Top 745 Quotes & Sayings by Stephen Covey - Page 3

While we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose our responses.

Improve relationships with others by assuming that they can hear everything you say about them

Be a light, not a judge, be a model not a critic. Little by little, your circle of influence will explode and you will avoid the emotional metastasizing cancers of complaining, criticizing, competing, comparing and cynicism, all which reflect victimization, all of which are the opposite of being proactive.

Free your heart from hatred - forgive. Free your mind from worries - most never happen. Live simply and appreciate what you have. Give more. Expect less.

It doesn't really matter how fast you're going if you're heading in the wrong direction.

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.

If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.

It's like the more you know the more you know you don't know.

All broken relationships can be traced back to broken agreements

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.

Moving along the upward spiral requires us to learn, commit, and do on increasingly higher planes. We deceive ourselves if we think that any one of these is sufficient. To keep progressing, we must learn, commit, and do-learn, commit, and do-and learn, commit, and do again.

Little kindness and courtesies are so important. In relationships, the little things are the big things.

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

Link yourself to your potential, not to your past.

In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.

You don't see the world as it is, you see it according to who you are.

If two people have the same opinion, one is unnecessary. ... I don't want to talk, to communicate, with someone who agrees with me; I want to communicate with you because you see it differently. I value that difference.

Only after we can learn to forgive ourselves can we accept others as they are because we don't feel threatened by anything about them which is better than us.

Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.

If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.

Develop all four intelligences. PQ (physical intelligence) which represents 70 trillion cells that fight disease and digest your breakfast. IQ (intellectual intelligence) EQ (emotional intelligence) the sensing and wisdom of the heart - - and SQ (spiritual intelligence) having to do with meaning, purpose and integrity around your selected value system and your believed source. When combined, they change the world for good.

Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.

Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.

Anyone can count the seeds of an apple. Who can count the apples in a seed?

Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually.

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.

It's better to be trusted than to be liked.

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

Once you have a clear picture of your priorities - that is values, goals, and high leverage activities - organize around them.

Before you wonder "Am I doing things right?" wonder "Am I doing the right things?"

Live your life by a compass, not a clock.

When parents see their children's problems as opportunities to build the relationship instead of as negative, burdensome irritations, it totally changes the nature of parent-child interaction. Parents become more willing, even excited, about deeply understanding and helping their children. . . . This paradigm is powerful in business as well.

Be sure that, as you scramble up the ladder of success, it is leaning against the right building.

If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control - myself.

Always surround yourself with people who are even more talented and competent than you.

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

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values - carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

Beginners are many; finishers are few.

Trust is a function of two things: character and competence. Character includes your integrity, your motive and your intent with people. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, and your track record. Both are vital.

We are free to choose our actions, . . . but we are not free to choose the consequences of these actions.

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are??or, as we are conditioned to see it.

Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential.

See every problem as an opportunity to exercise creative energy.

We judge ourselves by our intentions. And others by their actions.

Self-awareness involves deep personal honesty. It comes from asking and answering hard questions.

Humility is the mother of all virtues, courage the father, integrity the child and wisdom the grandchild.

The greatest risk is the risk of riskless living.

Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do).

The problems in life come when we're sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.

Prepare your mind and heart before you prepare your speech . What we say may be less important than how we say it.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.

You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut.

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.

I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a 'transformer' in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.

What you do has far greater impact than what you say.

Valuing differences is what really drives synergy. Do you truly value the mental, emotional, and psychological differences among people? Or do you wish everyone would just agree with you so you could all get along? Many people mistake uniformity for unity; sameness for oneness. One word--boring! Differences should be seen as strengths, not weaknesses. They add zest to life.

The more involved you are, the more significant your learning will be.

Your power to choose your direction of your life allows you to reinvent yourself, to change your future, and to powerfully influence the rest of creation.

I teach people how to treat me by what I will allow.