Quotes by William Glasser

Everybody needs one essential friend.
– William Glasser
You can acquire a lot of knowledge without ever going to school.
– William Glasser
What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher.
– William Glasser
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.
– William Glasser
We don't focus as much in schools on educational knowledge which requires thinking and application, as we do on acquiring facts.
– William Glasser
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.
– William Glasser
We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.
– William Glasser
Using no control and using humor will build a relationship and make a dent to where the client puts the counselor in their quality world and then begins to relate and seek out the counselor. Effective therapy begins with the acceptance of the therapist into the client's quality world.
– William Glasser
To counter the avoidance of intellectual challenge and responsibility, we must reduce the domination of certainty in education.
– 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
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
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
If you want to change attitudes, start with a change in behavior.
– William Glasser
If you improve education by teaching for competence, eliminating schooling, and connecting with students, the test scores will improve.
– William Glasser
If we had in this room a hundred teachers, good teachers from good schools, and asked them to define the word education, there would be very little general agreement.
– William Glasser
I think it is totally wrong and terribly harmful if education is defined as acquiring knowledge.
– William Glasser
I think education is both using and improving knowledge and that changes the whole picture.
– 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
Education is the process in which we discover that learning adds quality to our lives. Learning must be experienced.
– William Glasser
Caring for but never trying to own may be a further way to define friendship.
– William Glasser
As long as acquiring knowledge is the educational goal of schools, educational opportunities will be limited, as they are now, to affluent families.
– William Glasser