Top 500 Stephen R. Covey Quotes (2023 Update)
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301. “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.”

— Stephen R. Covey

302. “Link yourself to your potential, not to your past.”

— Stephen R. Covey

303. “To be successful we must live from our imaginations, not from our memories.”

— Stephen R. Covey

304. “Most people define greatness through wealth and popularity and position in the corner office. But what I call everyday greatness comes from character and contribution.”

— Stephen R. Covey

305. “People who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary to get the job done.”

— Stephen R. Covey

306. “The principle of fasting is taught in almost all major world religions as a means of developing a higher level of self-mastery and self-control, and also a deeper awareness of how really dependent we are.”

— Stephen R. Covey

307. “Remember that our reactions are a product of our perceptions, and our perceptions are a result of what is at the center of our life.”

— Stephen R. Covey

308. “The key to motivation is motive.”

— Stephen R. Covey

309. “The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, is the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.”

— Stephen R. Covey

310. “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.”

— Stephen R. Covey

311. “In the words of Thoreau, “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root.” We can only achieve quantum improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our attitudes and behaviors flow.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

313. “Creating and integrating an empowering personal mission statement is one of the most important investments we can make.”

— Stephen R. Covey

314. “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.”

— Stephen R. Covey

315. “Petty things become unimportant when people are impassioned about a purpose higher than self.”

— Stephen R. Covey

316. “The reflection of the current social paradigm tells us we are largely determined by conditioning and conditions.”

— Stephen R. Covey

317. “Keeping a personal journal a daily in-depth analysis and evaluation of your experiences is a high-leverage activity that increases self-awareness and enhances all the endowments and the synergy among them.”

— Stephen R. Covey

318. “In the end, life teaches us what is important, and that is family.”

— Stephen R. Covey

319. “My behavior is a product of my own conscious choices based on principles, rather than a product of my conditions, based on feelings.”

— Stephen R. Covey

320. “None of us see the world as it is but as we are, as our frames of reference, or maps, define the territory.”

— Stephen R. Covey

321. “Above all, success in business requires two things: a winning competitive strategy, and superb organizational execution. Distrust is the enemy of both. I submit that while high trust won’t necessarily rescue a poor strategy, low trust will almost always derail a good one.”

— Stephen R. Covey

322. “Be governed by your internal compass, not by some clock on the wall.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

324. “The personal power that comes from principle-centered living is the power of a 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

325. “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 R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

327. “Words are like eggs dropped from great heights. You could no more call them back then ignore the mess they left when they fell.”

— Stephen R. Covey

328. “Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of the effectiveness, happiness and trust-based relationships.”

— Stephen R. Covey

329. “In many situations involving service recovery – the problem itself became the catalyst for the creation of even greater trust as the companies took the issues head-on and worked through the difficult problem in a way that restored confidence.”

— Stephen R. Covey

330. “Patience is emotional diligence.”

— Stephen R. Covey

331. “By behaving in ways that build trust with one, you build trust with many.”

— Stephen R. Covey

332. “The struggle comes when we sense a gap between the clock and the compass – when what we do doesn’t contribute to what is most important in our lives.”

— Stephen R. Covey

333. “Empathy takes time, and efficiency is for things, not people.”

— Stephen R. Covey

334. “Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity.”

— Stephen R. Covey

335. “When people have a real sense of legacy, a sense of mattering, a sense of contribution, it seems to tap into the deepest part of their heart and soul. It brings out the best and subordinates the rest.”

— Stephen R. Covey

336. “Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms.”

— Stephen R. Covey

337. “Through imagination, we can visualize the uncredited worlds of potential that lie within us.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

339. “Whenever you experience stress of any kind, look into yourself and ask, In what way am I compromising my innermost values in this situation?”

— Stephen R. Covey

340. “Humility is the mother of all virtues. Humility says we are not in control, principles are in control, therefore we submit ourselves to principles. Pride says that we are in control, and since our values govern our behavior, we can simply do life our way.”

— Stephen R. Covey

341. “When we say that leadership is a choice, it basically means you can choose the level of initiative you want to exercise in response to the question, ‘What is the best I can do under the given circumstances?’”

— Stephen R. Covey

342. “Begin each day with the blueprint of my deepest values FIRMLY in mind then when challenges come, make decisions BASED on those values.”

— Stephen R. Covey

343. “The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.”

— Stephen R. Covey

344. “Love – the feeling – is a fruit of love, the verb.”

— Stephen R. Covey

345. “We do make a difference – one way or the other. We are responsible for the impact of our lives. Whatever we do with whatever we have, we leave behind us a legacy for those who follow.”

— Stephen R. Covey

346. “We’re constantly making choices about the way we spend our time. The issue is not between the good and the bad, but between the good and the best. So often, the enemy of the best is the good.”

— Stephen R. Covey

347. “Success in one role can’t justify failure in another.”

— Stephen R. Covey

348. “The universal elements are integrity, vision, discipline, passion, governed by conscience. Conscience has been educated through studying and pondering the universal, timeless principles of all six major world religions.”

— Stephen R. Covey

349. “In the long run, you can never accomplish a worthy end with an unworthy means.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey