Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

trying to prioritize activities before you even know how they relate to your sense of personal mission and how they fit into the balance of your life is not effective.

It's how you treat the one that reveals how you regard the ninety-nine, because everyone is ultimately a one.

I remember both of us becoming tearful on that day, not so much because of the insights, but because of the increased sense of reverence we had for each other. We discovered that even seemingly trivial things often have roots in deep emotional experiences. To deal only with the superficial trivia without seeing the deeper, more tender issues is to trample on the sacred ground of another's heart.

You can't find good people these days. There's too much turnover, absenteeism, moonlighting. People just don't care anymore.

Goethe taught, "Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.

FRIEND/ENEMY CENTEREDNESS. Young people are particularly, though certainly not exclusively, susceptible to becoming friend-centered. Acceptance and belonging to a peer group can become almost supremely important. The distorted and ever-changing social mirror becomes the source for the four life-support factors, creating a high degree of dependence on the fluctuating moods, feelings, attitudes, and behavior of others.

Pareto Principle—80 percent of the results flow out of 20 percent of the activities.

The need to produce today is today's reality and represents the demands of capital, but the real mantra of success is sustainability and growth. You may be able to meet your quarterly numbers, but the real question is, are you making the necessary investment that will sustain and increase that success one, five, and ten years from now?

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, generic common denominators. They are tightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty, and strength through the fabric of life.

How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office—or watching TV? The answer is, No one.

Trust—or the lack of it—is at the root of success or failure in relationships and in the bottom-line results of business, industry, education, and government.

Remember, frustration is a function of our expectations, and our expectations are often a reflection of the social mirror rather than our own values and priorities.

The fundamental problem has nothing to do with your behavior or your attitude. It has everything to do with having a wrong map.

Show me someone who is humble enough to accept and take responsibility for his or her circumstances and courageous enough to take whatever initiative is necessary to creatively work his or her way through or around these challenges, and I'll show you the supreme power of choice. Hopelessness.

I can't go to my company's annual convention vs. I choose not to go to convention. People just don't want to hear what I have to say vs. I will create an effective presentation that people will want to hear. I can't think of anyone to talk to vs. I choose to find 10 new people to talk to about my business. If only I had more time to prospect vs. I will make more time for prospecting. I have to go to work vs. I choose to work. A

Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas of life.

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance

Keep in mind that when you're working with your family, "slow" is "fast" and "fast" is

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ARISTOTLE

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.

It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms.

Your planning tool should be your servant, never your master.

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life…. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone's task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.

This brings into focus one of the basic flaws of the Personality Ethic. To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow. This perception demonstration also shows how powerfully our paradigms affect the way we interact with other people.