// JavaScript Document
// Ellis Quotes Script written by Will Ross
// 2006

<!--

// ***********************************************
// To add new quotes
// Copy the following:
// 
// text[number++] = "PLACE QUOTE HERE"
// 
// Repeat as often as required
// ***********************************************

function text() {
};

text = new text();
number = 0;

// textArray
text[number++] = "Demanding that you be approved by all those whose approval you would like to have sets a perfectionistic, unattainable goal: because even if 99 people accept or love you, there will always be the hundredth, the hundred-and-first, and so on, who do not."
text[number++] = "No human being can be perfectly competent and masterful in all or most respects; and most people cannot be truly outstanding even in a single major respect."
text[number++] = "Man is a distinctly fallible animal who can only be realistically expected to make mistakes and errors."
text[number++] = "There is no reason, why things should be different from the way they are, no matter how unfortunate or unfair their present state of existence is."
text[number++] = "It is difficult for most people in our society to change or control their emotions, largely because they rarely attempt to do so and get so little practice at doing this."
text[number++] = "Worry or over-concern frequently leads to fantasies about the 'harmfulness' in a given situation that actually have no basis in fact."
text[number++] = "Self-confidence arises only through doing something, and virtually never through avoidance. "
text[number++] = "If you spend a good part of your life avoiding difficult problems and responsibilities, you may possibly gain an 'easier' life but you will almost certainly concomitantly acquire a less self-confident existence"
text[number++] = "People seem to get along best when they are goal-oriented in the sense of being committed to and working steadily and relatively calmly at some long-range, fairly difficult project."
text[number++] = "Life, at bottom, is acting, moving, experiencing, creating; and human beings miss enormous amounts of high-level satisfaction when they focus on avoiding challenging and difficult problems of living."
text[number++] = "Let us by all means be socially cooperative; but as little as possible subservient."
text[number++] = "The more you rely on others to guide you and help you do various things, the less you will tend to do these things for yourself, and in consequence to learn by doing them. "
text[number++] = "The so-called influence of the past can be employed as a powerful excuse not to change your ways in the present."
text[number++] = "In existing society our family and other institutions directly and indirectly indoctrinate all of us so that we grow up to believe many superstitious, senseless ideas."
text[number++] = "Many of our most cherished and dogmatically upheld values—such as those of monogamous marriage, freedom, acquisitiveness, democracy, education, monotheistic religion, technology and science—are only assumed to be 'good' values and are rarely seriously reviewed or questioned by those who keep drumming them into the heads of our children."
text[number++] = "Although it is doubtless desirable for adults to be loved and approved by many of the people with whom they come into intimate contact, it is questionable whether it is absolutely necessary for adults to be accepted by virtually every other person in their community whom they deem to be significant to them."
text[number++] = "Even if you win the approval of all the people you consider important, if you direly need their acceptance, you will have to keep worrying constantly about how much they accept you or whether they still approve you."
text[number++] = "It is impossible, no matter what efforts you make, for you always to be lovable."
text[number++] = "Because of their own intrinsic prejudices, some of the people whose approval you value highly will inevitably dislike or be indifferent to you."
text[number++] = "Assuming that you could, theoretically, win the approbation of virtually everyone you wanted to approve you, you would have to spend so much time and energy doing so that you would have little remaining for other rewarding pursuits."
text[number++] = "In trying ceaselessly to be approved by others, you invariably have to become ingratiating or obsequious—and thereby give up many of your own wants and preferences and become considerably less self-directing."
text[number++] = "Loving, rather than being loved, is an absorbing, creative, self-expressing occupation. But loving tends to he inhibited rather than abetted by the dire need to be loved."
text[number++] = "To try to be quite successful is sane enough, since there are real advantages (such as monetary rewards or increased pleasure in participation) if one succeeds in a job, a game, or an artistic endeavor. But to demand that one must succeed is to make oneself a certain prey to anxiety and feelings of personal worthlessness."
text[number++] = "Although being reasonably successful and achieving has distinct advantages (particularly in our society), compulsive drives for accomplishment usually result in undue stress, hypertension, and forcing oneself beyond one's own physical limitations."
text[number++] = "The individual who must succeed in an outstanding way is not merely challenging himself and testing his own powers (which may well be creatively beneficial); but he is invariably comparing himself to and fighting to best others."
text[number++] = "It is senseless to keep comparing oneself invidiously to other achieving individuals, since one has no control whatever over their performances, but only over one's own."
text[number++] = "One has no control, in many instances, over one's own achievements and characteristics—cannot, for example, be beautiful when one is homely or a fine concert pianist when one is tone deaf—and it is therefore pointless for one to be over-concerned about these uncontrollable traits."
text[number++] = "To define one's personal worth in terms of one's extrinsic achievements, and to contend that one must excel others in order to be happy, is to subscribe to a thoroughly undemocratic, fascist-like philosophy, which does not essentially differ from the idea that one must be Aryan, or white, or Christian, or a social registerite in order to be a respectable, worthwhile human being."
text[number++] = "Concentrating on the belief that one must be competent and successful often effectively sidetracks one from a main goal of happy living: namely, experimentally discovering what one's own most enjoyable and rewarding interests in life are and courageously (no matter what others think) spending a good part of one's brief span of existence engaging in these pursuits."
text[number++] = "Over-concern with achievement normally results in one's acquiring enormous fears of taking chances, of making mistakes, and of failing at certain tasks—all of which fears, in turn, tend to sabotage the very achievement for which one is striving."
text[number++] = "Inordinate self-consciousness at performing any task, which generally follows from preoccupation with failing at it (and thereby defining oneself as worthless), almost always leads to (a) complete disenjoyment of the task and (b) propensity to fail miserably at it."
text[number++] = "A 'bad' act does not make a 'bad' person."
text[number++] = "Blame, hostility, and anger are almost certainly the most essential and serious causes of most human disturbances."
text[number++] = "If children were not brought up with the philosophy of blaming themselves and others for possible or actual mistakes and wrongdoings, they would have great difficulty becoming anxious, guilty, or depressed (which feelings result from self-blame) or hostile, bigoted, or grandiose (which result from blaming others)."
text[number++] = "It is simply amazing how many millions of people on this earth are terribly upset and miserable when things are not the way they would like them to be, or when the world is the way the world is."
text[number++] = "There are many reasons, especially the facts of reality themselves, why unpleasant situations and events are the way they are."
text[number++] = "Disliking nasty people or conditions is perfectly reasonable; but becoming seriously disturbed because reality is reality is patently absurd."
