Stephen Covey Quotes

345 Sourced Quotes

As you begin to think more in terms of importance, you begin to see time differently.

Stephen Covey
People with a scarcity mentality tend to see everything in terms of win-lose. There is only so much; and if someone else has it, that means there will be less for me. The more principle-centered we become, the more we develop an abundance mentality, the more we are genuinely happy for the successes, well-being, achievements, recognition, and good fortune of other people. We believe their success adds to...rather than detracts from...our lives.

Stephen Covey
The most effective way I know to begin with the end in mind is to develop a personal mission statement or philosophy or creed. It focused on what you want to be (character) and to do (contributions and achievements) and on the values or principles upon which being and doing are based.

Stephen Covey
None of us see the world as it is but as we are, as our frames of reference, or maps, define the territory.

Stephen Covey
The more involved you are, the more significant your learning will be.

Stephen Covey
The great contributors in life are those who, though afraid of the knock at the door, still answer it.

Stephen Covey
Response-ability is the ABILITY to choose our response to any circumstance or condition.

Stephen Covey
Petty things become unimportant when people are impassioned about a purpose higher than self.

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

Stephen Covey
Attending church does not necessarily mean living the principles taught in those meeting. You can be active in a church but inactive in its gospel.

Stephen Covey
Communication is the most important skill in life. We spend most of our waking hours communicating. But consider this: You've spent years learning how to read and write, years learning how to speak. But what about listening?

Stephen Covey
Integrity is conforming reality to our words - in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.

Stephen Covey
It takes courage to realize that you are greater than your moods, greater than your thoughts, and that you can control your moods and thoughts.

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

Stephen Covey
Because of the space between stimulus and response, people have the power of choice; therefore, leaders are neither born nor made — meaning environmentally trained and nurtured. They are self-made through chosen responses, and if they choose based on principles and develop increasingly greater discipline, their freedom to choose increases.

Stephen Covey
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.

Stephen Covey
There are principles that govern human effectiveness - natural laws in the human dimension that are just as real, just as unchanging and unarguably there as laws such as gravity are in the physical dimension.

Stephen Covey
When we value correct principles, we have truth - a knowledge of things as they are.

Stephen Covey
The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.

Stephen Covey
Would you not agree that relationships are built on trust? Would you not also agree that most individuals think more in terms of "me-my wants, my needs, my rights? What would wisdom dictate - would it not direct us to focus on trust-building principles and sacrificing 'me' for 'we'?"

Stephen Covey