” But you always—yes, always—accept and respect yourself, your personhood, your being, whether or not you perform well and whether or not other people approve of you and your behaviors.

Whenever you have strong negative feelings because unfortunate things are actually happening to you or you imagine that they might occur, see whether these feelings healthfully follow from your wishes and desires to have better things occur. Or are you creating them by going beyond your preferences and inventing powerful shoulds, oughts, musts, demands, commands, and necessities? If so, you are turning concern and caution into overconcern, severe anxiety, and panic. Observe the real difference in your feelings!

Choice gives you doubts and uncertainties. Therefore, you are always somewhat anxious

لن أتمكن من عدم التأثر أبداً بالمضايقات إلا أذا كنت ميتــاً. كيف السبيل الآن إلى التأثر أقل بالمضايقات و أنا على قيد الحياة؟

Keep my desires and goals in mind. Don’t insist that they must or must not be fulfilled. Let me work unfrantically to achieve them. REBT

Evolution is arranged so that a species survives, not so that it will be happy while it survives.

insight will help you very little.

This work led cognitive therapists such as Aaron Beck, David D. Burns, and Albert Ellis to build treatment around the idea that our thoughts shape our emotions, not the other way around. By

Having some support and the reassurance that my family, friends, or others will help me when I am anxious will often reduce my anxiety and panic. But because such support and reassurance may not exist or may not continue, I’d better not rely on it solely. I also had better gain self-confidence and self-support. 8.

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 —

Science is skeptical that the universe includes “deservingness” and “undeservingness” and that it deifies people (and things) for their “good” acts or damns them for their “bad” behavior. It does not have any absolute, universal standard of “good” and “bad” behavior and assumes that if any group sees certain deeds as “good” it will tend to (but doesn’t have to) reward those who act that way and will often (but not always) penalize those who act “badly.

My dad said to me a few years ago: "There's no harm in thinking." We were talking about Crazy Uncle Albert and whether it was right to use your brain to build weapons. He said, "You can't expect people not to think. Not to know things just because they COULD be bad." I said, "Yeah, but then they built it and a hundred thousand people died." My dad laughed and said there were a lot of steps between the thinking and the doing. Which I know, duh. All I was saying is that when you think of doing something, you don't always know the consequences. For a while people THOUGHT about building the bomb, but nothing happened. In the end it was a lot of different people doing a lot of different things, most of which had nothing to do with the bomb, that did make it happen. I think about that sometimes. Who was the person who had the first thought, the one that started it all? And after they had the thought, what was the first thing they did? I know my uncle never thought, Hey, all this great science- one day I'll use it to kill a whole bunch of people. You just look at his picture; he's not that kind of person. And yet, I guess in a way he sort of is.

The next time you feel angry, try to become aware of some of the physical sensations and changes that are occurring in your body. Remember that physical reactions accompanying your chronic anger can lead to damage, illness, and possibly premature death.

You are still a person who completed a perfect project, but never a good person for doing so.” “How, then, do I become an incompetent or bad person?” “You don’t! When you do incompetent or evil acts, you become a person who acted badly—never a bad person.

Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. We’d covered it in my first clinical psych class. Rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT), developed by Columbia University psychologist Albert Ellis, is a treatment

This work led cognitive therapists such as Aaron Beck, David D. Burns, and Albert Ellis to build treatment around the idea that our thoughts shape our emotions, not the other way around. By changing our thinking, we can alleviate depression or simply have greater control over our behavior.

تجنب التردد المحبط. قم بالواجبات المكدرة و لكن الضرورية أو المفيدة أولاً و بسرعة أي اليوم! و إذا كان ترددك على حاله، حاول أن تكافىء نفسك بالطعام أو القراءة أو إقامة علاقات إجتماعية مع الآخرين، بعد أن تؤدي ما تحاول تجنبه. و إذا لم ينفع ذلك، إفرض على نفسك عقوبة كالتحدث إلى شخص ممل لمدة ساعة في كل مرة ترجئ ما عليك القيام به.

you have discovered some of your unscientific beliefs with which you are creating emotional problems and making yourself act against your own interests, use the scientific method to challenge and dispute them. Ask yourself: Is this belief realistic? Is it opposed to the facts of life? Is this belief logical? Is it contradictory to itself or to my other beliefs? Can I prove this belief? Can I falsify it? Does this belief prove that the universe has a law of deservingness or undeservingness? If I act well, do I completely deserve a good life, and if I act badly, do I totally deserve a bad existence? If I continue to strongly hold the belief (and to have the feelings and do the acts it often creates), will I perform well, get the results I want to get, and lead a happier life? Or will holding it tend to make me less happy?

The cognitive psychology revolution has had a dramatic impact on mental health, and two of its major names are David D. Burns and Albert Ellis. Their mantra that thoughts create feelings, not the other way around, has helped many people to get back in control of their lives because it applies logic and reason to the murky pool of emotions.

أنا أسّر بإقناع الآخرين بوجهة نظري، لكنني قادر على تقبل أن يعارضني الآخرون في الرأي من دون أن يجعل ذلك منهم أشخاص سيئين.

يجب أن تعلم أن مخاوفك جزء من المخاوف التي يعاني منها الجميع و أن للآخرين مخاوف غير عقلانية تشلّهم ولو أنها ليست نفسها التي تعيقك

أنت المصدر الأساسي لتوترك و بالتالي المفتاح في يدك لتعيش السعادة

REBT’s Insight No. 1 holds that you have both healthy and unhealthy emotions

By forcefully telling nasty people off, or performing other cathartic acts, you will supposedly stop your aggressive energy from building to harmful levels.

oتضخيم الأمور نادراً ما يساعدك على تحسين الوضع كما أنه سيعود لاحقاً ليخرب جهودك نحو التغيير. فأنت تشعر أن الأمور أسوأ و اكثر إحباطاً مما هي عليه فعلاً حتى إنك تزيدها سوءاً. و العودة بإستمرار إلى الموضوع نفسه تزيد من الضيق الذي يحدثه في النفس بالإضافة إلى أنها تجعل هذا الضيق شعوراً مستديماً. الحل لتضخيم الأمور؟ أن تقنع نفسك أن الأمور السيئة سيئة فقط و ليست فظيعة.

You can figure out by sheer logic that if you were only—and I mean only—to stay with your desires and preferences, and if you were never—and I mean never—to stray into unrealistic demands that your desires have to be fulfilled, you could very rarely disturb, really disturb, yourself about anything. Why? Because your preferences start off with, “I would very much like or prefer to have success, approval, or comfort,” and then end with the conclusion, “But I don’t have to have it. I won’t die without it. And I could be happy (though not as happy) without it.

Annabel, one of my clients who cherished her perfectionism because she felt that it made her a fine writer and an excellent mother, was having a hard time with some of David Burns’s teachings against perfectionism in his book, Feeling Good. Dr. Burns, she thought, told her to give up all ideal goals and stick only to realistic and average ones. Then she couldn’t be disappointed or depressed.

REBT, then, helps you not only to understand what you “are” but to change what you harmfully think, feel, and do. It accepts your desires, wishes, preferences, goals, and values, then tries to help you achieve them. But REBT shows you how to separate your preferences from your insistences—and thus keep from sabotaging your own goals. It gives you insight into what you are now doing rather than into what you (and your damned parents!) have done.

Albert Ellis, who founded Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, a precursor to cognitive behavior therapy, taught me the extent to which we teach ourselves negative feelings about ourselves—and the negative and self-defeating behaviors that follow from these feelings. He showed that underlying our least effective and most harmful behaviors is a philosophical or ideological core that is irrational but is so central to our views of our self and the world that often we aren’t aware that it is only a belief, nor are we aware of how persistently we repeat this belief to ourselves in our daily lives. The belief determines our feelings (sadness, anger, anxiety, etc.), and our feelings in turn influence our behavior (acting out, shutting down, self-medicating to ease the discomfort). To change our behavior, Ellis taught, we must change our feelings, and to change our feelings, we change our thoughts.