text[number++] = "It would often be nice if things were different from the way they are, or if we got what we wanted out of life instead of what we actually get. But the fact that it would be nice if this were so hardly makes it so nor gives us sensible reason to cry when it is not so."
text[number++] = "Getting enduringly or extremely upset over a given set of circumstances will rarely help us to change them for the better. "
text[number++] = "The more upset we make ourselves over the unpleasant facts of life, the more we shall tend to become disorganized and ineffective in our efforts to improve existing conditions."
text[number++] = "When things are not the way we would like them to be, we should certainly strive, and often mightily strive, to change them. But when it is impossible (for the nonce or forever) to change them—as, alas, it often is—the only sane thing to do is to become philosophically resigned to our fate and accept things the way they are."
text[number++] = "The fact that children, who have little ability to think philosophically, usually are unable to tolerate any amount of inevitable frustration hardly proves that adults cannot calmly do so."
text[number++] = "It is not really the frustration itself, but one's subjective and moralistic attitude toward this frustration that really causes hostility and aggression. "
text[number++] = "No matter how badly you may be frustrated or deprived of something that you badly want, you normally need not make yourself terribly unhappy about this deprivation if you do not define your preference as a dire necessity."
text[number++] = "In our present society, people rarely physically or economically assault you; and almost all their 'onslaughts' consist of psychological attacks which have little or no power to harm you unless you erroneously believe that they are harmful."
text[number++] = "It is impossible for you to be harmed by purely verbal or gestural attacks unless you specifically let yourself—or actually make yourself—be harmed."
text[number++] = "It is never the words or gestures of others that hurt you—but your attitudes toward, your reactions to these symbols."
text[number++] = "Although millions of civilized people stoutly believe that they cannot control their emotions and that unhappiness is therefore forced upon them no matter what they do, this idea is quite false."
text[number++] = " 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."
text[number++] = "Once one has told oneself for a long period of time that one really should get upset about certain annoyances or dangers, one will then form the habit of becoming so upset about these things that it will be most difficult, if not impossible, for one to remain calm."
text[number++] = "Once one tells oneself for a long enough period of time that one need not upset oneself about annoyances or dangers, one will then find it difficult to get over-excited about them and will find it easy to remain calm when they occur."
text[number++] = "Instead of erroneously believing that his emotions are invariably beyond his control, the informed and intelligent individual will acknowledge that unhappiness largely (though not entirely) comes from within and is created by the unhappy person himself."
text[number++] = "If you become terribly worried or over-concerned about some possible hazard, you usually become so excited and edgy that you are actually prevented from objectively observing whether this 'hazard' is real or exaggerated."
text[number++] = "Intense anxiety about the possibility of an actual danger's occurring will frequently prevent your being able to meet this danger effectively when and if it does occur."
text[number++] = "Worrying intensely over the possibility of some dire event's happening will not only not prevent it from occurring in most cases, but will often contribute to bringing it about."
text[number++] = "Over-concern about a dangerous situation usually leads to your exaggerating the chances of its actually occurring."
text[number++] = "Some dreaded events—such as your ultimately becoming seriously ill or dying—are inevitable and nothing, including your worrying about them, can possibly prevent them from occurring."
text[number++] = "By worrying about inevitable events—such as your ultimately becoming seriously ill or dying—you do not in any manner, shape, or form, decrease the chances of their occurring; and you not only thereby manage to obtain the disadvantages of the dreaded events themselves, but create for yourself the additional, and often much more crippling, disadvantages of being upset about these events long before they actually occur. "
text[number++] = "Many dangerous and normally dreaded events—such as the possibility of your becoming diabetic if you happen to be born into a family that has a high incidence of this disease—would not actually be so handicapping if they did occur as your worries about their occurrence often will make them appear to be."
text[number++] = "The idea that there is an easy way out of life's difficulties only considers the ease of avoidance at the exact moment of decision, and fails to consider the many problems and annoyances engendered by avoidance."
text[number++] = "Although the effort you take in avoiding a decision or a difficulty seems, often, to be inconsequential and easy to perform, it is actually deceptively long and hard. For you may spend literally many hours of self-debate, self-torture, and ingenious plotting and scheming before you can arrange not to commit yourself to a difficult but potentially rewarding task; and the discomfort you thus create for yourself may be ten times as great as the discomfort that you imagine would exist if you actually committed yourself to this task."
text[number++] = "Human beings seem to be 'happiest' not when they are sitting passively around doing little or nothing, and perhaps not even when they are (for relatively few moments at a time) highly excited and intensely emotionally involved in something. Rather, they seem to get along best when they are goal-oriented in the sense of being committed to and working steadily and relatively calmly at some long-range, fairly difficult project (whether it be in the field of art, science, business, or anything else)."
text[number++] = "A life of ease and avoidance of responsibility may often be temporarily satisfying—especially on periods of vacation from a more active kind of life—but it is rarely continually rewarding."
text[number++] = "Although we theoretically endorse freedom and independence in our society, many of us appear to believe that we should be dependent on others and that we need someone stronger than ourselves on whom to rely."
text[number++] = "Although it is true that all of us are somewhat dependent on others in this complex society (since we could hardly buy food, ride on trains, clothe ourselves, or do a hundred other necessary acts without considerable collaborative division of labor), there is no reason why we should maximize this dependency and literally demand that others make our choices and do our thinking for us. "
text[number++] = "The more you rely on others, the more you are bound, in the first or last analysis, to give up many things that you want to do in life and to go along, out of dire need for their help, with things that they want you to do."
text[number++] = "Dependency, by definition, is inversely related to individualism and independence; and you cannot very well be you and be sorely dependent on others at one and the same time."
text[number++] = "The more you rely on others to guide you and help you do various things, the less you will tend to do these things for yourself, and in consequence to learn by doing them. This means that the more dependent you are, the still more dependent you tend to become."
text[number++] = "If you depend on others in order to feel safe—for then you cannot make mistakes yourself or be blamed if you do make them—you essentially lose rather than gain basic security: since the only real security that you can have in life is that of knowing that, no matter how many mistakes you make, you are still not worthless, but merely a fallible human being."
text[number++] = "Dependency leads, in a vicious circle, to less and less self-confidence and greater anxiety. Being dependent constitutes a never-ending quest for a never-findable (by that means) sense of self-esteem and security."
text[number++] = "By depending on others, you put yourself to a considerable degree at their mercy, and hence at the mercy of outside forces which you often cannot possibly control."
text[number++] = "If you depend on yourself to make decisions and to carry out actions, you can at least work with and rely on your own thinking and behavior. But if you depend on others, you never know when they will cease being dependable, move to another part of the world or die."
