Stephen Covey Quotes

Be sure that, as you scramble up the ladder of success, it is leaning against the right building.

We judge ourselves by our intentions. And others by their actions.

My behavior is a product of my own conscious choices based on principles, rather than a product of my conditions, based on feelings.

Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.

Each of us guard a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside.

The enemy of the "best" is often the "good."

Treat them all the same by treating them differently.

See every problem as an opportunity to exercise creative energy.

The core of any family is what is changeless, what is going to be there──shared vision and values.

What is common sense isn't common practice.

Before a performance, a sales presentation, a difficult confrontation, or the daily challenge of meeting a goal, see it clearly, vividly, relentlessly, over and over again. Create an internal "comfort zone". Then, when you get into the situation, it isn't foreign. It doesn't scare you.

Those who get the most out of life and those who give the most are those who make the choice to act.

Sacrifice really means giving up something good for something better.

Live the law of love. We encourage obedience to the laws of life when we live the laws of love.

When people seriously undertake to identify what really matters most to them in their lives, what they really want to be and do, they become very reverent. They start to think in larger terms than today and tomorrow.

The greatest thing you can do for your children is love your spouse.

When parents see their children's problems as opportunities to build the relationship instead of as negative, burdensome irritations, it totally changes the nature of parent-child interaction. Parents become more willing, even excited, about deeply understanding and helping their children. . . . This paradigm is powerful in business as well.

There are certain things that are fundamental to human fulfillment. The essence of these needs is captured in the phrase 'to live, to love, to learn, to leave a legacy.' The need to leave a legacy is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution.

Principles are the territory. Values are maps.

we're responsible for our own lives.

People and organizations don't grow much without delegation and completed staff work because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses

Trust is a function of two things: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, your motive and your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, and your track record. Both are vital.

Interdependency follows independence.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

Doing the right things for the right reason in the right way is the key to Quality of Life!

Many people think in terms of either/or: either you're nice or you're tough. Win-win requires that you be both. It is a balancing act between courage and consideration. To go for win-win, you not only have to be empathic, but you also have to be confident. You not only have to be considerate and sensitive, you also have to be brave. To do that-to achieve that balance between courage and consideration-is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to win-win.

The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.

Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass - when what we do doesn't contribute to what is most important in our lives.

In the end, life teaches us what is important, and that is family.

While values drive behaviors, principles govern consequences.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don't pay the price day in and day out, you'll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.

An empowering mission statement has to become a living document, part of our very nature, so that the criteria we've put into it are also in us, in the way we live our lives day by day.

Character grows in the soil of experience with the fertilization of example, the moisture of ambition, and the sunshine of satisfaction. Character cannot be purchased, bargained for, inherited, rented or imported from afar. It must be home-grown. Purely intellectual development without commensurate internal character development makes as much sense as putting a high-powered sports car in the hands of a teenager who is high on drugs. Yet all too often in the academic world, that's exactly what we do by not focusing on the character development of young people.

Effective interdependence can only be built on true independence.

Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.

Instead, I have an abundance mentality: When people are genuinely happy at the successes of others, the pie gets larger.

We are free to choose our actions, . . . but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.

It is extremely ironic that the more we care about what people think about us the less we care about people, and the less we care about what people think about us the more we begin to care for others

Real excellence does not come cheaply. A certain price must be paid in terms of practice, patience, and persistence - natural ability notwithstanding.

But with the steady disintegration of the family in modern society over the last century, the role of the school in bridging the gap has become vital!

The key to motivation is motive.

Priority is a function of context.

Synergy: The combined effect of individuals in collaboration that exceeds the sum of their individual effects.

To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.

To blame and accuse other people, is to choose to empower them, to control us.

The way we see things is the source of the way we think or the way we act