For if you damn others for their errors, how can you not also damn yourself—your entire being or personhood—for your failings? Give some thought to that dilemma! Your hating others as persons, in other words, borders much too close on self-hatred.

Getting better is even more important. It consists of clients’ (1) feeling better; (2) continuing to feel better; (3) experiencing fewer disturbing symptoms (e.g., depressing and needlessly inhibiting themselves); (4) making their distressing seldom recur; (5) knowing how to reduce it when they partly cause it; (6) using this knowledge effectively; (7) being less likely to disturb themselves when new adversities occur in their lives; (8) accepting the challenge of making themselves minimally undisturbing, even when unusually aversive events occur.

It became obvious that my negative thoughts were pretty distorted, and that was a huge relief. This type of recovery is what Dr. Albert Ellis has called the “low-level solution.” You suddenly feel better because you discover that your negative thoughts simply aren’t true. A “high-level solution” is different: That’s where you discover that you can feel happy even if your negative thoughts are true. How does that work? Suppose, for example, that the crowd in Anaheim had been much smaller and less enthusiastic. What then? Would that have meant that my “self ” really wasn’t “good enough”? I

this belief realistic? Is it opposed to the facts of life? Is this belief logical? Is it contradictory to itself or to my other beliefs? Can I prove this belief? Can I falsify it? Does this belief prove that the universe has a law of deservingness or undeservingness? If I act well, do I completely deserve a good life, and if I act badly, do I totally deserve a bad existence? If I continue to strongly hold the belief (and to have the feelings and do the acts it often creates), will I perform well, get the results I want to get, and lead a happier life? Or will holding it tend to make me less happy?

يمكنك أن تختار إذا إستطعت أن تبتعد عنهم، لكن توقف عن التذمر من أنهم يقومون بما لا يفترض بهم. إذا كانت لديك القدرة على منعهم، إستخدمها بحكمة. أما إذا كان الأمر خارجاً عن إرادتك فلا تدعي أنك تسيطر على الأمور و تقبل أن الناس سيتصرفون في غالب الأحيان كما يروق لهم و ليس كما تريد. أمر مؤسف، لكنه ليس فظيعاً!

لماذا يعاقب الإنسان نفسه؟ لأنه يسعى بحكم الطبيعة إلى العظمة. بمجرد أن يولد و يتقدم في العمر قليلاً و يصبح مدركاً للرغبة في العيش بسعادة، يبدأ بفرض المطالب على نفسه. فهو ينتقل غالباً من "أنا أرغب في النجاح فعل ا" إلى "عليّ أن أنجح" و من "آمل أن أنال إعجابك" إلى "عليك أن تعجب بي" و من "أتمنى لو ظروف الحياة أفضل" إلى "يجب أن تكون ظروف الحياة أفضل

إذا حدث و توفيت مما تحاول تجنبه، فنحن نعدك بجنازة فخمة :D لن تموت بالطبع، على العكس سيموت جزء منك لو إستمريت في تجنب تلك الأفعال التي تراها "مريعة". توقف عن عمل الأمور "السهلة" التي تقوم بها عمداً لتجنب ما يخيفك. قم بما تخاف القيام به، و من الأفضل أن تحاول ذلك مراراً. لن يكون ذلك العلاج الشافي لكل مشاكلك، إلا أنني واثق أنه سيساعدك إلى حد كبير.

Science, as I pointed out in the previous chapter, is flexible and nondogmatic. It sticks to facts and to reality (which always can change) and to logical thinking (which does not contradict itself and hold two opposite views at the same time). But it also avoids rigid all-or-none and either/or thinking and sees that reality is often two sided and includes contradictory events and characteristics. Thus, in my relations with you, I am not a totally good person or a bad person but a person who sometimes treats you well and sometimes treats you badly. Instead of viewing world events in a rigid, absolute way, science assumes that such events, and especially human affairs, usually follow the laws of probability.

If Albert Einstein, the last century’s very poster boy for the cunning man and the wild-haired magician of science, knew one thing, then it was simply that there was always more to be known. He didn’t pridefully condemn dreams of physics and incomplete theories. He pointed off into the future and named the unknown things as, in fact, spooky action at a distance.