text[number++] = "Instead of striving to be dependent on other individuals (or upon hypothetical abstractions, such as the State or God), the rational individual should do his best to stand on his own two feet and to do his own thinking and acting."
text[number++] = "Many people in our civilization appear to believe and to act on the proposition that because something once affected their life significantly, or was once appropriate to their existence, it should remain so forever."
text[number++] = "If you allow yourself to be unduly influenced by your past history, you are committing the logical error of over-generalization: that is, you are assuming that because a thing is true in some circumstances it is equally true in all circumstances."
text[number++] = "If you are too strongly under the sway of past events, you will usually employ superficial or 'easy' solutions to your problems which were once useful but may now be relatively inefficient."
text[number++] = "Normally, there are several alternate solutions to any problem, and they have various degrees of efficiency or thoroughness. The more you are influenced by those solutions that you successfully employed in the past, the less likely you will be to cast around for better possible alternate solutions to your present problems."
text[number++] = "Many people seem to feel that what other people do or believe is most important to their existences, and that they should therefore become distinctly upset over the problems and disturbances of others."
text[number++] = "Other people's problems frequently have little or nothing to do with us and there is no reason why we must become unduly upset when they are different from us or are behaving in a manner that we consider to be mistaken."
text[number++] = "Even when others are so disturbed that they do things which annoy or injure us, most of our annoyance stems not from their behavior but by the injustice-collecting idea that we take toward this behavior."
text[number++] = "When we get upset over others' behavior, we imply that we have considerable power over them, and that our becoming upset will somehow magically change their behavior for the better."
text[number++] = "Although we have enormous power to control and change ourselves (which, alas, we rarely use) we actually have little power to change others. And the more angry and upset we become over their behavior-thereby rewarding them with considerable attention—the less likely we are to induce them to change."
text[number++] = "When we induce others to change by becoming upset over their actions, we pay a sorry price for our self-created disturbance. Certainly, there must be, and there invariably are, other, less self-defeating ways in which we can calmly go about trying to get others to correct their wrongdoings. But, for the most part, our getting terribly disturbed about others' behavior helps neither them nor ourselves."
text[number++] = "Upsetting ourselves over the way others behave will often only help to sidetrack us from what should be our main concern: namely, the way we behave and the things we do."
text[number++] = "Letting ourselves dwell on the horror of others' behavior can often be used as a fine excuse for not tackling our own problems and not cultivating our own gardens."
text[number++] = "When those for whom we definitely care are behaving badly, we should not become unduly upset about their behavior, but instead calmly and objectively attempt to show them the errors of their ways and lovingly help them over their handicaps and hurdles."
text[number++] = "If we cannot possibly eliminate the self-defeating or annoying behavior of others, we should at least attempt not to become annoyed at the idea of their being annoying and should, instead, resign ourselves to making the best of a bad situation."
text[number++] = "Millions of modern men and women believe that they must have perfect, certain solutions to the problems that beset them and that if they have to live in a world of imperfection and uncertainty they cannot happily survive. This kind of quest for certainty, absolute control, and perfect truth is highly irrational."
text[number++] = "As far as we can tell, there is no certainty, perfection, nor absolute truth in the world."
text[number++] = "Whether we like it or not we live in a world of probability and chance, and we can be certain of nothing external to ourselves."
text[number++] = "Since the quest for certainty can only raise false expectations and consequent anxiety in connection with these expectations, the only sane thing to do is to accept (grim or pleasant) reality and never idiotically to tell oneself that one must know it fully, or has to control it completely, or ought to have perfect solutions to all its problems."
text[number++] = "The disasters that people imagine will ensue if they do not arrive at and stick to a single 'correct' solution to their problems, or if they cannot perfectly control the external world, have no objective existence but are only made 'disastrous' by their thinking them so."
text[number++] = "Perfectionism normally limits your possible solutions to a problem and induces you to solve it much less 'perfectly' than you otherwise would if you were not perfectionistic."
text[number++] = "Some people—perhaps most of the world's population—will only achieve conditional, rather than unconditional, self-acceptance and only 'like themselves' when they do well, or even outstandingly well."
text[number++] = "The clinical facts show fairly clearly that when humans demand—and not merely wish—that they function well and be approved by significant others and when they are afraid that these demands will not be fulfilled they often feel deep, intense, and prolonged feelings of anxiety, anger, and panic."
text[number++] = "When you (and other people) have important 'irrational' or 'self-defeating' Beliefs—especially grandiose demands that you absolutely must perform well, must have others treat you nicely, and must get what you want when you want it—you most probably will think, feel, and act neurotically. When, however, you change these Jehovian commands to strong but nondemanding preferences, you most probably will think, feel, and act less neurotically."
text[number++] = "In general, people's beliefs are said to be irrational when they are unrealistic, illogical, absolutist, and devoutly held even when they are unprovable and unfalsifiable."
text[number++] = "In REBT theory rational mainly means self-helping; but because people practically always live in social groups or communities, it also means socially helpful and socially interested."
text[number++] = "People act rationally when they, first, aid instead of sabotage themselves; second, adequately get along with others; and third, preferably collaborate with and help members of their social group."
text[number++] = "The three main irrational demands or arrogant musturbatory ideas that people use to disturb themselves are: (1) 'I (ego) absolutely must perform well at important tasks (especially, winning the approval of others) or else I am an inadequate, worthless person!' (2) 'You (other people) definitely must treat me fairly and kindly or you are no damned good!' (3) 'The conditions under which I live must almost always be comfortable and enjoyable, else my whole life is pretty rotten!'"
text[number++] = "There is no reason why I must perform well, though it is usually highly preferable."
text[number++] = "People clearly don't have to treat me fairly, no matter how much I want them to do so."
text[number++] = "No one can prove that my life conditions have got to be hassle free and it is practically certain that they won't always be."
text[number++] = "Emotionally disturbing musts, shoulds, oughts, and demands are absolutist and supposedly have to, under all conditions and at all times, be fulfilled. Obviously, therefore, they cannot be justified and sustained. No matter how desirable your goals and values, they often will be unfulfilled in reality; and even when now fulfilled, often will not be achieved tomorrow."
text[number++] = "Musts imply absolute necessity—which rarely, if ever, exists. They usually lead to your feeling anxious about an important project before it occurs, and to depression after it occurs if your grandiose demands are not fulfilled."
