Best William Glasser Quotes & Sayings

Good or bad, everything we do is our best choice at that moment. — William Glasser

Told that the passing grade is a B or competence and that we will help you to get there, students do competent work. The lowest passing grade in the real world is competence. Why do schools accept so much less? — William Glasser

I think it is totally wrong and terribly harmful if education is defined as acquiring knowledge. — William Glasser

To counter the avoidance of intellectual challenge and responsibility, we must reduce the domination of certainty in education. — William Glasser

Choice Theory explains that, for all practical purposes, we choose everything we do. — William Glasser

What we get, and all we ever get, from the outside is information; how we choose to act on this information is up to us. — William Glasser

There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison. — William Glasser

The Compassionate Classroom is a fabulous book! If teachers will read it, they can transform their classrooms. — William Glasser

You can acquire a lot of knowledge without ever going to school. — William Glasser

The answer lies in preventing failures not in looking for better ways to fix the children who are failing. — William Glasser

Caring for but never trying to own may be a further way to define friendship. — William Glasser

The more a person perceives that he/she is loved, the less they will interfere with the lives of others. — William Glasser

Education is the process in which we discover that learning adds quality to our lives. Learning must be experienced. — William Glasser

Addiction, that is, negative addiction, is the third, and in terms of pain, essentially successful choice in the series of choices made by people who are unable to find sufficient love and worth. Each choice - from the initial decision to give up trying to find love or worth, the second choice to take on one or more symptoms, and the final choice of becoming addicted - is a pain-reducing step. The reason addiction is powerful and difficult to break is that it alone of all the choices consistently both completely relieves the pain of failure, and provides an intensely pleasurable experience. — William Glasser

Too many of us fail to fulfill our needs because we say no rather than yes, or perhaps later in life, yes when we should say no. — William Glasser

Everybody needs one essential friend. — William Glasser

Running a school where the students all succeed, even if some students have to help others to make the grade, is good preparation for democracy. — William Glasser

We may be up against a stone wall, but we don't have to bloody our heads against it unless we choose to. — William Glasser

The major difference between heroin and alcohol is that, contrary to popular belief, heroin has no physically harmful effect. Alcohol is physically harmful to the brain, to the liver, to the nerve endings, eventually perhaps even to the stomach and intestines. Both drugs seem equally addicting, and why a person chooses one over another is probably based on experience, on availability, on legality, and on some personal idiosyncrasy not yet understood. What we do know is that the drugs work to relieve the pain and provide pleasure — William Glasser

This is at the heart of all good education, where the teacher asks students to think and engages them in encouraging dialogues, constantly checking for understanding and growth. — William Glasser

It is no kindness to treat unhappy people as helpless, hopeless, or inadequate, no matter what has happened to them. Kindness is having faith in the truth and that people can handle it and use it for their benefit. True compassion is helping people help themselves. — William Glasser

We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun. — William Glasser

Don't marry someone you would not be friends with if there was no sex between you. — William Glasser

Since there will be no one left to talk peace after the next war, it makes good sense to break with tradition and hold the peace conference first. — William Glasser

Prior to being allowed to enter the profession, prospective teachers should be asked to talk with a group of friendly students for at least half an hour and be able to engage them in an interesting conversation about any subject the prospective teacher wants to talk about. — William Glasser

It is difficult to live in such a way that all our relationships are in effective control, and usually it doesn't make that much difference as long as some relationships are satisfying. But when you get sick, it is a good idea to review all of them. Some may be more rankling than you are willing to admit. You can review these relationships by yourself; with the help of a friend or family member you trust; with your doctor if he or she can give you the time; or, best of all, with the aid of a good counselor. — William Glasser

Since the obvious purpose of pain, misery, and suffering is to tell you something is wrong, fix it, change it, reform, improve, get help; if you don't have the strength to do it, you are stuck with the pain. This is not to say that people with strength don't suffer - they do. They have no immunity to life, but when they feel pain, they get moving or at least they try to do something, and the more strength they have the more successful their efforts are. — William Glasser

Every single major push in education has made it worse and right now it's really bad because everything we've done is de-humanizing education. It's destroying the possibility of the teacher and the student having a warm, friendly, intellectual relationship. — William Glasser

We learn ...
10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we both hear and see
70% of what is discussed
80% of what we experience personally
95% of what we teach to someone else — William Glasser

The faster you go, the more students you leave behind. It doesn't matter how much or how fast you teach. The true measure is how much students have learned. — William Glasser

If everyone could learn that what is right for me does not make it right for anyone else, the world would be a much happier place. — William Glasser

What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher. — William Glasser

People are more motivated and confident when they believe they have more control over their environment. "People with low-power mindsets do less than they otherwise could," said one motivation researcher (Rigoglioso, 2008). Inviting students to have a voice in classroom decisions - where they sit, what day a test takes place, in what order units are studied, or even where a plant should be placed in the classroom - can help them develop that greater sense of control. An added benefit to this strategy could be fewer discipline issues. William Glasser suggests that power is a key need of students, and that 95% of classroom management problems happen because students are trying to fulfill that need (Ryan & Cooper, 2008, p. 85). — Larry Ferlazzo

In a Glasser Quality School there is no such thing as a closed book test. Students are told to get out their notes and open their books. There is no such thing as being forbidden to ask the teacher or another student for help. — William Glasser