Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

Proactive people aren't pushy. They're smart, they're value driven, they read reality, and they know what's needed. Look at Gandhi.

Integrity in an interdependent reality is simply this: you treat everyone by the same set of principles.

As clearly and objectively as we think we see things, we begin to realize that others see them differently from their own apparently equally clear and objective point of view. "Where we stand depends on where we sit.

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.

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 never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.

your freedom to choose your response lies the power to achieve growth and happiness.

The more people are into quick fixes and focus on the acute problems and pain, the more that very approach contributes to the underlying chronic condition. The way we see the problem is the problem.

two people can see the same thing, disagree, and yet both be right. It's not logical; it's psychological.

But knowing I need to listen and knowing how to listen is not enough. Unless I want to listen, unless I have the desire, it won't be a habit in my life. Creating a habit requires work in all three dimensions.

You have control over three things: what you think, what you say, and how you behave. To make a change in your life, you must recognize these gifts are the most powerful tools you possess in shaping the form of your life. —SONYA FRIEDMAN

Trust is the highest form of human motivation.

These four gifts—self-awareness, conscience, creative imagination, and independent will—reside in the space we

The principles you live by create the world you live in. So when you change the principles you live by, you can change your world. Your mission statement serves to summarize the principles you want to live by.

It's not enough to say your family is important. If "family" is really going to be top priority, you have to "hunker down, suck it up, and make it happen!

Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the "social weather." When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don't, they become defensive or protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.

you can't talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into." *

We hear a lot today about identity theft. The greatest identity theft is not when someone takes your wallet or steals your credit card. The greater theft happens when we forget who we really are, when we begin to believe that our worth and identity come from how well we stack up compared to others, instead of recognizing that each of us has immeasurable worth and potential, independent of any comparison.

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.

The children of blame are cynicism and hopelessness. 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.

Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.

As Emerson once put it, "What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.

The thing I learned is that you don't invent your mission, you detect it. You uncover it, as it were.

principle of making what is important to the other person as important to you as the other person is to you.

For our purposes, a simple way to understand paradigms is to see them as maps. We all know that "the map is not the territory." A map is simply an explanation of certain aspects of the territory. That's exactly what a paradigm is. It is a theory, an explanation, or model of something else.