text[number++] = "People typically use phrases like 'I can't stand it' when referring to legitimately unpleasant events such as medical procedures, social rejections by friends or lovers, loss of occupational status, etc. Sometimes the events are very, very unpleasant, such as losing your sight, or sexual ability, or the ability to walk as a result of an accident. However, reality and research show that people actually do adjust to these and can and do stand them with the passage of time."
text[number++] = "Does the universe, fate, or the powers that be really care if I have or do not have a steady relationship? Even if the universe has the purpose of my (and other people) achieving a steady relationship, is it likely to damn and punish me if I (and others) fail in this important respect?"
text[number++] = "Disturbed people think irrationally—and feel and behave self-defeatingly—because they have innate tendencies to do so, learn to do so from their parents and culture, and tend to practice and habituate themselves to do so from childhood onward."
text[number++] = "My approach to psychotherapy is to zero in, as quickly as possible, on the clients' basic philosophy of life, to get them to see exactly what this is and how it is inevitably self-defeating; and to persuade them to work their asses off, cognitively, emotively, and behaviorally, to profoundly change it."
text[number++] = "My basic assumption is that virtually all 'emotionally disturbed' individuals at times actually think crookedly, magically, dogmatically, and unrealistically. They do not only want, wish, or prefer; they demand." 
text[number++] = "The vast majority of humans, in every part of the world, are much more disturbed than they have to be because they simply will not accept themselves as fallible, incessantly error-prone humans."
text[number++] = "Practically all individuals have strong innate and learned tendencies to act like babies all their lives: to define their wants as absolute needs (necessities); to devoutly believe that they must perform well, that others ought to treat them fairly, and that their conditions of living have to be comfortable and pleasant."
text[number++] = "The main occupational hazard that I find in being a therapist is that I do not allow myself to become emotionally involved or very friendly with my clients. And some of them are bright, charming, warm individuals with whom I would be glad to relate if it were not against their and my therapeutic interest. Even when years have passed and I am no longer likely to see them again as clients, pressures of time and other involvements almost always preclude my maintaining personal friendships with them. And that is unfortunate; but not awful, horrible, or terrible!"
text[number++] = "Self-acceptance means that the individual fully and unconditionally accepts himself whether or not he behaves intelligently, correctly, or competently and whether or not other people approve, respect, or love him. "
text[number++] = "Since the number of consistently well-behaving individuals in this world appears to be exceptionally small and the number of highly fallible and ill-behaving persons appears to be legion, the consistent achievement of self-esteem by most of us would seem to be remote. On the other hand, the steady feeling of self-acceptance would seem to be quite attainable."
text[number++] = "Both positive and negative self-evaluation are inefficient and often seriously interfere with problem-solving. If you elevate or defame yourself because of your performances, you will tend to be self-centered rather than problem-centered, and your performances will consequently tend to suffer."
text[number++] = "Self-rating only works well when you have many talents and few flaws; but, statistically speaking, few are in that class. It also tends to demand universal competence. But, again, few can measure up to such a demand."
text[number++] = "Self-appraisal almost inevitably leads to oneupmanship and onedownmanship. If you rate yourself as being 'good,' you will usually rate others as 'bad' or 'less good.' If you rate yourself as 'bad,' others will be seen as 'less bad' or 'good.' Thereby you practically force yourself to compete with others in 'goodness' or 'badness' and constantly feel envious, jealous, or superior."
text[number++] = "To see yourself as having a better or worse trait than another person may be unimportant or even beneficial (since you may use your knowledge of another's superior trait to help achieve that trait yourself). But to see yourself as being a better or worse person than another is likely to cause trouble for both of you."
text[number++] = "Self-evaluation enhances self-consciousness and therefore tends to shut you up within yourself, to narrow your range of interests and enjoyments."
text[number++] = "When human selves are lauded or condemned there is a strong implication that people should be rewarded or punished for being 'good' or 'bad.' But if there were 'bad' people, they would already be so handicapped by their 'rottenness' that it would be thoroughly unfair to punish them further for being 'rotten.' And if there were 'good' people, they would already be so favored by their 'goodness' that it would be superfluous or unjust to reward them for it. Human justice, therefore, is very badly served by self-evaluations."
text[number++] = "To rate yourself high because of your good traits is often tantamount to deifying yourself. Conversely, to rate yourself low because of your bad traits is tantamount to demonizing yourself. But since you seem to have no way of validating your godhood or devilhood and since you can well live without this redundant hypothesis, it merely clutters your thinking and acting and probably does much more harm than good. "
text[number++] = "Concepts of god and the devil obviously vary enormously from person to person and from group to group. They add nothing to human knowledge; and they usually serve as obstructions to precise intrapersonal and interpersonal communication. Although it is possible that people who behave stupidly and weakly may derive benefits from seeing themselves as godlike, there is no evidence that those who act intelligently and strongly have any need of godhood."
text[number++] = "By evaluating an individual, even if only in a complimentary way, you are often trying to change her or trying to control or manipulate her, and the kind of change envisioned may or may not be good for her or for you."
text[number++] = "Evaluation of the individual tends to bolster the Establishment and to block social change. "
text[number++] = "Since 'wrong' acts are largely measured by societal standards, and since most societies are run by a limited number of 'upper level' people who have a strong, vested interest in keeping them the way they are, self-evaluation usually encourages you to go along with social rules, no matter how arbitrary or foolish they are, and especially to woo the approval of the powers-that-be. Conformism, which is one of the worst products of self-rating, often means conformity to the time-honored and justice-dishonoring rules of the 'Establishment.'"
text[number++] = "Person-rating tends to denigrate human wants, desires, and preferences and to replace them with demands, compulsions, or needs."
text[number++] = "The traits by which a person is to be rated are very likely to change from year to year, even from moment to moment. A human is not a thing or an object, but a process. How can an ever-changing process be precisely measured and rated?"
text[number++] = "The characteristics by which a person is to be evaluated have no absolute scale by which they can be judged. Traits that are highly honored in one social group are roundly condemned in another. A murderer may be seen as a horrible criminal by a judge but as a marvelous soldier by a general. A person's qualities (such as her ability to compose music) may be deemed fine in one century and mediocre in a later age."
text[number++] = "No matter how many traits of an individual are known and employed for his global rating, since it is quite impossible for him or anyone else to discover all his characteristics and to use them in arriving at a single universal rating, in the final analysis the whole of him is being evaluated by some of his parts."
text[number++] = "All of our traits are different -- as apples and pears are different. Just as we cannot legitimately add and divide apples and pears and thereby get a single, accurate global rating of an entire basket of fruit, so we cannot truly add and divide different human traits and thereby obtain a single, meaningful global rating of a human individual."
