Top 500 Stephen R. Covey Quotes (2023 Update)
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401. “I am the creative force of my life.”

— Stephen R. Covey

402. “Principles are the basis for developing a vision and value system for all.”

— Stephen R. Covey

403. “Employees are given the chance to help shape their company by participating in a company-wide communications program making suggestions on waste reduction, environmental improvement, customer satisfaction, quality improvement, and safety issues.”

— Stephen R. Covey

404. “To set and work toward any goal is an act of courage.”

— Stephen R. Covey

405. “Basing our happiness on our ability to control everything is futile.”

— Stephen R. Covey

406. “Improve relationships with others by assuming that they can hear everything you say about them.”

— Stephen R. Covey

407. “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

408. “To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you’ll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.”

— Stephen R. Covey

409. “So often the problem is in the system, not in the people. If you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow.”

— Stephen R. Covey

410. “Contrary to what most people believe, trust is not some soft, illusive quality that you either have or you don’t; rather, trust is a pragmatic, tangible, actionable asset that you can create.”

— Stephen R. Covey

411. “But borrowing strength builds weakness.”

— Stephen R. Covey

412. “In a very real sense, there are only two roles in organisations: customers and suppliers. Everybody functions simultaneously in both roles, whether inside or outside the organisation the essence of good business, therefore, is the quality of the relationship between customer and supplier.”

— Stephen R. Covey

413. “You can’t have the fruits without the roots. It’s the principle of sequencing: Private Victories proceed Public Victories. Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.”

— Stephen R. Covey

414. “How you treat the one reveals how you regard the many, because everyone is ultimately a one.”

— Stephen R. Covey

415. “Synergy is what happens when one plus one equals ten or a hundred or even a thousand! It’s the profound result when two or more respectful human beings determine to go beyond their preconceived ideas to meet a great challenge.”

— Stephen R. Covey

416. “A moment of choice is a moment of truth.”

— Stephen R. Covey

417. “Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential.”

— Stephen R. Covey

418. “Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we are in control of it or not, there is a first creation to every part of our lives. We are either the second creation of our own proactive design, or we are the second creation of other people’s agendas, of circumstances, or of past habits.”

— Stephen R. Covey

419. “Without trust, the best we can do is compromise.”

— Stephen R. Covey

420. “The key to the 99 is the one. Or, put another way, the key to the group is the one individual. Think about the one, talk to the one, regard the one, serve the one. If you are sincere and constant, you will discover that gradually your influence with the many will be magnified.”

— Stephen R. Covey

421. “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.”

— Stephen R. Covey

422. “In this knowledge-worker age, it’s now increasingly tied to doing well in school so you can get into better grad schools so you can get better jobs – so the pressure to do well is really high.”

— Stephen R. Covey

423. “We can never really change someone; people must change themselves.”

— Stephen R. Covey

424. “You are dependent if you allow the weaknesses of other people to ruin your emotional life!”

— Stephen R. Covey

425. “I think the most significant work we’ll do in our whole life, in our whole world is done within the four walls of our home.”

— Stephen R. Covey

426. “Actually I did not invent the seven habits, they are universal principles and most of what I wrote about is just common sense. I am embarrassed when people talk about the Covey Habits, and dislike the idea of being some sort of guru.”

— Stephen R. Covey

427. “Employers and business leaders need people who can think for themselves – who can take initiative and be the solution to problems.”

— Stephen R. Covey

428. “Whether you’re on a sports team, in an office or a member of a family, if you can’t trust one another there’s going to be trouble.”

— Stephen R. Covey

429. “Most learning is social, or what I call the cultural DNA. Everyone knows that word of mouth advertising is the best advertising. That’s social learning.”

— Stephen R. Covey

430. “Affirm people. Affirm your children. Believe in them, not in what you see but in what you don’t see – their potential.”

— Stephen R. Covey

431. “People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally ‘being lived.’ They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates, and society.”

— Stephen R. Covey

432. “Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.”

— Stephen R. Covey

433. “Most people think of leadership as a position and therefore don’t see themselves as leaders.”

— Stephen R. Covey

434. “Unfortunately, too many executives believe the myths about trust. Myths like how trust is soft and is merely a social virtue. The reality is that trust is hard-edged and is an economic driver.”

— Stephen R. Covey

435. “The problems in life come when we’re sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.”

— Stephen R. Covey

436. “Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.”

— Stephen R. Covey

437. “Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value.”

— Stephen R. Covey

438. “If you say to one flower, ‘Grow,’ but you water another, the first one won’t grow.”

— Stephen R. Covey

439. “The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.”

— Stephen R. Covey

440. “It is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.”

— Stephen R. Covey

441. “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.”

— Stephen R. Covey

442. “Only 20 percent of employees working in large organizations surveyed feel their strengths are in play every day. Thus, eight our of ten employees surveyed feel somewhat miscast in their role.”

— Stephen R. Covey

443. “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.”

— Stephen R. Covey

444. “The human will is an amazing thing. Time after time, it has triumphed against unbelievable odds.”

— Stephen R. Covey

445. “If you don’t let a teacher know what level you are – by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance – you will not learn or grow.”

— Stephen R. Covey

446. “Perhaps a sense of possessing needs to come to come before a sense of genuine sharing.”

— Stephen R. Covey

447. “We can’t live without eating, but we don’t live to eat.”

— Stephen R. Covey

448. “The world has entered an era of the most profound and challenging change in human history.”

— Stephen R. Covey

449. “A thousand-mile journey begins with the first step” and can only be taken one step at a time.”

— Stephen R. Covey

450. “To judge individuals before understanding them is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself.”

— Stephen R. Covey