إن إخبار نفسك الأفكار الفلسفية الفعالة ليس كافياً بل يجب أن تقتنع بها فعلاً. كإنسان أنت قادر أن ترددها لنفسك من دون قناعة فعلية و في الوقت نفسه تكون مقتنعاً بشدة بنقيضها. كما أنه من الممكن أن تجاهر بأي شعارات للمساعدة الذاتية إلا أنك تظل غير مقتنع حتى ولو كررتها لنفسك مرات عدة. لماذا؟ لأن لدى الإنسان على الأرجح رغبات و عادات قوية تعطل التفكير المنطقي في بعض الأحيان

كلما قلت لنفسك " لا أحتمل أو أطيق هذا الوضع" تذكر أن القول لا يمنع أن الظرف الذي تمر به لا يزال موجوداً و أنك تتحمله. إذا قلت "لا أحتمل هذه الوظيفة" أو "لا أطيق هذا الزواج"، يمكن لأن تسعى إلى الإستقالة أو الطلاق و هما حلان منطقيان لتغيير الوضع. لكن عندما "لا تطيق الوضع" لكنك تظل في الوظيفة أو الزواج فأنت في الواقع تتحمل الوضع، تتذمر من أنه لا يُحتمل بينما هذا هو ما تفعله في الحقيقة.

Try to remember the last time you felt extremely angry. Recall what you focused upon and how you acted. Were you able to reasonably consider good courses of action? Were you able to look at all your options? Did you make the best decision? Do you regret something you said or did? If you are like most people, you will see that you hardly think and behave at your best when you feel enraged.

هل تح و ل غالباً أمانيك العزيزة على قلبك إالى أوامر قاسية؟ إذا لم تحقق بعض الرغبات العابرة كالفوز في مباراة ودية لكرة الطاولة أو مشاهدة فيلم سينمائي، فإنك تستمر في حياتك دون خيبة أمل كبيرة. لكن إذا لم تحقق رغبات قوية مثل أن تصبح بطل كرة الطاولة او أن تشاهد بطلك المفضل في هذا الفيلم المميز اليلة، فإنتبه! لأن ما سيحصل هو أنك ستصيح غاضباً: "لا أحتمل هذا الأمر! إنه أمر مريع! إنه مثير للغضب! لا يمكنني تحمله. حياتي فارغة. ما المعنى من الإستمرار!

As a fallible human, you can't help failing at work and at love, so your self-esteem is at best temporary. Even when it is high, you are in real danger of failing next time and of plummeting down again. Worse yet, since you know this after awhile, and you know that your worth as a person depends on your success, you make yourself anxious about important achievements-and, very likely, your anxiety interferes with your performances and makes you more likely to fail.

More specifically, this book has the following goals—which I do not think you will find presented, all together, in any other book about acquiring mental health and happiness. • It encourages you to have and to express strong feelings when something goes wrong with your life. But it clearly distinguishes between your feeling healthily and helpfully concerned, sorry, sad, frustrated, or annoyed and your feeling unhealthy and destructively panicked, depressed, enraged, and self-pitying.

When you have discovered some of your unscientific beliefs with which you are creating emotional problems and making yourself act against your own interests, use the scientific method to challenge and dispute them. Ask yourself: Is this belief realistic? Is it opposed to the facts of life? Is this belief logical? Is it contradictory to itself or to my other beliefs? Can I prove this belief? Can I falsify it? Does this belief prove that the universe has a law of deservingness or undeservingness? If I act well, do I completely deserve a good life, and if I act badly, do I totally deserve a bad existence? If I continue to strongly hold the belief (and to have the feelings and do the acts it often creates), will I perform well, get the results I want to get, and lead a happier life? Or will holding it tend to make me less happy? Persist at using the scientific method of questioning and challenging your irrational Beliefs until you begin to give them up, increase your effectiveness, and enjoy yourself more.

