Stephen Covey famous quotes

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspirational #Life #Inspiring

The universal elements are integrity, vision, discipline, passion, governed by conscience. Conscience has been educated through studying and pondering the universal, timeless principles of all six major world religions.
-- Stephen Covey

#Integrity #Passion #Discipline

To receive gratitude with grace is a form of gratitude by itself, and not always an easy art to master.
-- Stephen Covey

#Gratitude #Art #Grace

Be a light, not a judge, be a model not a critic. Little by little, your circle of influence will explode and you will avoid the emotional metastasizing cancers of complaining, criticizing, competing, comparing and cynicism, all which reflect victimization, all of which are the opposite of being proactive.
-- Stephen Covey

#Cancer #Emotional #Opposites

You can retire from a job, but don't ever retire from making extremely meaningful contributions in life.
-- Stephen Covey

#Life #Change #Meaningful

Management is formal authority given from above. Leadership is moral authority given from below and all around.
-- Stephen Covey

#Management #Moral #Authority

Leadership is a choice, not a position
-- Stephen Covey

#Choices #Position

Start small, make a promise and keep it. Then, make larger promises and keep them. Eventually, your honor will become greater than your moods or your circumstances, which includes your medical condition and other people's stereotypic observations. Once you overcome this comparison based mentality, your confidence will soar.
-- Stephen Covey

#People #Honor #Promise

Only as we keep an open communication with our deep inner life will we have the wisdom to make effective choices.
-- Stephen Covey

#Communication #Choices #Intuition

Develop all four intelligences. PQ (physical intelligence) which represents 70 trillion cells that fight disease and digest your breakfast. IQ (intellectual intelligence) EQ (emotional intelligence) the sensing and wisdom of the heart - - and SQ (spiritual intelligence) having to do with meaning, purpose and integrity around your selected value system and your believed source. When combined, they change the world for good.
-- Stephen Covey

#Spiritual #Integrity #Heart

Principles don't die. They aren't here one day and gone the next. They can't be destroyed by fire, earthquake or theft. Principles are deep, fundamental truths, classic truths.
-- Stephen Covey

#Earthquakes #Fire #One Day

Listen, involve, synergize at work. Then you will bury the old and create an entirely new winning culture which will unleash people's talents and create complementary teams where strengths are made productive and weakness are made irrelevant through the strengths of others.
-- Stephen Covey

#Team #Winning #People

There are three constants in life... change, choice and principles.
-- Stephen Covey

#Life #Change #Bad Ass

Most learning is social, or what I call the cultural DNA. Everyone knows that word of mouth advertising is the best advertising. That's social learning.
-- Stephen Covey

#Dna #Mouths #Advertising

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspirational #Motivational #Courage

True leadership is moral authority, not formal authority. Leadership is a choice, not a position. The choice is to follow universal timeless principles, which will build trust and respect from the entire organization. Those with formal authority alone will lose this trust and respect.
-- Stephen Covey

#Organization #Choices #Principles

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Life Changing

I believe that God is the source of all the universal, timeless principles. And to Him, I give all the credit and the glory. However, to a person who is not religious, I believe they can live to the highest level of their conscience and develop spiritual intelligence that surpasses most people, including many religious people, who profess but do not practice.
-- Stephen Covey

#Spiritual #Religious #Believe

Most of us think we don't have enough time to exercise. What a distorted paradigm! We don't have time not to. We're talking about three to six hours a week - or a minimum of thirty minutes a day, every other day. That hardly seems an inordinate amount of time considering the tremendous benefits in terms of the impact on the other 162 - 165 hours of the week.
-- Stephen Covey

#Workout #Exercise #Thinking

People are social beings and want interaction and social learning is the primary form of learning, just as word of mouth advertising is the highest form of advertising.
-- Stephen Covey

#People #Mouths #Want

Love is a verb. Love – the feeling – is the fruit of love the verb or our loving actions. So love her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her.
-- Stephen Covey

