Stephen Covey Quotes
-
In order to have influence, you have to be influenced.
-
Do what is important, not what is urgent.
-
The ability to manage well doesn't make much difference if you're not even in the right jungle.
-
Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought.
-
When you study the lives of all great achievers-those who have had the greatest influence on others, those who have made things happen-you will find a pattern. Through their persistent efforts and inner struggle, they have greatly expanded their four native human intelligences or capacities. The highest manifestations of these four intelligences are: for mental, vision; for the physical, discipline; for the emotional, passion; for the spiritual, conscience. These manifestations also represent our highest means of expressing our voice.
-
To set and work toward any goal is an act of courage.
-
We must never be too busy to take time to sharpen the saw.
-
When people seriously undertake to identify what really matters most to them in their lives, what they really want to be and do, they become very reverent. They start to think in larger terms than today and tomorrow.
-
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.
-
Anytime we think the problem is 'out there,' that thought is the problem. We empower what's out there to control us. The change paradigm is 'outside-in' - what's out there has to change before we can change. The proactive approach is to change from the 'inside-out': to be different, and by being different, to effect positive change in what's out there - I can be more resourceful, I can be more diligent, I can be more creative, I can be more cooperative.
-
How you treat the one reveals how you regard the many, because everyone is ultimately a one.
-
Only as we keep an open communication with our deep inner life will we have the wisdom to make effective choices.
-
we're responsible for our own lives.
-
Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.
-
Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.
-
In a very real sense, there are only two roles in organisations: customers and suppliers. Everybody functions simultaneously in both roles, whether inside or outside the organisation the essence of good business, therefore, is the quality of the relationship between customer and supplier.
-
The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.
-
I think the most significant work we'll do in our whole life, in our whole world is done within the four walls of our home.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
The environment you fashion out of your thoughts, your beliefs, your ideals, your philosophy is the only climate you will ever live in. The key is in not spending time, but in investing it.
-
Anything less than a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.