Intellectual Fascism – 3/3 To make matters still worse, intellectual fascist frequently demand of themselves, as well as others, perfect competence and universal achievement. If they are excellent mathematicians or dancers, they demand that they be the most accomplished. If they are outstanding scientists or manufacturers, they also must be first-rate painters or writers. If they are fine poets, they not only need to be the finest, but likewise must be great lovers, drawing room wits, and political experts. Naturally, only being human, they fail at many or most of these ventures. And then - O, poetic justice! - they apply to themselves the same excoriations and despisements that they apply to others when they fail to be universal geniuses. However righteous their denials, therefore - and even though readers who be now are not squirming with guilt are probably screaming with indignation, I will determinedly continue - the typical politico-social "liberals" of our day are fascistic in several significant ways. For they arbitrarily define certain human traits as "good" or "superior"; they automatically exclude most others from any possibility of achieving their "good" standards; they scorn, combat, and in many ways persecute those who do not live up to these capricious goals; and finally, in most instances they more or less fail to live up to their own definitional standards and bring down neurotic self-pity and blame on their own heads. .... What is the alternative? Assuming that intellectual fascism exists on a wide scale today, and that it does enormous harm and little good to people's relations with themselves and others, what philosophy of living are they to set up in its place? Surely, you may well ask, I am not suggesting an uncritical, sentimental equalitarianism, whereunder everyone would fully accept and hobnob with everyone else and where no one would attempt to excel or perfect himself at anything? No, I am not. On the contrary, significant human differences (as well as sameness) exists; and they add much variety and zest to living; and that one human may sensibly cultivate the company of another just because this other is different from, and perhaps in certain respects superior to, others. At the same time, "one's worth as a human being is not to be measured in terms of one's popularity, success, achievement, intelligence, or any other such trait, but solely in terms of one's Humanity".

Anger can be likened to an architect’s blueprint. The availability of a blueprint does not cause a building to be constructed, but it does make construction easier.

Albert Ellis once said, “Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it’s conditional.” People with self-compassion don’t feel the need to constantly prove themselves, and research shows they are less likely to feel like a “loser.

Intellectual Fascism – 1/3 If fascism is defined as the arbitrary belief that individuals possessing certain traits (such as those who are white, Aryan, or male) are intrinsically superior to individuals possessing certain other traits (such as those who are black, Jewish, or female), and that therefore the "superior" individuals should have distinct politico-social privileges, then the vast majority of (American) liberals and so called antifascists are actually intellectual fascists. In fact, the more politico-economically liberal our citizens are, the more intellectually fascistic they often tend to be. Intellectual fascism - in accordance with the above definition - is the arbitrary belief that individuals possessing certain traits (such as those who are intelligent, cultured, artistic, creative, or achieving) are intrinsically superior to individuals possessing certain other traits (such as those who are stupid, uncultured, unartistic, uncreative, or unachieving). The reason why the belief of the intellectual fascist, like that of the politico-social fascist, is arbitrary is simple: there is no objective evidence to support it. At bottom, it is based on value judgements or prejudices which are definitional in character and are not empirically validatable, nor is it falsifiable. It is a value chosen by a group of prejudiced people - and not necessarily by a majority. This is not to deny that verifiable differences exist among various individuals. They certainly do. Blacks, in some ways, are different from whites; short people do differ from tall ones; stupid individuals can be separated from bright ones. Anyone who denies this, whatever his or her good intentions, is simply not accepting reality. Human differences, moreover, usually have their distinct advantages. Under tropical conditions, the darkly pigmented blacks seem to fare better than do the lightly pigmented whites. At the same time, many blacks and fewer whites become afflicted with sickle-cell anaemia. When it comes to playing basketball, tall men are generally superior to short ones. But as jockeys and coxswains, the undersized have their day. For designing and operating electric computers, a plethora of gray matter is a vital necessity; for driving a car for long distances, it is likely to prove a real handicap. Let us face the fact, then, that under certain conditions some human traits are more advantageous - or "better" - than some other traits. Whether we approve the fact or not, they are. All people, in today's world, may be created free, but they certainly are not created equal. Granting that this is so, the important question is: Does the possession of a specific advantageous endowment make an individual a better human? Or more concretely: Does the fact that someone is an excellent athlete, artist, author, or achiever make him or her a better person? Consciously or unconsciously, both the "politico-social" and the "intellectual fascist" say yes to these questions. This is gruesomely clear when we consider politico-social or lower-order fascists. For they honestly and openly not only tell themselves and the world that being white, Aryan, or male, or a member of the state-supported party is a grand and glorious thing; but, simultaneously, they just as honestly and openly admit that they despise, loathe, consider as scum of the earth individuals who are not so fortunate as to be in these select categories. Lower-order fascists at least have the conscious courage of their own convictions. Not so, alas, intellectual or higher-order fascists. For they almost invariably pride themselves on their liberality, humanitarianism, and lack of arbitrary prejudice against certain classes of people. But underneath, just because they have no insight into their fascistic beliefs, they are often more vicious, in their social effects, than their lower-order counterparts.

