Choice Theory Quotes

“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 M.D., Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“Beware of getting involved with people who seem to be able to feel good but have no close friends. They may be witty and fun to be around, but their humor is all put-downs and hostility. If you marry such a person, you will soon be the recipient of that hostile humor and may regret it for the rest of your marriage. Look for someone who has good friends whom he or she treats well and whom you enjoy being with, too. Someone who does not have good friends does not know how to love.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“Choice theory explains that, for all practical purposes, we choose everything we do, including the misery we feel. Other people can neither make us miserable nor make us happy. All we can get from them or give to them is information. But by itself, information cannot make us do or feel anything. It goes into our brains, where we process it and then decide what to do.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“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, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“unhappiness can lead people in two directions. The first unhappy group tries to find the way back to happiness, which I define as pleasurable relationships with happy people. The second unhappy group has given up on finding happiness with happy people; they no longer even try to have pleasurable relationships. But like all of us, they do not give up on trying to feel good. They continually search for pleasure without relationships and find much of it by abusing food, alcohol, drugs, and by engaging in violence and unloving sex. If we cannot create a society in which more people are happy, we will never come close to reducing these destructive and self-destructive choices.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“a lot of people have not found anyone they can trust and enjoy being with. They may have been rejected or abused, and they begin to give up on happiness, on feeling good in a relationship. In many instances, they discover that there are ways to find pleasure without relationships. To feel good, they begin to replace people pictures with nonpeople pleasure pictures—pictures of violence, drugs, and unloving sex—in their quality worlds. As they do so, they separate themselves further from people and happiness, compounding the urgency of their problem. The more lonely they get, the less they are able to accept that they have rejected people and the more they believe that people have rejected them.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“This entire book is an attempt to answer the all-important question that almost all of us continually ask ourselves when we are unhappy: How can I figure out how to be free to live my life the way I want to live it and still get along well with the people I need?”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“A choice theory world is a tough, responsible world; you cannot use grammar to escape responsibility for what you are doing.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“Fun is the genetic reward for learning.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“The best thing parents can do for their children is love each other.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“the surface. To begin to approach that goal, we need a new psychology that can help us get closer to each other than most of us are able to do now.”
― William Glasser M.D., Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“there is no evidence that we are genetically driven to find sexual love with the same person for our entire lives. Our genes want someone; they don’t care whom. This truth is evident in the high divorce rate and the almost equally high remarriage rate,”
― William Glasser M.D., Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“Many mothers rely on external control psychology to make their children feel guilty. But choosing to feel guilty because you don’t do what your mother expects of you is a choice. When you learn this lesson—and if you have a skilled guilt-tripping mother it is not an easy one to learn—you will find that it frees both you and your mother to make better choices.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“All of us know happily married couples, solid families, and people who are well satisfied with their jobs. But when asked to explain their happiness, many hesitate. They aren’t sure. Some say, We work hard to get along with each other, but others shrug and say, Maybe luck has a lot to do with it. What they never say is, We have given up trying to control each other. They don’t realize that they may be following a different theory, that inadvertently they have discovered choice theory.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“The best way to learn choice theory is to focus on why we choose the common miseries that we believe just happen to us. When we are depressed, we believe that we have no control over our suffering, that we are victims of an imbalance in our neurochemistry and hence that we need brain drugs, such as Prozac, to get our chemistry back into balance.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom

“after so many years of the freedom we have, many people are still deeply suspicious of free speech, of allowing people to say things that they know are not right. Having enjoyed the benefits and suffered the problems of the Bill of Rights for so long, these people see only the problems and would vote against this protection today if they had a chance. If you will do what I say, I will protect you against the forces of evil is the working maxim of every tyrant who has ever lived.”
― William Glasser, Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom