Stephen Covey Quotes

Effective leadership is the only competitive advantage that will endure. That's because leadership has two sides- what a person is character and what a person does- competence.

Integrity in the Moment of Choice: Quality of life depends on what happens in the space between stimulus and response.

Effective people do two things: they strive to do excellent work, and they prioritize.

Strategy is important, but trust is the hidden variable. On paper you can have clarity around your objectives, but in a low-trust environment, your strategy won't be executed.

When we look through the lens of each others' weaknesses, we make others' strengths irrelevant and their weaknesses more evident.

If we do not teach our children, societ will. And they-and we-will live with the results.

I am convinced that if we as a society work diligently in every other area of life and neglect the family, it would be analogous to straightening deck chairs on the Titanic.

Vital to quality of life is the ability to work together, learn from each other, and help each other grow.

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!

The essence of the best thinking in the area of time management (practice planning) can be captured in a single phrase: Organize and execute around priorities

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.

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.

The exercise of true leadership is inversely proportional to the exercise of power.

While I believe in the power of positive thought, I do not believe that you or I can simply psyche ourselves into success or peace of mind.

Success comes from the ability to view each arising problem as an opportunity for self improvement.

Leadership is communicating people's worth and potential so clearly that they come to see it themselves.

Trust is a competency. It's something you can get good at. It's a strength you personally, and your team and your company can master. Being good at it will elevate every other strength you have.

Every time I see high-trust cultures, I see a lessening of adversarialism.

Only as we keep an open communication with our deep inner life will we have the wisdom to make effective choices.

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

In our personal lives, if we do not develop our own self-awareness and become responsible for first creations, we empower other people and circumstances to shape our lives by default.

Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb.

It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it.

When we succumb to believing that we are victims of our circumstances and yield to the plight of determinism, we lose hope, we lose drive, and we settle into resignation and stagnation.

Private Victory precedes Public Victory. Algebra comes before calculus.

If there's one thing that's certain in business, it's uncertainty.

Leaders are not born or made - they are self made

You have two ears and one mouth. Use them accordingly.

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.

Don't prioritize your schedule, schedule those priorities.

Passion is the fire, enthusiasm and courage that an individual feels when she is doing something she loves while accomplishing worthy ends, something that satisfies her deepest needs.

The only way we can handle change around us is to know what is changeless about ourselves

Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world.

If you don't choose to do it in leadership time up front, you do it in crisis management time down the road.

The power to distinguish between person and performance and to communicate intrinsic worth flows naturally out of our own sense of intrinsic worth.

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.

A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it's personal, it's positive, it's present tense, it's visual, and it's emotional.

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.

All things are created twice. There's a mental or first creation, and a physical or second creation to all things

Time management is a misnomer, the challenge is to manage ourselves.

Principles are the territory. Values are maps.

A life of integrity is the most fundamental source of personal worth.

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.

If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.

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.

Trust is the one thing that affects everything else you're doing. It's a performance multiplier which takes your trajectory upwards, for every activity you engage in, from strategy to execution.

Real excellence does not come cheaply. A certain price must be paid in terms of practice, patience, and persistence - natural ability notwithstanding.

We're often so busy cutting through the undergrowth we don't even realise we're in the wrong jungle.

If we know how to listen to our own heart, we can listen to the hearts of others.

We tend to get what we expect - both from ourselves and from others. When we expect more, we tend to get more; when we expect less, we tend to get less.