Intellectual Fascism – 2/3 Take, by way of illustration, two well-educated, presumably liberal, intelligent people in our culture who are arguing with each other about some point. What, out of irritation and disgust, is one likely to call the other? A "filthy black," a "dirty Jew bastard," or a "black-eyed runt"? Heavens, no. But a "stupid idiot," a "nincompoop," a "misinformed numbskull"? By all means, yes. And will the note of venom, of utter despisement that is in the detractor's voice, be any different from that in the voice of the out-and-out fascist with his racial, religious, and political epithets? Honestly, now: will it? Suppose the individual against whom a well-educated, presumably liberal, intelligent person aims scorn actually is stupid, or misinformed. Is this a crime? Should he, perforce, curl up and die because he is so afflicted? Is she an utterly worthless, valueless blackguard for not possessing the degree of intelligence and knowledge that her detractor thinks she should possess? And yet - let us be ruthlessly honest with ourselves, now! - isn't this exactly what the presumably liberal person is saying and implying - that the individual whose traits she dislikes doesn't deserve to live? Isn't this what we (for it is not hard to recognize our own image here, is it?) frequently are alleging when we argue with, criticize, and judge others in our everyday living? The facts, in regard to higher-order fascism, are just as clear as those in regard to lower-order prejudice. For just as everyone in our society cannot be, except through the process of arbitrary genocide or "eugenic" elimination, Aryan, or tall, or white, so cannot everyone be bright, or artistically talented, or successful in some profession. In fact, even if we deliberately bred only higher intelligent and artistically endowed individuals to each other, and forced the rest of the human race to die off, we still would be far from obtaining a race of universal achievers: since, by definition, topflight achievement can only be attained by a relatively few leaders in most fields of endeavour, and is a "relative" rather than an "absolute" possibility. The implicit goals of intellectual fascism, then, are, at least in today's world, impractical and utopian. Everyone cannot be endowed with artistic or intellectual genius; only a small minority can be. And if we demand that all be in that minority, to what are we automatically condemning those who clearly cannot be? Obviously: to being blamed and despised for their "deficiencies"; to being lower-class citizens; to having self-hatred and minimal self-acceptance. Even this, however, hardly plumbs the inherent viciousness of intellectual fascism. For whereas lower-order or politico-economic fascism at least serves as a form of neurotic defensiveness for those who uphold its tenets, higher-order fascism fails to provide such defences and actually destroys them. Thus, politico-social fascists believe that others are to be despised for not having certain "desirable" traits - but that they are not to be applauded for having them. From a psychological standpoint, they compensate for their own underlying feelings of inadequacy by insisting that they are super-adequate and those who are not like them are subhumans. Intellectual Fascists start out with a similar assumption but more often than not get blown to bits by their own homemade explosives. For although they can at first assume that they are bright, talented, and potentially achieving, they must eventually prove that they are. Because, in the last analysis, they tend to define talent and intelligence in terms of concrete achievement, and because outstanding achievement in our society is mathematically restricted to a few, they rarely can have real confidence in their own possession of the values they have "arbitrarily deified".

