“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

—  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Widely attributed to Goethe, but also claimed to be a distortion of a passage by Haim Ginott.
Disputed

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 185
German writer, artist, and politician 1749–1832

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Variant:
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