text[number++] = "Several human aspirations and goals—such as sex, love, gustatory- and meaning-oriented desires—are at least partly (and individualistically) motivated but that they also are strongly socially and environmentally influenced. They also can be distinctly—and consciously—self-developed and modified."
text[number++] = "REBT is highly skeptical that humans have any 'true' transpersonal, transcendental, or mystical selves, though they are certainly often born and reared with strong propensities to think or experience that they do have superhuman cores. "
text[number++] = "REBT acknowledges that a belief in religion, God, mysticism, Pollyannaism, and irrationality may at times help people. But it also points out that such beliefs often do much more harm than good and block a more fully functioning life."
text[number++] = "Because people choose to live in a social group (family, community, nation, the earth) and not to be asocial hermits, they had better care for themselves and for others and preserve—and help actualize—themselves as well as their sociality. They can choose—or not choose—to put themselves first in some respects, but preferably should put others—particularly some selected others—a close second."
text[number++] = "People can be biologically inclined to be self-interested and also biologically (and sociologically) inclined to be altruistic and socially involved. "
text[number++] = "REBT sees no evidence that humans ever truly transcend their humanity and develop a transpersonal, transcendental, or superhuman 'self' that achieves 'higher miraculous states of consciousness.' They frequently aspire to such mystical states, and devoutly believe that they experience them. But they are probably self-deluded—sometimes psychotic—and do not really achieve 'Absolute Truth,' godliness, or completely nonhuman consciousness"
text[number++] = "However much human mystics experience Nirvana, selflessness, unity with the universe, or similar 'transpersonal' states, it is unlikely (though not impossible) that they really have superhuman powers and very unlikely that their special state of altered consciousness is 'better' than the usual state of consciousness."
text[number++] = "People are born as well as reared with strong tendencies both to defeat themselves (e.g., to ignore their capacity to function more fully) and to change their self-destructive thoughts feelings, and behaviors to achieve fuller functioning. To a large (though not total) degree, they choose emotional-behavioral disturbance (or health) and choose restricted (or fuller) functioning. Therefore, to more fully actualize themselves, they had preferably better choose to work at—yes, work at—achieving more growth, development, and happiness."
text[number++] = "To make themselves more fully functioning, people had better ask themselves, 'What do I choose as my Life purpose?' 'What do I really like and dislike?' 'How can I experiment and discover what I truly prefer, and prefer not to feel and do?' 'Which of my likes (e.g., smoking) and dislikes (e.g., exercising) will probably be self-harming as well as enjoyable?' 'What am I likely to prefer and abhor in the future?' 'What do I do to enhance my preferences and decrease my distastes?' 'How can I make my opinions more accurate to the data of my experiences?' 'What do I do with evidence that disconfirms my opinions and positions?' 'How do I choose to relate to unexpected difficulties and barriers that arise?'"
text[number++] = "People usually make themselves needlessly anxious, depressed, self-hating, self-pitying, and dysfunctional when they take their healthy preferences for achievement, approval, and comfort and change them into dogmatic, extreme musts, demands, and commands on themselves, on others, and on the environment."
text[number++] = "Don't blame any person, including yourself, for anything.  Acknowledge that you (and others) may behave ineffectually or overrestrictively and thereby defeat yourself and others about many important goals and values. But only negatively rate or assess what you and they do and actively refrain from measuring your self—or their selves—for poor performances.   Work at unconditionally accepting your self, your youness, your humanity, whether or not you perform well or are approved by others."
text[number++] = "REBT has always endorsed sensible nonconformity and individuality in sex, love, marital, vocational, recreational, and other important aspects of life. It has, from its start, also been a highly unconventional form of psychotherapy and has only recently been accepted as a leader in the more conventional cognitive-behavioral movement."
text[number++] = "Emotionally and mentally healthy people tend to be considerate and fair to others; to avoid needlessly harming these others; to engage in collaborative and cooperative endeavors; at times to be somewhat altruistic; and to distinctly enjoy some measure of interpersonal and group relationships."
text[number++] = "Healthy and enjoying people are true to themselves as well as to others, often put themselves first, usually put a few selected others a close second, and the rest of the world not too far behind. Their self-interest is mainly directed toward enjoying, and not to proving themselves."
text[number++] = "People largely neuroticize themselves with rigid, imperative musts and shoulds. Conversely, they are significantly less neurotic and more self-actualizing when they scientifically dispute their dogmatic, unconditional musts and change them to preferences and to alternative-seeking desires."
text[number++] = "Humans will rarely be undisturbed and self, fulfilling unless they rate only their deeds and performances and not their global 'selves.' "
text[number++] = "Self-actualization without risk-taking and experimenting is almost unthinkable.  People had better experiment with many tasks, preferences, and projects to discover what they really want and don't want, and to keep risking new defeats and failures to achieve heightened, deepened, and new enjoyments."
text[number++] = "Short-range hedonism—'Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die!'—has its distinct limitations, for tomorrow you will probably be alive with a hangover!"
text[number++] = "The three major insights of REBT are: (1) Take much responsibility for disturbing yourself and do not cop out by mainly blaming others. (2)   Face the fact that your early disturbances do not automatically make you disturbed today. Rather, your still strongly held irrational Beliefs and unhealthy feelings and actions do. (3) No magical forces will change you, but only your own strong and persistent work and practice—yes, work and practice. "
text[number++] = "REBT is a practical, action-oriented approach to coping with problems and enhancing personal growth"
text[number++] = "REBT places a good deal of its focus on the present: on currently-held attitudes, painful emotions and maladaptive behaviors that can sabotage a fuller experience of life."
text[number++] = "REBT helps people to develop a philosophy and approach to living that can increase their effectiveness and happiness at work, in parenting and educational settings, in living successfully with others, in making our community and environment healthier, and in enhancing their own health and personal welfare."
text[number++] = "Contrary to what some people erroneously believe, REBT does recognize that we may be strongly influenced by events in early life. Much of our philosophy of life - what we think about ourselves and our values - is learned from past experiences. But the past is with us in the form of beliefs that we carry in our head in the present. "
text[number++] = "REBT believes that the 'nuttiness' of our past exerts its influence in our current-day thinking patterns and beliefs. Although we cannot change the past, we can change how we let the past influence the way we are today and the way we want to be tomorrow. In this sense, REBT is an optimistic approach to living and to solving problems."
text[number++] = "Perhaps more so than any other approach, REBT emphasizes the involvement of emotions in just about every aspect of our thinking and actions."
