Eating is always a decision, nobody forces your hand to pick up food and put it into your mouth.
Albert EllisRead
As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses a philosophical stance on the distinction between personal feelings and actions against harmful behaviors.
Albert Ellis articulates a complex emotional response to Adolf Hitler, conveying that while he was prepared to take action against Hitler's aggressive actions during the war, he did not harbor personal hatred towards Hitler himself. This reflects a nuanced understanding that one can oppose destructive actions without succumbing to personal animosity, emphasizing the importance of focusing on the actions rather than the individual.
Themes
PhilosophyHateWarActionEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on moral philosophy, one might quote Ellis to illustrate the importance of separating actions from personal feelings.
More from Albert Ellis
All quotes →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.
Albert EllisRead
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.
Albert EllisRead
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.
Albert EllisRead
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 EllisRead
Attempts to help humans eliminate all self-ratings and views self-esteem as a self-defeating concept that encourages them to make conditional evaluations of self. Instead, it teaches people unconditional self-acceptance.
Albert EllisRead
Similar quotes
the size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider’s measurement of it but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it.
Mark TwainRead
Although gold and silver are not by nature money, money is by nature gold and silver.
Karl MarxRead
Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.
Wallace StevensRead
To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!
Emile M. CioranRead
Our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives by … not paying attention?
Joshua FoerRead
Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams.
Oscar WildeRead