Quotes By William Glasser

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

If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.

There is plenty of competition in a Glasser Quality School in that there is winning but no losing.

When we depress, we believe we are the victims of a feeling over which we have no control.

Sex is on the minds of most people, especially those who shouldn't be having it.

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

If you improve education by teaching for competence, eliminating schooling, and connecting with students, the test scores will improve.

As long as acquiring knowledge is the educational goal of schools, educational opportunities will be limited, as they are now, to affluent families.

They have this big book called the "DSM-IV," you know, that is supposedly written about crazy people, but I think it is a book that is written by crazy people!

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.

Effective teaching may be the hardest job there is.

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.

Everybody needs one essential friend.

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

No human being will work hard at anything unless they believe that they are working for competence.

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

What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today, but revisiting this painful past can contribute little or nothing to what we need to do now.

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.

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

Without pay, no human being will work up to their ability if he or she is not cared for and respected.

We can pay teachers a hundred thousand dollars a year, and we'll do nothing to improve our schools as long as we keep the A, B, C, D, F grading system.

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

We can teach a lot of things, but if the teacher can't relate by talking to a group of friendly students, he'll never be a competent teacher.

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

We almost always have choices, and the better the choice, the more we will be in control of our lives.

I think education is both using and improving knowledge and that changes the whole picture.

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

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.

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.

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.