A Quote by Stephen Covey

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

Stephen Covey

Quote Topics

Ability Commitments Define Discipline Honor Keep Make Promises

Quote Author

Stephen Covey
American - Educator
October 24, 1932 - July 16, 2012

As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives. By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods.

Stephen Covey

Losers make promises they often break. Winners make commitments they always keep.

Denis Waitley

Keep your word. Honor commitments, and they will double back to honor you.

Bill Rancic

Commitments present themselves in delineations of black and white. You either honor your commitments or you don't. Success is the result of making and keeping commitments to your self and others, while all failed or unfinished goals, projects and relationships are the direct result of broken commitments. It's that simple, that profound, and that important.

Gary Ryan

If we can't make and keep commitments to ourselves as well as to others, our commitments become meaningless.

Stephen Covey

Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss, he promises life, and pays with death. But God pays as he promises; all his payments are made in pure gold.

Thomas Brooks

Social Security and Medicare represent promises made and we must keep these commitments.

Tom Coburn

The ability to make and keep promises is the key aspect to trust in a relationship.

Robert Cheeke

Our government shouldn't make promises we cannot keep, but we must keep the promises we've already made.

Barack Obama

The most important promises are the ones we make to ourselves. The promises we makes to ourselves are the things that assure us we have the capacity to keep our promises to others.

Mary Anne Radmacher

Making promises to myself, in my personal writing practice, has been important to me all my life. In practical application it is so much easier for me to make promises to others, and keep them, than it is to make promises to myself. "Why is that?" and the answer I gave myself is that in making promises to others I create a model of accountability and reinforcement. I duplicate that in my writing and have grown increasingly better at making and keeping promises to myself.

Mary Anne Radmacher

But with lots of good ideas, implementation is the key, and so we need to keep our eye on the ball as we go forward and make sure that people honor their pledges in terms of financial commitments, and that we actually use this money so that it makes a real difference.

Mitchell Reiss

We must keep the promises and commitments we've made to our military veterans by ensuring needed services and care are always available and delivered in a timely fashion.

Elise Stefanik

Start small, make a promise and keep it. Then, make larger promises and keep them. Eventually, your honor will become greater than your moods or your circumstances, which includes your medical condition and other people's stereotypic observations. Once you overcome this comparison based mentality, your confidence will soar.

Stephen Covey

SELF-DISCIPLINE, more than any other personal quality I can think of, is the one thing that separates successful people from the unsuccessful. Think of all it encompasses: honoring commitments, promises and deadlines, keeping your life on schedule, being willing to go the extra mile... Self-discipline is essential to success. The alternative is a life ruled by emotions, and none of us can afford that if we're going to fulfill our purpose and realize our potential.