Intellectual Fascism 3/3 To make matters still worse, intellectual fascists frequently demand of themselves, as well as others, perfect competence and universal achievement. If they are excellent mathematicians or dancers, they demand that they be the most accomplished. If they are outstanding scientists or manufacturers, they also must be first-rate painters or writers. If they are fine poets, they not only need to be the finest, but likewise must be great lovers, drawing room wits, and political experts. Naturally, only being human, they fail at many or most of these ventures. And then - O, poetic justice! - they apply to themselves the same excoriations and despisements that they apply to others when they fail to be universal geniuses. However righteous their denials, therefore - and even though readers who by now are not squirming with guilt are probably screaming with indignation, I will determinedly continue - the typical politico-social "liberals" of our day are fascistic in several significant ways. For they arbitrarily define certain human traits as "good" or "superior"; they automatically exclude most others from any possibility of achieving their "good" standards; they scorn, combat, and in many ways persecute those who do not live up to these capricious goals; and finally, in most instances they more or less fail to live up to their own definitional standards and bring down neurotic self-pity and blame on their own heads. .... What is the alternative? Assuming that intellectual fascism exists on a wide scale today, and that it does enormous harm and little good to people's relations with themselves and others, what philosophy of living are they to set up in its place? Surely, you may well ask, I am not suggesting an uncritical, sentimental equalitarianism, whereunder everyone would fully accept and hobnob with everyone else and where no one would attempt to excel or perfect himself at anything? No, I am not. On the contrary, significant human differences (as well as sameness) exists; and they add much variety and zest to living; and that one human may sensibly cultivate the company of another just because this other is different from, and perhaps in certain respects superior to, others. At the same time, "one's worth as a human being is not to be measured in terms of one's popularity, success, achievement, intelligence, or any other such trait, but solely in terms of one's Humanity".

people often want to remain angry. This represents a very important difference between anger and other troublesome emotions.

how it blocks them from reaching their goals

Zettle notes, we misuse many nouns in psychology instead of verbs and thereby create semifictional entities that Kevin Everett FitzMaurice (1997) calls “thought things.” Thus we say, “My feelings upset me when panic overwhelms me when I am in closed spaces” instead of, “I upset myself by panicking when I am in closed spaces.

Atatürk bir eğitim sıçraması yapmak için Tevhid-i Tedrisat'ı hayata geçirdi, yurtdışına talebe gönderdi. Peki bu gençler döndükleri zaman ne yapacaklar? Öğretmen olacaklar. Yurtdışına talebe göndermenin ana gayesi bu. Yurtdışına tahsile gidenlerden biri de benim hocalarımdan, rahmetli İhsan Ketin. İhsan Bey lisans tahsilini bitiriyor, oradaki hocası "Sen çok başarılısın. Memleketine dönüp liseye öğretmen olman yazık olur. Kal burada ve doktora yap" diyor. Bunun için İhsan Bey Milli Eğitim'e müracaat ediyor ve doktora yapması için kalmasına müsaade ediyorlar. Sonra Mustafa Kemal'in yurtdışına tahsile gönderilen bu talebelere söylediği bir söz vardır: "Sizleri birer kıvılcım olarak gönderiyorum, volkan olarak dönünüz." Ne müthiş bir nasihattır. Yurtdışına giden, benim de öğrencileri olma imkânı bulduğum İhsan Ketin, Ekrem Akurgal, Sedat Alp gibi hocalarımdan bu hikâyeleri çokça dinledim. “Öyle bir heyecanla gittik ki, Almanlara tepeden bakıyorduk. Paramız daha değerliydi. Almanya kargaşa içindeydi. Hitler iktidara gelmeden evvel işsizlik yüzde elli civarındaydı. Günde yirmi-otuz kişi sokaklarda öldürülüyordu" diye anlatıyorlardı. Ortak kanaatleri oranın bir cehennem, bizim vatanın ise bir cennet olduğu istikametindeydi. Almanlar bizimkilerle kendilerini yemeğe götürsünler diye arkadaşlık etmeye çalışırlarmış, çünkü bizimkiler daha zengin! Şimdi, bu insanların dönecekleri yer üniversite, Darülfünun. Fakat buranın durumu bir felaket. Sadece bir kişinin varlığından söz edebiliriz, o da Fuad Köprülü. Şahane bir Türkiyat Enstitüsü var. Köprülü, dönemin çok önemli bilim insanları olan Bartold, Karçkovski ve Oldenburg'un imzalarıyla Rus Bilimler Akademisi'ne seçiliyor. Hatta Köprülü, 1928 yılında Bartold'u Darülfünun'a davet eder ve Bartold, burada on iki ders verir. Sonra bu derslerin metinleri önce Türkçe, sonra da sair dillerde yayınlanır. Ardından da hep beraber Azerbaycan'daki meşhur Türkiyat Kongresi'ne giderler. Şunu söylemeye çalışıyorum: Köprülü'den başka hemen hemen işe yarar insan yok Darülfünun'da. Atatürk de nihayetinde bir asker, nasıl tartacak bu vaziyeti? İsviçre'den Albert Malche davet ediliyor. Kendisi durumu tetkik ettikten sonra Mustafa Kemal'e bir rapor takdim ediyor. Özetle, "Ne burası üniversiteye, ne de buradaki hocalar üniversite hocalarına benziyor." der. Hocaların çoğunun diploması dahi yok.

To successfully reduce your anger and more sanely face life’s difficulties, give up the idea that unfair situations, difficult people, and great frustrations automatically make you furious. Yes, they help. But you still largely create what you feel. To accept that responsibility is a crucial first

All your feelings (just because you honestly feel them) are authentic. But none of them is absolutely and certainly "true.

أنا أكره أن أُعامل بقسوة أو بظلم لكن القاعدة ليست أن أعامل دائماً بعدل و بمراعاة لشعوري كما أنني يجب ألا أعير الأمر أهمية أكثر من اللازم أو أن أصبح حقوداً. إن الهوس بالظلم ظلم على نفســي.

أن أنكر أنني أعاني من مشاكل نفسية معناه أنني أنكر أنني أحلها.

إن التردد و التأجيل لن يسهلا عليّ القيام بمهمة مملة أو صعبة. سأحــاول أن أؤجل التأجيـل!

لو هبط سكان المريخ على الأرض و كانوا عاقلين لضحكوا كيف أن شخصاً ذكيا مثلى يتصرف على هذا القدر من الغبــاء. من الأفضل أن أتعلم كيف أضحك أنا معهم :)

ليس من المجدي أن تسعى لتحقيق الذات بشكل مثالي أو كامل لأن ذلك سينعكس عليك سلباً. التطرف في المساعي الجيدة غالباً ما يحمل نتائج غير سارة.

عندما تشعر بالضيق، على الأرجح أنك تفكر شعورياً أو لا شعورياً بطريقة غير منطقية أو هدامة. فأنت تأخذ رغبات أو أهداف أو تفضيلات عادية و تحولها إلى فروض و واجبات إجبارية

أنت تسبب الضيق لنفسك عندما تفرض عليها تطلبات متصلبة و آمرة. إلا أنه بإمكانك أن تقلل من هذا الضيق عندما تعيد النظر في هذه الحاجات و تفضل عليها مقاربات بديلة

من الممكن تغيير التطلبات المبالغ بها التي تفرضها على نفسك بما أنك أنت من أوجدها لنفسك. من السهل والطبيعي أن تقصدها و من الممكن أن يشجعك الكثيرون على إتباعها، فقد إعتدت عليها حتى باتت جزءاا من تفكيرك و أنت تلجأ إليها من دون تفكير. إذا كانت لا تزال تؤثر فيك الآن، فهذا لأنك لا تزال مقتنعا ً بها. لكن لديك القدرة على عدم الإقتناع بها لأن مع الميل الطبيعي إلى تدمير الذات، هناك الميل الطبيعي إلى مساعدة الذات. و بإمكانك أن تستخدم قدرتك الطبيعية على حل المشاكل لإبطال الآثار السيئة للميول الهدام. المهم هو أن تختار القيام بذلك و أن تعمل على التنفيذ