#Sacrifice #Love Is #Appreciate

Little kindness and courtesies are so important. In relationships, the little things are the big things.
-- Stephen Covey

#Relationship #Kindness #Important

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

#Change #Keys #Ability

Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.
-- Stephen Covey

#Teamwork #Emotional #Differences

Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships.
-- Stephen Covey

#Relationship #Trust #Boyfriend

The problems in life come when we're sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.
-- Stephen Covey

#Law Of Attraction #Different #Sowing

Don't cheat people of their growth. Empower them to solve problems and generate ideas. Watch them grow!
-- Stephen Covey

#Ideas #People #Empowering

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen.
-- Stephen Covey

#Reflection #Emotional #Views

Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice.
-- Stephen Covey

#Positive #Positivity #Choices

Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.
-- Stephen Covey

#Mind #Way #Principles

Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.
-- Stephen Covey

#Two #Perspective #People

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.
-- Stephen Covey

#Happiness #Sacrifice #Desire

Begin each day with the blueprint of my deepest values FIRMLY in mind then when challenges come, make decisions BASED on those values.
-- Stephen Covey

#Decision #Challenges #Mind

Role modeling is the most basic responsibility of parents. Parents are handing life's scripts to their children, scripts that in all likelihood will be acted out for the rest of the children's lives.
-- Stephen Covey

#Children #Father #Responsibility

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

#Inspirational #Life #Wise

Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic
-- Stephen Covey

#Leadership #Character #Light

Our greatest joy and our greatest pain comes in our relationships with others.
-- Stephen Covey

#Broken Heart #Pain #Joy

Only after we can learn to forgive ourselves can we accept others as they are because we don't feel threatened by anything about them which is better than us.
-- Stephen Covey

#Forgiveness #Forgiving #Accepting

When you engage in a work that taps your talent and fuels your passion-that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet-therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul's code.
-- Stephen Covey

#Lying #Passion #Voice

It is possible to be busy-very busy-without being very effective.
-- Stephen Covey

#Busy

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply. They're either speaking or preparing to speak. They're filtering everything through their own paradigms, reading their autobiography into other people's lives.
-- Stephen Covey

#Reading #People #Empathy

Free your heart from hatred - forgive. Free your mind from worries - most never happen. Live simply and appreciate what you have. Give more. Expect less.
-- Stephen Covey

#Heart #Giving #Worry

The amateur salesman sells products; the professional sells solutions to needs and problems.
-- Stephen Covey

#Needs #Problem #Interpersonal Skills

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
-- Stephen Covey

#Anniversary #Spiritual #Suicidal

To achieve goals you've never achieved before, you need to start doing things you've never done before.
-- Stephen Covey

#Change #Goal #Needs

The way we see the problem is the problem.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspirational #Motivational #Way

If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.
-- Stephen Covey

#Want #Trustworthy #Trusted

A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it's personal, it's positive, it's present tense, it's visual, and it's emotional.
-- Stephen Covey

#Emotional #Ingredients #Affirmation

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

#Freedom #Decision #Empowerment

Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspirational #Self #Growth

I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a 'transformer' in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.
-- Stephen Covey

#Change #Persistence #Organization

Look at the word responsibility-"response-ability"-the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.
-- Stephen Covey

#Responsibility #People #Choices

A long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others.
-- Stephen Covey

#Life #Meaningful #Long

One of the most important ways to manifest integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, we build the trust of those who are present.
-- Stephen Covey

#Integrity #Important #Loyal

Prepare your mind and heart before you prepare your speech . What we say may be less important than how we say it.
-- Stephen Covey

#Heart #Mind #Important

The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are.
-- Stephen Covey

#Relationship #Important #Ingredients

If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspirational #Wall #Effectiveness

But until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspirational #Integrity #Yesterday

