Stephen Covey Quotes

345 Sourced Quotes

If you're proactive, you don't have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.

Stephen Covey
One of the best ways to educate our hearts is to look at our interaction with other people, because our relationships with others are fundamentally a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.

Stephen Covey
The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a self-aware, knowledgeable, proactive individual, unrestricted by the attitudes, behaviors, and actions of others or by many of the circumstances and environmental influences that limit other people.

Stephen Covey
While values drive behaviors, principles govern consequences.

Stephen Covey
Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe this is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds.

Stephen Covey
How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.

Stephen Covey
If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting.

Stephen Covey
When it comes to developing character strength, inner security and unique personal and interpersonal talents and skills in a child, no institution can or ever will compare with, or effectively substitute for, the home's potential for positive influence.

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

Stephen Covey
You will never be able to truly step inside another person, to see the world as he sees it, until you develop the pure desire, the strength of personal character, and the positive Emotional Bank Account, as well as the empathetic listening skills to do it.

Stephen Covey
THE MOMENT OF CHOICE
A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence.

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
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
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