William Glasser (b.1925) was an American psychiatrist. Glasser was the developer of reality therapy and choice theory. His ideas, which focus on personal choice, personal responsibility and personal transformation, are considered controversial by mainstream psychiatrists, who focus instead on classifying psychiatric syndromes, and who often prescribe psychotropic medications to treat mental disorders. Glasser was also notable for applying his theories to broader social issues, such as education, management, and marriage, to name a few. Glasser notably deviated from conventional psychiatrists by warning the general public about the potential detriments caused by the profession of psychiatry in its traditional form because of the common goal to diagnose a patient with a mental illness and prescribe medications to treat the particular illness when, in fact, the patient may simply be acting out of unhappiness, not a brain disorder. Glasser advocated the consideration of mental health as a public health issue.
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You can acquire a lot of knowledge without ever going to school.
—William Glasser
Topics: School
There are only two places in the world where time takes precedence over the job to be done. School and prison.
—William Glasser
Topics: School
What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher.
—William Glasser
Topics: School
We learn…
10%… of what we read
20%… of what we hear
30%… of what we see
50%… of what we see and hear
70%… of what we discuss with others
80%… of what we experience personally
95%… of what we teach others.
—William Glasser
We are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun.
—William Glasser
Topics: Survival, Fun, Freedom
Everybody needs one essential friend.
—William Glasser
Topics: Friends and Friendship
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
Healthy personalities accept themselves not in any self-idolizing way, but in the sense that they see themselves as persons who are worth giving to another and worthy to receive from another.
—William Glasser
Topics: Awareness, Realization, Acceptance
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