Top 500 Stephen R. Covey Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “People can’t live with change if there’s not a changeless core inside them.”

— Stephen R. Covey

402. “Strategy is important, but trust is the hidden variable. On paper you can have clarity around your objectives, but in a low-trust environment, your strategy won’t be executed.”

— Stephen R. Covey

403. “Trust is a function of both character and competence. Of course you can’t trust someone who lacks integrity, but if someone is honest but they can’t perform, you’re not going to trust them either. You won’t trust them to get the job done.”

— Stephen R. Covey

404. “We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

406. “Every exaggeration of the truth once detected by others destroys our credibility and makes all that we do and say suspect.”

— Stephen R. Covey

407. “To blame and accuse other people, is to choose to empower them, to control us.”

— Stephen R. Covey

408. “Real excellence does not come cheaply. A certain price must be paid in terms of practice, patience, and persistence – natural ability notwithstanding.”

— Stephen R. Covey

409. “The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do,” he observed. “They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.”

— Stephen R. Covey

410. “The key to acting with integrity is to simply stop playing the game.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

412. “We exhaust ourselves more from the tension and the consequences of internal disharmony than from hard, unremitting work.”

— Stephen R. Covey

413. “We hear a lot about identity theft when someone takes your wallet and pretends to be you and uses your credit cards. But the more serious identity theft is to get swallowed up in other people’s definition of you.”

— Stephen R. Covey

414. “People simply feel better about themselves when they’re good at something.”

— Stephen R. Covey

415. “Management is formal authority given from above. Leadership is moral authority given from below and all around.”

— Stephen R. Covey

416. “When the trust is high, you get the trust dividend. Investors invest in brands people trust. Consumers buy more from companies they trust, they spend more with companies they trust, they recommend companies they trust, and they give companies they trust the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

419. “Don’t cheat people of their growth. Empower them to solve problems and generate ideas. Watch them grow!”

— Stephen R. Covey

420. “If we know how to listen to our own heart, we can listen to the hearts of others.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

422. “Quality relationships are built on principles, especially the principle of trust.”

— Stephen R. Covey

423. “Trust is clearly a key competency. A competency or skill that can be learned, taught, and improved and one that talent can be screened for.”

— Stephen R. Covey

424. “Trust is a competency. It’s something you can get good at. It’s a strength you personally, and your team and your company can master. Being good at it will elevate every other strength you have.”

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

426. “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

427. “As you begin to think more in terms of importance, you begin to see time differently.”

— Stephen R. Covey

428. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ARISTOTLE Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits. “Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny,” the maxim goes.”

— Stephen R. Covey

429. “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

430. “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

431. “If you want to get something done, give it to a busy man.”

— Stephen R. Covey

432. “Live the law of love. We encourage obedience to the laws of life when we live the laws of love.”

— Stephen R. Covey

433. “Reducing children to a test score is the worst form of identity theft we could commit in schools.”

— Stephen R. Covey

434. “But borrowing strength builds weakness.”

— Stephen R. Covey

435. “If you focus on principles, you empower everyone who understands those principles to act without constant monitoring, evaluating, correcting, or controlling.”

— Stephen R. Covey

436. “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

437. “Communication is the most important single activity of man.”

— Stephen R. Covey

438. “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

439. “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

440. “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

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

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Stephen R. Covey

443. “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

444. “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

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

— Stephen R. Covey

446. “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

447. “We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations.”

— Stephen R. Covey

448. “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

449. “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

450. “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