S R Covey Quotes

#1. Despite all our gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for.

Stephen Covey

#2. I've set and met my career goals and I'm having tremendous professional success. But it's cost me my personal and family life. I don't know my wife and children anymore. I'm not even sure I know myself and what's really important to me. I've had to ask myself - is it worth it?

Stephen R. Covey

#3. It's sometimes a painful process. It's a change that has to be motivated by a higher purpose, by the willingness to subordinate what you think you want now for what you want later.

Stephen R. Covey

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. Remember that quick fix is a mirage. Building and repairing relationships takes time.

Stephen R. Covey

#9. 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

#10. Habits are like a cable. We weave a strand of it every day and soon it cannot be broken.

Stephen R. Covey

#11. Success is when you realize obstacles you face are challenges to help you become better - and your response equals the challenge.

Stephen Covey

#12. Some people say they have 20 years experience, when in reality, they have 1 year's experience repeated 20 times. (Stephen M R Covey to Richie Norton when Norton asked if he was too young to train older executives for Covey.)

Richie Norton

#13. 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

#14. To judge individuals before understanding them is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself.

Stephen Covey

#15. Light is the greatest disinfectant in nature and also in organizations.

Stephen Covey

#16. man you might like to take her out. If you were

Stephen R. Covey

#17. You can't talk your way out of a problem you behaved your way into!

Stephen R. Covey

#18. If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to keep getting what we're getting.

Stephen Covey

#19. Stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them.

Stephen Covey

#20. 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

#21. 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

#22. It comes from within.

Stephen R. Covey

#23. Changing a planning tool or a method won't create significant change in the results we're getting in our lives - although the implied promise is that it will. It's not a matter of controlling things more, better, or faster; it's questioning the whole assumption of control.

Stephen R. Covey

#24. No matter how long we've walked life's pathway to mediocrity, we can always choose to switch paths. Always. It's never too late. We can find our voice.

Stephen R. Covey

#25. It is that a meaningful life is not a matter of speed or efficiency. It's much more a matter of what you do and why you do it, than how fast you get it done.

Stephen R. Covey

#26. A moment of choice is a moment of truth. It's the testing point of our character and competence.

Stephen R. Covey

#27. We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people's definition of you.

Stephen R. Covey

#28. Systems. They are self-evident and can easily be validated by any individual. It's almost as if these principles or natural laws are part of the human condition, part of the human consciousness, part of the human conscience. They seem to exist in all human beings, regardless of social conditioning

Stephen R. Covey

#29. People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them.

Stephen R. Covey

#30. Or a person endlessly going to school, never producing, living on other people's golden eggs - the eternal student syndrome.

Stephen R. Covey

#31. When you engage in a work that taps your talent and fuels your passion
that rises out of a great need in the world that you feel drawn by conscience to meet
therein lies your voice, your calling, your soul's code.

Stephen R. Covey

#32. While we must learn from good examples and keep always in mind the bigger goal, we must compare ourselves only with ourselves. We can't focus or base our happiness on another's progress; we can focus only on our own.

Stephen R. Covey

#33. Your economic security does not lie in your job; it lies in your own power to produce- to think, to learn, to create, to adapt. That's true financial independence. It's not having wealth; it's having the power to produce wealth. It's intrinsic.

Stephen R. Covey

#34. 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

#35. It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.

Stephen R. Covey

#36. Two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.

Stephen R. Covey

#37. When all you want is a person's body and you don't really want their mind, heart or spirit, you have reduced a person to a thing.

Stephen R. Covey

#38. It's not enough to dream. It's not enough to try. It's not enough to set goals or climb ladders. It's not enough to value. The effort has to be based on practical realities that produce the result. Only then can we dream, set goals, and work to achieve them with confidence.

Stephen R. Covey

#39. Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it / immediately.

Stephen R. Covey

#40. We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people's agendas, of circumstances, or of past habits.

Stephen R. Covey

#41. Is it logical that two people can disagree and that both can be right? It's not logical: it's psychological. And it's very real.

Stephen R. Covey

#42. I realized that Sandra and I had been getting social mileage out of our children's good behavior, and, in our eyes, this son simply didn't measure up.

Stephen R. Covey

#43. The first job of a leader - at work or at home - is to inspire trust. It's to bring out the best in people by entrusting them with meaningful stewardships, and to create an environment in which high-trust interaction inspires creativity and possibility.

Stephen M.R. Covey

#44. We become what we repeatedly do.

Sean Covey

#45. True independence of character empowers us to act rather than be acted upon.

Stephen Covey

#46. 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

#47. Priority is a function of context.

Stephen Covey

#48. You can retire from a job, but don't ever retire from making extremely meaningful contributions in life.

Stephen Covey

#49. 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

#50. 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

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

Stephen Covey

#52. We think we see the world as it is, when in fact we see the world as we are.

Stephen Covey

#53. It's all about how you feel, not how you look

Sean Covey

#54. You can't hold someone accountable for results if you supervise their methods.

Stephen Covey

#55. Independent people can get what they want through

Stephen R. Covey

#56. The heart and soul of loving yourself is integrity and the peace of conscience it inspires.

Stephen Covey

#57. 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

#58. I believe in Coach Louis Wong. He is so much more than just a football coach.

Stephen Covey

#59. 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

#60. What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time?

Stephen Covey

#61. Taking initiative is a form of self-empowerment.

Stephen Covey

#62. Sincere apologies make deposits; repeated apologies interpreted as insincere make withdrawals. And the quality of the relationship reflects it.

Stephen R. Covey

#63. I didn't know much about the Mexican gray wolf before January 2011, when we contributed a flight in our Pilatus PC12 to the effort to re-establish the wolf in the forests of Arizona and New Mexico.

Joy Covey

#64. 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

#65. 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

#66. 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

#67. Abraham Lincoln was often criticized for trying to make friends with his enemies instead of trying to get rid of them. He replied, Isn't that what I'm doing when I make an enemy a friend?

Sean Covey

#68. We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations

Stephen Covey

#69. Live out of your imagination, not your history.

Stephen Covey

#70. 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

#71. The key to success is dedication to life-long learning.

Stephen Covey

#72. 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

#73. Effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems.

Stephen Covey

#74. You can't have the fruits without the roots.

Stephen Covey

#75. You can't talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

Stephen Covey

#76. We can't live without eating, but we don't live to eat.

Stephen R. Covey

#77. 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

#78. 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

#79. Trust is central to an economy that works.

Stephen Covey

#80. Some people achieve the top of the ladder and only then realise it was standing against the wrong wall.

Stephen Covey

#81. You know what? At the end of the day, funny is funny. I hope to see the end of all the female cliches that are written in a lot of comedies that are named chick flicks.

Wendi McLendon-Covey

#82. The need to leave a legacy is our spiritual need to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution.

Stephen Covey

#83. 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

#84. 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

#85. To listen with empathy is the most important human skill.

Stephen Covey

#86. I define discipline as the ability to make + keep promises and to honor commitments.

Stephen Covey