Top 500 Stephen R. Covey Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “Leadership without mutual trust is a contradiction in terms.”

— Stephen R. Covey

302. “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

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

— Stephen R. Covey

304. “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

305. “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

306. “Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe this is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds.”

— Stephen R. Covey

307. “You basically get what you reward. If you want to achieve the goals and reflect the values in your mission statement, then you need to align the reward system with these goals and values.”

— Stephen R. Covey

308. “You will never be able to truly step inside another person, to see the world as he sees it, until you develop the pure desire, the strength of personal character, and the positive Emotional Bank Account, as well as the empathetic listening skills to do it.”

— Stephen R. Covey

309. “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

310. “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

311. “Over time, I have come to this simple definition of leadership: Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust.”

— Stephen R. Covey

312. “T. S. Eliot’s observation: We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”

— Stephen R. Covey

313. “In effective personal leadership, visualization and affirmation techniques emerge naturally out of a foundation of well thought through purposes and principles that become the center of a person’s life.”

— Stephen R. Covey

314. “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

315. “Principles don’t die. They aren’t here one day and gone the next. They can’t be destroyed by fire, earthquake or theft. Principles are deep, fundamental truths, classic truths.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

317. “In order to have influence, you have to be influenced.”

— Stephen R. Covey

318. “If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror – from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us – our view of ourselves is like the reflection in a crazy mirror room at the carnival.”

— Stephen R. Covey

319. “As human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values.”

— Stephen R. Covey

320. “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

321. “Independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

324. “It’s better to be trusted than to be liked.”

— Stephen R. Covey

325. “You can’t be successful with other people if you haven’t paid the price of success with yourself.”

— Stephen R. Covey

326. “People and organizations don’t grow much without delegation and completed staff work because they are confined to the capacities of the boss and reflect both personal strengths and weaknesses.”

— Stephen R. Covey

327. “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

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

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

331. “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

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

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

334. “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

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

338. “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

339. “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

340. “In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.”

— Stephen R. Covey

341. “Look at the word responsibility – “response-ability” – the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”

— Stephen R. Covey

342. “I am the creative force of my life.”

— Stephen R. Covey

343. “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

344. “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

345. “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

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

— Stephen R. Covey

347. “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

348. “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

349. “The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are.”

— Stephen R. Covey

350. “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