Top 100 Stephen Covey Quotes
#1. You can't hold someone accountable for results if you supervise their methods.
Stephen Covey
#2. I don't read blogs but occasionally people tell me about what they contain, and I do take questions that come from blogs.
Stephen Covey
#3. The need to leave a legacy is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution.
Stephen Covey
#4. Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.
Stephen Covey
#5. The key to success is dedication to life-long learning.
Stephen Covey
#6. In this knowledge-worker age, it's now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs - so the pressure to do well is really high.
Stephen Covey
#7. Unfortunately, too many executives believe the myths about trust. Myths like how trust is soft and is merely a social virtue. The reality is that trust is hard-edged and is an economic driver.
Stephen Covey
#8. Success is when you realize obstacles you face are challenges to help you become better - and your response equals the challenge.
Stephen Covey
#9. Principles are natural laws that are external to us and that ultimately control the consequences of our actions. Values are internal and subjective and represent that which we feel strongest about in guiding our behavior.
Stephen Covey
#10. Keeping a personal journal a daily in-depth analysis and evaluation of your experiences is a high-leverage activity that increases self-awareness and enhances all the endowments and the synergy among them.
Stephen Covey
#11. Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them.
Stephen Covey
#12. The deepest hunger of [a child's] human heart is to be understood, for understanding implicitly affirms, validates, recognizes and appreciates the intrinsic worth of another.
Stephen Covey
#13. All things are created twice; first mentally; then physically. The key to creativity is to begin with the end in mind, with a vision and a blue print of the desired result.
Stephen Covey
#14. You basically get what you reward. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals and values.
Stephen Covey
#15. Everyone has values; even criminal gangs have values. Values govern people's behavior but principles govern the consequences of those behaviors.
Stephen Covey
#16. We can never really change someone; people must change themselves.
Stephen Covey
#17. Inspire (from the Latin inspirare) means to breathe life into another.
Stephen Covey
#18. While values drive behaviors, principles govern consequences.
Stephen Covey
#19. The world has entered an era of the most profound and challenging change in human history.
Stephen Covey
#20. Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
Stephen Covey
#21. 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
#22. The solutions to our problems are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history.
Stephen Covey
#23. The more involved you are, the more significant your learning will be.
Stephen Covey
#24. We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.
Stephen Covey
#25. 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
#26. The greatest and most inspiring mountain climbing achievements in history are not so much stories of individual achievement, but are stories of the extraordinary power of a unified, talented, prepared team that stays loyally committed to one another and to their shared vision to the end.
Stephen Covey
#27. It's better to be humbled by the word than by the force of circumstances.
Stephen Covey
#28. If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination,
we're tied to that which is infinite.
Stephen Covey
#29. I am fortunate to have a very helpful team that enables me to spend time doing things that are important but not necessarily urgent. People who have no such team need to also make these larger decisions so that they can cheerfully say No to that which is urgent but not important.
Stephen Covey
#30. By behaving in ways that build trust with one, you build trust with many.
Stephen Covey
#31. To be successful we must live from our imaginations, not from our memories.
Stephen Covey
#32. Success comes from the ability to view each arising problem as an opportunity for self improvement.
Stephen Covey
#33. Studies have identified a significant 'skills gap' between what students are currently being taught and the skills employers are seeking in today's global economy. Our children must be better prepared than they are now to meet the future challenges of our ever-changing world.
Stephen Covey
#34. Private Victory precedes Public Victory. Algebra comes before calculus.
Stephen Covey
#35. If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.
Stephen Covey
#36. Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.
Stephen Covey
#37. More essential than working on attitudes and behaviors is examining the paradigms out of which those attitudes and behaviors flow.
Stephen Covey
#38. Time management is a misnomer, the challenge is to manage ourselves.
Stephen Covey
#39. Be proactive. Ask yourself, "Are my actions based on self-chosen values or on my moods, feelings and circumstances?"
Stephen Covey
#40. The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.
Stephen Covey
#41. Link yourself to your potential, not to your past.
Stephen Covey
#43. Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character.
Stephen Covey
#44. We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.
Stephen Covey
#45. Whether or not we belong to a church or service organization or have a job that provides meaningful service opportunities, not a day goes by that we can't at least serve one other human being by making deposits of unconditional love.
Stephen Covey
#46. The problems in life come when we're sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.
Stephen Covey
#47. Find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.
Stephen Covey
#48. Over time, I have come to this simple definition of leadership: Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust.
Stephen Covey
#49. Win-win is a belief in the Third Alternative. It's not your way or my way; it's a better way, a higher way.
Stephen Covey
#50. The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our circle of influence, our own character.
