Top 100 Covey Stephen Quotes
#1. Those who get the most out of life and those who give the most are those who make the choice to act.
Stephen Covey
#2. You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness.
Stephen R. Covey
#3. Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment.
Stephen Covey
#4. What one great idea resonates deeper in the soul than any other ... that we are free to choose. Next to life itself, the power to choose is your greatest gift.
Stephen Covey
#5. Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven't paid the price to decide what is really important to them.
Stephen Covey
#6. The spirit of America has nurtured responsibility and community unlike any other country.
Stephen Covey
#7. Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them.
Stephen Covey
#8. 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
#9. 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
#11. What you do has far greater impact than what you say.
Stephen Covey
#12. If you don't have confidence in the diagnosis, you won't have confidence in the prescription.
Stephen Covey
#13. Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.
Stephen R. Covey
#14. We are free to choose our response in any situation, but in doing so we chose the attendant consequence. If we pick up one end of the stick, we pick up the other.
Stephen Covey
#15. We not not our feelings. We are not our moods. We not even our thoughts.
Stephen R. Covey
#16. 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
#17. The key to acting with integrity is to simply stop playing the game.
Stephen Covey
#18. We do make a difference - one way or the other. We are responsible for the impact of our lives. Whatever we do with whatever we have, we leave behind us a legacy for those who follow.
Stephen Covey
#19. In many situations involving service recovery - the problem itself became the catalyst for the creation of even greater trust as the companies took the issues head-on and worked through the difficult problem in a way that restored confidence.
Stephen Covey
#20. Synergy is better than my way or your way. It's our way.
Stephen Covey
#21. An empowering mission statement has to become a living document, part of our very nature, so that the criteria we've put into it are also in us, in the way we live our lives day by day.
Stephen Covey
#22. 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
#23. Remember that quick fix is a mirage. Building and repairing relationships takes time.
Stephen R. Covey
#24. 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
#25. Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it every day and soon it cannot be broken.
Stephen R. Covey
#26. We can never really change someone; people must change themselves.
Stephen Covey
#27. Effective people lead their lives and manage their relationships around principles; ineffective people attempt to manage their time around priorities and their tasks around goals. Think effectiveness with people; efficiency with things.
Stephen R. Covey
#28. All broken relationships can be traced back to broken agreements
Stephen Covey
#29. Our problems don't stem from our ignorance so much as our disobedience of that which we know to be right.
Stephen Covey
#30. 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
#31. Nevertheless, the only way we can move from where we are now to where we would like to be is to accept where we are now.
Stephen Covey
#32. It's not that we ignore our weaknesses; rather, we make our weaknesses irrelevant by working effectively with others so that we compensate for our weaknesses through their strengths and they compensate for their weaknesses through our strengths.
Stephen Covey
#33. Make time for planning: Wars are won in the general's tent.
Stephen Covey
#34. Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context.
Stephen Covey
#35. The average family spends 30 hours in front of a television, and they say they don't have the time to have a balanced, integrated life.
Stephen Covey
#36. But with the steady disintegration of the family in modern society over the last century, the role of the school in bridging the gap has become vital!
Stephen Covey
#37. If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control - myself.
Stephen R. Covey
#38. There's strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.
Stephen Covey
#39. Success is when you realize obstacles you face are challenges to help you become better - and your response equals the challenge.
Stephen Covey
#40. There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.
Stephen R. Covey
#41. Conscience connects us with the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the heart.
Stephen Covey
#42. Every person in the organization must change inside their hearts and minds, so that they themselves become principle centred.
Stephen Covey
#43. Everyone has values; even criminal gangs have values. Values govern people's behavior but principles govern the consequences of those behaviors.
Stephen Covey
#44. 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
#45. 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
#47. 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
#48. The person who doesn't read is no better off than the person who can't read.
Stephen R. Covey
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. The best way to develop courage is to set a goal and achieve it, make a promise and keep it.
Stephen Covey
#52. The need to leave a legacy is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution.
Stephen Covey
#53. The key to the 99 is the one. Or, put another way, the key to the group is the one individual. Think about the one, talk to the one, regard the one, serve the one. If you are sincere and constant, you will discover that gradually your influence with the many will be magnified.
Stephen Covey
#54. Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don't; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create.
Stephen Covey
#55. To listen with empathy is the most important human skill.
Stephen Covey
#56. I define discipline as the ability to make + keep promises and to honor commitments.
Stephen Covey
#58. True independence of character empowers us to act rather than be acted upon.
Stephen Covey
#59. 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
#61. You can retire from a job, but don't ever retire from making extremely meaningful contributions in life.
Stephen Covey
#62. It simply makes no difference how good the rhetoric is or even how good the intentions are; if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success.
Stephen R. Covey
#63. It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busyness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy - very busy - without being very effective.
Stephen R. Covey
#64. Some people achieve the top of the ladder and only then realise it was standing against the wrong wall.
Stephen Covey
#65. We think we see the world as it is, when in fact we see the world as we are.
Stephen Covey
#66. You can't hold someone accountable for results if you supervise their methods.
Stephen Covey
#67. The heart and soul of loving yourself is integrity and the peace of conscience it inspires.
Stephen Covey
#68. The process of building trust is an interesting one, but it begins with yourself, with what I call self trust, and with your own credibility, your own trustworthiness. If you think about it, it's hard to establish trust with others if you can't trust yourself.
Stephen Covey
#69. I believe in Coach Louis Wong. He is so much more than just a football coach.
Stephen Covey
#70. 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 R. Covey
#71. What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time?
Stephen Covey
#72. Taking initiative is a form of self-empowerment.
Stephen Covey
#73. Sincere apologies make deposits; repeated apologies interpreted as insincere make withdrawals. And the quality of the relationship reflects it.
Stephen R. Covey
#74. 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 R. Covey
#75. The reality is that everybody makes mistakes. The issue isn't whether you will make them, it's what you will do about them. It's whether you will choose the path of humility and courage or the path of ego and pride.
Stephen Covey
#76. We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations
Stephen Covey
#77. Despite all our gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for.
Stephen Covey
#78. Trust is a powerful accelerator to performance and when trust goes up, speed also goes up while cost comes down - producing what we call a trust dividend.
Stephen Covey
#79. To judge individuals before understanding them is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself.
Stephen Covey
#80. Light is the greatest disinfectant in nature and also in organizations.
Stephen Covey
#82. You can't talk your way out of a problem you behaved your way into!
Stephen R. Covey
#83. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting.
Stephen Covey
#84. Stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them.
Stephen Covey
#85. He (Anwar Sadat) records that he was almost loathe to leave his prison cell because it was there that he realized that real success is success with self. It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.
Stephen R. Covey
#86. Before a performance, a sales presentation, a difficult confrontation, or the daily challenge of meeting a goal, see it clearly, vividly, relentlessly, over and over again. Create an internal "comfort zone". Then, when you get into the situation, it isn't foreign. It doesn't scare you.
Stephen Covey
#88. 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
#89. The more closely our maps or paradigms are aligned with these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be
Stephen R. Covey
#90. Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Stephen Covey
#91. 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
#92. The key to success is dedication to life-long learning.
Stephen Covey
#93. Our lives are the results of our choices. To blame and accuse other people, the environment, or other extrinsic factors is to choose to empower those things to control us.
Stephen Covey
#94. Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.
Stephen Covey
#96. You can't talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.
Stephen Covey
#98. Highly proactive people don't blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice.
Stephen Covey
#99. We are free to choose our actions, based on our knowledge of correct principles, but we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Remember, If you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other.
Stephen R. Covey
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