Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

You can pretty well summarize the first three habits with the expression "make and keep a promise." And you can pretty well summarize the next three habits with the expression "involve others in the problem and work out the solution together.

Principles are not values. A gang of thieves can share values, but they are in violation of the fundamental principles we're talking about. Principles are the territory. Values are maps. When we value correct principles, we have truth—a knowledge of things as they are.

The core of any family is what is changeless, what is always going to be there—shared vision and values.

Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now… Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.

In other words, what matters most is how we respond to what we experience in life.

In addition, as you openly, honestly share what you're learning with others, you may be surprised to find that negative labels or perceptions others may have of you tend to disappear. Those you teach will see you as a changing, growing person, and will be more inclined to be helpful and supportive as you work, perhaps together, to integrate the Seven Habits into your lives.

True discipline means channeling our best hours into first-order objectives, and that means being a nonconformist in the best sense.

The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don't like to do

Leadership is affirming people's worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.

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

If you don't let a teacher know at what level you are—by asking a question, or revealing your ignorance—you will not learn or grow.

To relate effectively with a wife, a husband, children, friends, or working associates, we must learn to listen. And this requires emotional strength. Listening involves patience, openness, and the desire to understand—highly developed qualities of character. It's so much easier to operate from a low emotional level and to give high-level advice.

There are some people who interpret "proactive" to mean pushy, aggressive, or insensitive; but that isn't the case at all. Proactive people aren't pushy. They're smart, they're value driven, they read reality, and they know what's needed.

Keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal. In fact, there's probably not a more massive withdrawal than to make a promise that's important to someone and then not to come through. The next time a promise is made, they won't believe it. People tend to build their hopes around promises, particularly promises about their basic livelihood.

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger. (p. 62)

If I were emotionally dependent, my sense of worth and security would come from your opinion of me.

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn't reserve a plot for weeds." —Dag Hammarskjöld

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.

It builds weakness in the person forced to acquiesce, stunting the development of independent reasoning, growth, and internal discipline. And finally, it builds weakness in the relationship. Fear replaces cooperation, and both people involved become more arbitrary and defensive.

It shows, first of all, how powerfully conditioning affects our perceptions, and our paradigms. If ten seconds can have that kind of impact on the way we see things, what about the conditioning of a lifetime?

if God was at the center of your life, everything else would find its proper place.

No one can persuade another to change. Each of us guards a gate of change that can only be opened from the inside. We cannot open the gate of another, either by argument or by emotional appeal.

What is synergy? Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It

Your crises and problems would shrink to manageable proportions because you would be thinking ahead, working on the roots, doing the preventive things that keep situations from developing into crises in the first place. In time management jargon, this is called the Pareto Principle—80 percent of the results flow out of 20 percent of the activities.