Stephen Covey
#51. Live the law of love. We encourage obedience to the laws of life when we live the laws of love.
Stephen Covey
#52. A blind person could make a lifelong study of the eye, properties of light, the sight process and become a great expert in the field, but in another sense he would know nothing about sight. A person could know a great deal about God and yet not know God.
Stephen Covey
#54. It's not only a matter of when to do things, but whether or not to do them at all.
Stephen Covey
#55. Management is clearly different from leadership. Leadership is primarily a high-powered, right-brain activity. It's more of an art it's based on a philosophy. You have to ask the ultimate questions of life when you're dealing with personal leadership issues.
Stephen Covey
#57. Vision is about more than just getting things done, accomplishing some task, achieving something; it is about discovering and expanding our view of others, affirming them, believing in them, and helping them discover and realize the potential within them-helping them find their own voice.
Stephen Covey
#58. 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
#59. Remember, technology is a great servant, but a terrible master.
Stephen Covey
#60. Trust is the glue in relationships and organizations
Stephen Covey
#61. It is unpleasant and disturbing to be rejected. It is deeply satisfying to be accepted.
Stephen Covey
#62. As we create synergy among the roles of our lives, there's more of us to put into the time we have.
Stephen Covey
#64. Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.
Stephen Covey
#65. Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.
Stephen Covey
#66. Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.
Stephen Covey
#67. Most people are basically a victim of the circumstances of their life. They have things like 9/11, they have terrorism threats, they have new war threats, they have economy problems, and they think, 'What can I do? I'm basically a victim.'
Stephen Covey
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.
Stephen Covey
#71. If you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself, except in some short-term, psych-up, superficial way.
Stephen Covey
#72. Belief is another word for paradigm. It's a synonymous. Your belief of the way things are. Values are the way things should be, it's a paradigm of the way things should be. Beliefs are the paradigms of the way things are.
Stephen Covey
#73. Satisfied needs do not motivate. It's only the unsatisfied need that motivates. Next to physical survival, the greatest need of a human being is psychological survival - to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, to be appreciated.
Stephen Covey
#74. When our honor becomes greater than our moods, that is where transformation happens
Stephen Covey
#75. Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren't important. They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II ... Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management.
Stephen Covey
#76. Actually I did not invent the seven habits, they are universal principles and most of what I wrote about is just common sense. I am embarrassed when people talk about the Covey Habits, and dislike the idea of being some sort of guru.
Stephen Covey
#77. Effective interdependence can only be built on true independence.
Stephen Covey
#78. Through it all I have learned that parenting is basically a life of self sacrifice.
Stephen Covey
#79. Prepare your mind and heart before you prepare your speech . What we say may be less important than how we say it.
Stephen Covey
#80. To achieve goals you've never achieved before, you need to start doing things you've never done before.
Stephen Covey
#81. Brands need to reinvent themselves from time to time to stay relevant.
Stephen Covey
#82. The exercise of true leadership is inversely proportional to the exercise of power.
Stephen Covey
#83. 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
#84. The principle of fasting is taught in almost all major world religions as a means of developing a higher level of self-mastery and self-control, and also a deeper awareness of how really dependent we are.
Stephen Covey
#85. The highest challenge inside organizations is to enable each person to contribute his or her unique talents and passion to accomplish the organization's purpose.
Stephen Covey
#86. Trust is a function of both character and competence. Of course you can't trust someone who lacks integrity, but if someone is honest but they can't perform, you're not going to trust them either. You won't trust them to get the job done.
Stephen Covey
#87. I believe that the habit of constant reading of good books and scholarly periodicals and magazines in many disciplines is vital to give a larger perspective and to constantly sense the interdependent nature of life.
Stephen Covey
#88. 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
#90. I think that [respect for people] is of profound importance because it means you are caring and you trust them to do the right thing.
Stephen Covey
#91. Will we act upon life, or will we merely be acted upon?
Stephen Covey
#92. 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
#93. Our greatest joy and our greatest pain comes in our relationships with others.
Stephen Covey
#94. The role of the leader is to foster mutual respect and build a complementary team where each strength is made productive and each weakness irrelevant.
Stephen Covey
#95. What is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you
Stephen Covey
#96. As human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values.
Stephen Covey
#97. Vital to quality of life is the ability to work together, learn from each other, and help each other grow.
Stephen Covey
#98. People and their managers are working so hard to be sure things are done right, that they have hardly have time to decide if they are doing the right things.
Stephen Covey
#99. Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.
Stephen Covey
#100. Every time I see high-trust cultures, I see a lessening of adversarialism.
Stephen Covey
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