text[number++] = "REBT proposes that when our negative emotions become too intense (e.g., rage, panic, or depression), not only do we feel very unhappy, but our ability to manage our lives begins to deteriorate. At these times, the quality of our thinking changes and we begin to take things over-personally, blow things out of perspective, condemn others for their transgressions and generally become less tolerant of life's hassles and hardships. REBT helps restore the emotional balance in an individual's life by providing methods for thinking more realistically and level-headedly about ourselves, other people, and the world."
text[number++] = "Experiencing intense irritation and displeasure when things go wrong can motivate you to change frustrating conditions. Feelings of rage, on the other hand, often land you in a smoldering stew, where either you are stymied from taking any action at all, or you act in ways that are impulsive and self-defeating."
text[number++] = "REBT seeks to empower individuals both by helping them more effectively handle their own painful emotions, and by enabling them to change their own behavior and improve their world where possible. When you get too upset, it is much more difficult to behave in constructive ways. By gaining better control over upsetting emotions, you become far more able to act assertively to change bad outside circumstances."
text[number++] = "Healthy people are usually glad to be alive and accept themselves just because they are alive and have some capacity to enjoy themselves. They refuse to measure their intrinsic worth by their extrinsic accomplishments, materialistic possessions and by what others think of them. They frankly choose to accept themselves unconditionally; and then try to completely avoid globally rating themselves - meaning their totality or their 'essence.' They attempt to enjoy rather than prove themselves. Thus, rather than acting out of selfishness, they learn to operate from responsible self-interest"
text[number++] = "People have extrinsic value to others and intrinsic value to themselves but they easily confuse the two and define themselves as 'good' or 'worthwhile' mainly in terms of their assumed value to others."
text[number++] = "Ideas and feelings about self-worth are largely definitional and are not empirically confirmable or falsifiable. We really choose to accept or denigrate our 'selves' and falsely assume that because we can fairly accurately measure our deeds and performances as 'good' or 'bad,' once we establish goals and purposes to measure them against, we can also measure our 'selves' or our 'being.' "
text[number++] = "We confuse our self-rating with our happiness. But although happier people may lead a better life than less happy people, that hardly means that they are better persons."
text[number++] = "People's intrinsic value or worth cannot really be measured, because their being includes their becoming. They are a process with an ever-changing present and future. Therefore, how can we ever rate them while they are still alive and changing?"
text[number++] = "There is no objective way of defining our personal worth or intrinsic value but we can fairly safely assess our existence, aliveness, or potential future, and say that we are 'good' or 'worthwhile' when we are alive and have the possibility and potentiality of remaining alive and being reasonably happy. This is a definitional but still practical way of measuring our 'worth.' "
text[number++] = "People can be shown that they are only worthless by definition— because they think that they are. Therefore, they'd better choose to define themselves as worthwhile because that will lead to much better emotional and behavioral results. "
text[number++] = "By all means set up your own goals and purposes and heed the rules of the community in which you choose to live. Doing so will usually get you favorable results and is therefore (because of your goals) 'good' or 'valuable.' But if you really want to be self-helping, wise, and 'rational,' decide that you will only rate your acts, deeds, thoughts, feelings, and other behaviors and that you will not—yes, not—rate your self, your being, your essence, your totality at all. "
text[number++] = "Try to only rate, measure, and evaluate how well you do and how well you are approved and not your self or your global worth."
text[number++] = "You often (not always) take standards and values that your parents (and your culture) teach you and make them into absolutistic musts. Why? Because, like most humans, that is your nature, your innate tendency, to take important rules and goals and often to change them into dire necessities. So you partly learn that you must do well and are a rotten person if you don't. But you largely construct or invent this musturbatory kind of thinking yourself, with or without help from your parents."
text[number++] = "If religion is defined as man’s dependence of a power above and beyond the human, then as a psychotherapist, I find it to be exceptionally pernicious. For the psychotherapist is normally dedicated to helping human beings in general, and his patients in particular, to achieve certain goals of mental health, and virtually all these goals are antithetical to a truly religious viewpoint."
text[number++] = "The emotionally healthy individual should primarily be true to himself and not masochistically sacrifice himself for others. His kindness and consideration for others should be derived from the idea that he himself wants to enjoy freedom from unnecessary pain and restriction, and that he is only likely to do so by helping create a world in which the rights of others, as well as his own, are not needlessly curtailed.  "
text[number++] = "The emotionally healthy individual should assume responsibility for his own life, be able independently to work out his own problems, and while at times wanting or preferring the cooperation and help of others, not need their support for his effectiveness and well-being. "
text[number++] = "The emotionally healthy individual should fully give other human beings the right to be wrong; and while disliking or abhorring some of their behavior, still not blame them, as persons, for performing this dislikeable behavior. He should accept the fact that all humans are remarkably fallible, never unrealistically expect them to be perfect, and refrain from despising or punishing them when they make inevitable mistakes and errors. "
text[number++] = "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. "
text[number++] = "The emotionally healthy individual should remain intellectually flexible, be open to change at all times, and unbigotedly view the infinitely varied people, ideas, and things in the world around him. "
text[number++] = "The emotionally mature individual should be objective, rational and scientific; and be able to apply the laws of logic and of scientific method not only to external people and events, but to himself and his interpersonal relationships.  "
text[number++] = "The emotionally mature individual should be vitally absorbed in something outside of himself, whether it be people, things, or ideas; and should preferably have at least one major creative interest, as well as some outstanding human involvement, which is highly important to him, and around which he structures a good part of his life. "
text[number++] = "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. "
text[number++] = "The emotionally sound person should normally be glad to be alive, and to like himself just because he is alive, because he exists, and because he (as a living being) invariably has some power to enjoy himself, to create happiness and joy. He should not equate his worth or value to himself on his extrinsic achievements, or on what others think of him, but on his personal existence; on his ability to think, feel, and act, and thereby to make some kind of an interesting, absorbed life for himself. "
text[number++] = "Does religion—by which I mean faith unfounded on fact, or dependence on some supernatural deity—help human beings to achieve these healthy traits and thereby to avoid becoming anxious, depressed, and hostile? The answer, of course, is that it doesn’t help at all; and in most respects it seriously sabotages mental health. For religion, first of all, is not self-interest; it is god-interest."
text[number++] = "The religious person must, by virtual definition, be so concerned with whether or not his hypothesized god loves him, and whether he is doing the right thing to continue to keep in this god’s good graces, that he must, at very best, put himself second and must sacrifice some of his most cherished interests to appease this god. "
text[number++] = "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."
text[number++] = "Religiosity, to a large degree, essentially is masochism; and both are forms of mental sickness."
