Stephen Covey Quotes

345 Sourced Quotes

Habit 1: Be Proactive Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind Habit 3: Put First Things First Habit 4: Think Win/Win Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood Habit 6: Synergize Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Stephen Covey
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.

Stephen Covey
Trust is the glue of life. It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships — marriages, families, and organizations of every kind — together.

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

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

Stephen Covey
Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.

Stephen Covey
It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

Stephen Covey
Management works in the system; leadership works on the system.

Stephen Covey
Everyone chooses one of two roads in life - the old and the young, the rich and the poor, men and women alike. One is the broad, well-traveled road to mediocrity, the other road to greatness and meaning.

Stephen Covey
If I try to use human influence strategies and tactics of how to get other people to do what I want, to work better, to be more motivated, to like me and each other-while my character is fundamentally flawed, marked by duplicity and insincerity-then, in the long run, I cannot be successful. My duplicity will breed distrust, and everything I do-even using so-called good human relations techniques-will be perceived as manipulative.

Stephen Covey
Frustration is a function of our expectations, and our expectations are often a reflection of the social mirror rather than our own values and priorities.

Stephen Covey
Retire from your job but never from meaningful projects. If you want to live a long life, you need eustress, that is, a deep sense of meaning and contribution to worthy projects and causes, particularly your intergenerational family.

Stephen Covey
If we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.

Stephen Covey
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
We may find it convenient to live with the illusion that circumstances or other people are responsible for the quality of our lives, but the reality is that we are responsible-response-able-for our choices.

Stephen Covey
If you put good people in bad systems you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow.

Stephen Covey
What is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you

Stephen Covey
We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.

Stephen Covey
Empathic listening takes time, but it doesn't take anywhere near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you're already miles down the road; to redo; to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems; to deal with the results of not giving people psychological air.

Stephen Covey
We value the clock for its speed and efficiency. The clock has its place, efficiency has its place, after effectiveness. The symbol of effectiveness is the compass a sense of direction, purpose, vision, perspective, and balance. But the empowerment process itself is not efficient.

Stephen Covey
When your happiness comes primarily from the happiness of others, you know you have moved from a 'me' experience to a 'we' experience. And the whole problem-solving and opportunity-seizing process changes.

Stephen Covey
Vital to quality of life is the ability to work together, learn from each other, and help each other grow.

Stephen Covey
If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror - from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us - our view of ourselves is like the reflection in a crazy mirror room at the carnival.

Stephen Covey
The best way to develop courage is to set a goal and achieve it, make a promise and keep it.

Stephen Covey
When people have a real sense of legacy, a sense of mattering, a sense of contribution, it seems to tap into the deepest part of their heart and soul. It brings out the best and subordinates the rest.

Stephen Covey
Vision is seeing a future state with the mind's eye. Vision is applied imagination.

Stephen Covey
You think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things.

Stephen Covey
One thing's for sure. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

Stephen Covey
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

Stephen Covey
If two people have the same opinion, one is unnecessary.... I don't want to talk, to communicate, with someone who agrees with me; I want to communicate with you because you see it differently. I value that difference.

Stephen Covey