What you do has far greater impact than what you say.
-- Stephen Covey

#Leadership #Impact

If we know how to listen to our own heart, we can listen to the hearts of others.
-- Stephen Covey

#Heart #Compassion

The heart and soul of loving yourself is integrity and the peace of conscience it inspires.
-- Stephen Covey

#Integrity #Heart #Loving Yourself

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

#Inspirational #Attitude #Freedom

As you care less about what people think of you, you will care more about what others think of themselves.
-- Stephen Covey

#Thinking #Perspective #People

How you treat the one reveals how you regard the many, because everyone is ultimately a one.
-- Stephen Covey

#Treats #Interpersonal Skills

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

#Morning #Pie #People

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

#Success #Ladders #Building

Internal victories precede external victories.
-- Stephen Covey

#Victory #Internals

Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential.
-- Stephen Covey

#Effectiveness #People #Efficiency

The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions
-- Stephen Covey

#Freedom #Passion #Empowerment

At some time in your life, you probably had someone believe in you when you didn't believe in yourself.
-- Stephen Covey

#Believe #Believe In Yourself #Personal Development

I teach people how to treat me by what I will allow.
-- Stephen Covey

#People #Treats #Teach

When air is charged with emotions, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection.
-- Stephen Covey

#Air #Rejection #Emotion

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.
-- Stephen Covey

#Perspective #Perception #Mouths

If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won't require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them. Their fire comes from within, not from without. Their motivation is internal, not external.
-- Stephen Covey

#Jobs #Motivation #Passion

Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
-- Stephen Covey

#Life #Leadership #Insperational

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.
-- Stephen Covey

#Exercise #Space #Choices

Once you've found your own voice, the choice to expand your influence, to increase your contribution, is the choice to inspire others to find their voice.
-- Stephen Covey

#Voice #Choices #Inspire

Time management is a misnomer, the challenge is to manage ourselves.
-- Stephen Covey

#Challenges #Time Management #Management

Every human has four endowments - self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change.
-- Stephen Covey

#Change #Encouragement #Freedom

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Leadership

Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.
-- Stephen Covey

#Ability

Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going. Rather than always focusing on what's urgent, learn to focus on what is really important.
-- Stephen Covey

#Motivation #Focus #Important

Nothing is more exciting and bonding in relationships than creating together.
-- Stephen Covey

#Creativity #Creating #Together

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.
-- Stephen Covey

#Life Is #Accumulation #Contribution

Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves - who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.
-- Stephen Covey

#Thinking #People #Leader

Our character is basically a composite of our habits.
-- Stephen Covey

#Inspiration #Character #Habit

While we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose our responses.
-- Stephen Covey

#Response

The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.
-- Stephen Covey

#Life #Change #Team

When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.
-- Stephen Covey

#Trust #Communication #Easy

Live, love, laugh, leave a legacy.
-- Stephen Covey

#Love #Life #Inspiration

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.
-- Stephen Covey

#Essence #Eggs #Effectiveness

Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment.
-- Stephen Covey

#Success #Leadership #Commitment

The challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves.
-- Stephen Covey

#Time #Challenges #Manage

The environment you fashion out of your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideals, your philosophy is the only climate you will ever live in. The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
-- Stephen Covey

#Fashion #Time #Philosophy

Through imagination, we can visualize the uncredited worlds of potential that lie within us.
-- Stephen Covey

#Lying #Imagination #Vision

Your power to choose your direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future, and to powerfully influence the rest of creation.
-- Stephen Covey

#Careers #Decision #Influence

Empathy takes time, and efficiency is for things, not people.
-- Stephen Covey

#People #Empathy #Efficiency

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

#Motivational #Change #Choices

Private victories precede public victories. You can't invert that process any more than you can harvest a crop before you plant it.
-- Stephen Covey

#Victory #Conservative #Harvest

The greatest risk is the risk of riskless living.
-- Stephen Covey

#Challenges #Risk