text[number++] = "The trait of flexibility, which is so essential to proper emotional functioning, is blocked and sabotaged by religious belief. For the person who dogmatically believes in god, and who sustains this belief with a faith unfounded in fact, which a true religious of course must, clearly is not open to change and is necessarily bigoted."
text[number++] = "While a person may be both scientific and religious (as he may be at times sensible and at other times foolish) it is doubtful if an individual’s attitude may simultaneously be truly pious and objective."
text[number++] = "Religious commitment frequently has its serious disadvantages, since it tends to be obsessive-compulsive; and it may well interfere with other kinds of healthy commitments—such as deep involvements in sex-love relations, in scientific pursuits, and even in artistic endeavors. Moreover, it is a commitment that is often motivated by guilt or hostility, and may serve as a frenzied covering-up mechanism which masks, but does not really eliminate, these underlying disturbed feelings. It is also the kind of commitment that is based on falsehoods and illusions, and that therefore easily can be shattered, thus plunging the previously committed individual into the depths of disillusionment and despair."
text[number++] = "When religious individuals are happily committed to faith, they often tend to be fanatically and dogmatically committed in an obsessive-compulsive way that itself is hardly desirable. Religious commitment may well be better for a human being than no commitment to anything. But religion, to a large degree, is fanaticism—which, in turn, is an obsessive-compulsive, rigid form of holding to a viewpoint that invariably masks and provides a bulwark for the underlying insecurity of the obsessed individual."
text[number++] = "Keep thinking, thinking and thinking rational beliefs or coping statements, such as: 'It's great to succeed but I can fully accept myself as a person and enjoy life considerably even when I fail!' Don't merely parrot these statements but go over them carefully many times and think them through until you really begin to believe and feel that they are true."
text[number++] = "Keep forcefully and persistently disputing your irrational beliefs whenever you see that you are letting them creep back again. And even when you don't actively hold them, realize that they may arise once more, bring them to your consciousness, and preventively - and vigorously! - dispute them."
text[number++] = "Keep risking and doing things that you irrationally fear - such as riding in elevators, socializing, job hunting, or creative writing. Once you have partly overcome one of your irrational fears, keep acting against it on a regular basis. If you feel uncomfortable in forcing yourself to do things that you are unrealistically afraid of doing, don't allow yourself to avoid doing them - and thereby to preserve your discomfort forever! Often, make yourself as uncomfortable as you can be, in order to eradicate your irrational fears and to become unanxious and comfortable later. "
text[number++] = "Avoid self-defeating procrastination. Do unpleasant tasks fast - today! If you still procrastinate, reward yourself with certain things that you enjoy - for example eating, vacationing, reading, and socializing - only after you have performed the tasks that you easily avoid. If this won't work, give yourself a severe penalty such as talking to a boring person for two hours or burning a hundred dollar bill — every time that you procrastinate."
text[number++] = "Show yourself that it is an absorbing challenge and something of an adventure to maintain your emotional health and to keep yourself reasonably happy no matter what kind of misfortunes assail you. Make the uprooting of your misery one of the most important things in your life - something you are utterly determined to steadily work at achieving. Fully acknowledge that you almost always have some choice about how to think, feel, and behave; and throw yourself actively into making the choice for yourself."
text[number++] = "Steadily - and unfrantically! - look for personal pleasures and enjoyments - such as reading, entertainment, sports, hobbies, art, science, and other vital absorbing interests. Take as your major life goal not only the achievement of emotional health but also that of real enjoyment. Try to become involved in a long-term purpose, goal, or interest in which you can remain truly absorbed. For a good, happy life will give you something to live for; will distract you from many serious woes; and will encourage you to preserve and to improve your mental health. "
text[number++] = "Try to keep in touch with several other people who know something about REBT and who can help go over some of its aspects with you. Tell them about problems that you have difficulty coping with and let them know how you are using REBT to overcome these problems. See if they agree with your solutions and can suggest additional and better kinds of REBT disputing that you can use to work against your irrational beliefs. "
text[number++] = "Practice using REBT with some of your friends, relatives and associates who are willing to let you try to help them with it. The more often you use it with others, and are able to see what their irrational beliefs are and to try to talk them out of these self-defeating ideas, the more you will be able to understand the main principles of REBT and to use them with yourself. When you see other people act irrationally and in a disturbed manner, try to figure out - with or without talking to them about it - what their main irrational beliefs probably are and how these could be actively and vigorously disputed. "
text[number++] = "It is almost impossible to disturb yourself and to remain disturbed in any way if you abandon your absolutistic, dogmatic shoulds, oughts, and musts and consistently replace them with flexible and unrigid (though still strong) desires and preferences. "
text[number++] = "If you always had to succeed, if the universe commanded that you must do so, you obviously would always succeed. And of course you often don't! If you invariably had to be approved by others, you could never be disapproved. But obviously you frequently are! The universe is clearly not arranged so that you will always get what you demand. So although your desires are often realistic, your godlike commands definitely are not!"
text[number++] = " No matter how much you want to succeed and to be approved, it never follows that therefore you must do well in these (or any other) respects. No matter how desirable justice or politeness is, it never has to exist. "
text[number++] = "Try to set up some main goals and purposes in life - goals that you would like very much to reach but that you never tell yourself that you absolutely must attain. Keep checking to see how you are coming along with these goals; at times revise them; see how you feel about achieving them; and keep yourself goal-oriented for the rest of your days. "
text[number++] = "There is no law of the universe that says that I have to be approved of by people whom I find important and there is a law of probability that says that many of the people I would prefer to approve of me definitely will not. "
text[number++] = "Just because I find certain people important it does not follow that they must approve of me. And even if I find it highly inconvenient when important people do not approve of me, it doesn't follow that my life will be catastrophic or awful."
text[number++] = "The fact that people achieve, produce, solve, or complete anything is not to be used as a measure of their intrinsic value. They may be happier, healthier, richer, or more confident if they successfully paint, write, or manufacture a useful product. But they will not be, nor is it desirable that they see themselves as, better people."
text[number++] = "Rating your self or your you- ness is an overgeneralization and is virtually impossible to do accurately. You are (consist of) literally millions of acts, deeds, and traits during your lifetime. Even if you were fully aware of all these performances and characteristics (which you never will be) and were able to give each of them a rating (say, from zero to one hundred) how would you rate each one?; for what purpose?; and under what conditions? Even if you could accurately rate all your millions of acts, how could you get a mean or global rating of the you who performs them? Not very easily!"
text[number++] = "Just as your deeds and characteristics constantly change (today you play tennis or chess or the stock market very well and tomorrow quite badly), so does your self change. Even if you could, at any one second, somehow give your totality a legitimate rating, this rating would keep changing constantly as you did new things and had more experiences. Only after your death could you give your self a final and stable rating."
