“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate.”
As commonly credited to Goethe
- Credited to
- Goethe
- Actually said by
- Haim G. Ginott
- Earliest known
- 1972
Findings
Goethe did not say this. The lines come from the preface of Haim G. Ginott’s 1972 book Teacher and Child. Ginott said he wrote them as a young teacher, as a summary of the book’s philosophy, and they’ve been repeated (and occasionally garbled) ever since.