text[number++] = "What is the purpose of rating your self or achieving ego aggrandizement or self-esteem? Obviously, to make you feel better than other people: to grandiosely deify yourself, to be holier than thou, and to rise to heaven in a golden chariot. Nice work—if you can do it! "
text[number++] = "You can only have stable ego-strength when (a) you do well, (b) know you will continue to do well, and (c) have a guarantee that you will always equal or best others in important performances in the present and future. Well, unless you are truly perfect, lots of luck on those aspirations!"
text[number++] = "The best or most effective criterion of our human worth is no self rating—yes, no measure of our self or our ego. For then we would only rate our behaviors and traits, and thereby strive for continued aliveness and enjoyment—and not for deification or devil-ification."
text[number++] = "If you want to use people for your purpose—for having cultured conversations, for example, with them—then you can legitimately specify that they be intelligent, aesthetic, well-educated, or what you will. But please don't, because you desire them to have certain traits, insist that they are worthless for not possessing these traits. Don't confuse their worthlessness to you with worthlessness in themselves."
text[number++] = "People can be viewed as good in themselves—because they are people, because they exist. They may be good for some specific purpose because they have this or that trait. But that purpose is not them. "
text[number++] = "This is the essence of intellectual fascism: it is a belief about humans which convinces not only the believers, but usually their victims as well, that people acquire intrinsic worth not from merely being, but from being intelligent, talented, competent, or achieving. It is politico-social fascism with the trait names changed—the same hearse with different license plates."
text[number++] = "My philosophy of life has always been that humans have a great degree of choice, freedom, or agency in their life and they can choose to be very disturbed about bad things that happen to them or choose to be much less disturbed, that is, healthy, sorry, regretful, frustrated, or annoyed."
text[number++] = "I give myself unconditional self-acceptance (USA), no matter what my personal and professional failings are—and they often are considerable! I also accept myself unconditionally, no matter who disapproves of me and my therapy. Since REBT, for many years, was anathema to most therapists, and since I was reviled for creating and practicing it, I was able to keep it going and turn it into one of the most popular psychotherapies by not giving too much of a damn for the scathing criticism that I and it kept engendering. Let the benighted faultfinders criticize! I didn't give that much of a shit."
text[number++] = "My private and public manner and language, including my well-known use of four-letter words, is controversial and unconventional and turns off many professionals. It is not exactly consonant with the scientifically respectable cognitive-behavioral therapy movement!"
text[number++] = "Most of the so-called sex perversions--such as oral-genital and anal genital intercourse and gay and lesbian relations--are not in the least perverse but consist of healthy human sex behavior. Although they are sometimes labeled 'immoral' and 'abnormal,' it is always by arbitrary (often biblically inspired) fiat. Enjoy them if you choose, and do not permit anyone to propagandize you into believing them to be 'wrong' or 'disturbed.' "
text[number++] = "'Unnatural' sex behavior cannot be precisely defined and certainly doesn't include lesbian or gay activity. I find it difficult to describe any act which humans can and do perform fairly consistently as 'unnatural.' Whatever they do, they usually do naturally. To say that their sex preferences are 'unnatural' or 'subhuman' seems quite inaccurate, and to label them as 'deviant' and 'perverse' for these preferences is bigoted and prejudiced."
text[number++] = "Some people, of course, say that certain sex acts are 'perverse' because they flout 'divine law'; but this seems silly because who can say who the true God is (Jehovah, Zeus, Thor, Allah, Buddha), or what his (or her) real laws are? 'God's laws' regarding sexual 'deviation' obviously vary widely with the beliefs and interpretations of those who subscribe to them, and they have a strange way of changing over the centuries! The probability that they are actually human (though not necessarily humanist!) laws rather than God's dicta is remarkably high."
text[number++] = "Some sex acts--such as rape and the sexual abuse of children--are generally considered to be immoral, antisocial, or criminal. However, they are still 'natural' acts committed under unethical conditions (the coercion of an unwilling party), and some of them--such as rape--may be more power driven than sex-driven. But we usually do not call a crime--such as robbery--a 'perversion.' So it's strange--and most pejorative--that we almost exclusively put sex offenses into this category."
text[number++] = "Although terms like perversion, deviancy, and abnormality may have once served some purpose (and probably not a very good one at that), I don't think they are useful today. They cover, quite vaguely, a multiplicity of rather 'natural' behaviors, most of them harmless--even enjoyable--idiosyncrasies rather than truly self-harming or people-harming 'abnormalities.' Even when 'perversions' are harmful--as with an obsessive-compulsive lying seducer who continually sabotages his or her own and other people's lives--this sex behavior is, like addiction to alcohol or cigarettes, much more of a vice than a crime and hardly merits the term perversion."
text[number++] = "I would recommend that we stop speaking about sexual 'perversions' and 'abnormalities'; that we drop the nasty, pejorative, and puritanical connotations that almost invariably accompany the use of such terms; and that, instead, we try merely to distinguish between sexual (and nonsexual) behaviors that are psychologically disturbed or healthy."
text[number++] = "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."
text[number++] = "I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition."
text[number++] = "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."
text[number++] = "The art of love ...is largely the art of persistence."
text[number++] = "Anyway, devout religionists are frequently attracted to and bound to their piety largely because it presumably offers them holier-than-thouness and one-upmanship over non-religionists..."
text[number++] = "There are three musts that hold us back: I MUST do well. You MUST treat me well. And the world MUST be easy."
text[number++] = "I used to think the most awful thing would be to be tortured to death slowly, but then I realized I could always be tortured to death MORE slowly."
text[number++] = "I would have liked having children to some degree, but frankly I haven't got the time to take the kids to the goddamn ballgame."
text[number++] = "I'm one of the best-loved psychologists in the United States, but I'm also probably the most hated one, now that Fred Skinner has died."
text[number++] = "People could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they'd much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection."
text[number++] = "Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional."
text[number++] = "Some screwballs 100 years from now will manufacture atomic bombs in their bathtub and annihilate the human race because they demand that the world agree with their dogmas."
text[number++] = "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."
text[number++] = "The relationship part of psychoanalysis-where you must have a deep, emotional relationship with the client-will, I think, get kicked in the teeth one of these days."
text[number++] = "Our slogan is, I will not should on myself today."
text[number++] = "I hope to die in the saddle seat."

// keep adding items above...

increment = Math.floor(Math.random() * number);

document.write(text[increment]);

//-->