Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

People are intrigued when they see good things happening in the lives of individuals, families, and organizations that are based on solid principles. They admire such personal strength and maturity, such family unity and teamwork, such adaptive synergistic organizational culture.

Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So

4: Think Win/Win)

Many "older" children go through life either secretly or openly hating their parents. They blame them for past abuses, neglect, or favoritism and they center their adult life on that hatred, living out the reactive, justifying script that accompanies it.

La capacidad para subordinar los impulsos a los valores es la esencia de la persona proactiva. Las personas reactivas se ven impulsadas por sentimientos, por las circunstancias, por las condiciones, por el ambiente. Las personas proactivas se mueven por valores: valores cuidadosamente meditados, seleccionados e interiorizados.

We feel the key to staying in love is to talk, particularly about feelings. We try to communicate with each other several times every day, even when I'm traveling. It's like coming into home base, which accesses all the happiness, security, and values it represents. Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again—if your home is a treasured relationship, a precious companionship.

Our character, basically, is a composite of our habits. "Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit

When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.

I can live out of my imagination instead of my memory.

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.

Our values often reflect the beliefs of our cultural background. From childhood we develop a value system that represents a combination of cultural influences, personal discoveries, and family scripts. These become the "glasses" through which we look at the world. We evaluate, assign priorities, judge, and behave based on how we see life through these glasses

So the place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our Circle of Influence, our own character.

beautiful definition of leadership: he taught that leadership is communicating others' worth and potential so clearly that they are inspired to see it in themselves.

Difficult circumstances often create paradigm shifts, whole new frames of reference by which people see the world and themselves and others in it, and what life is asking of them.

As you become truly independent, you have the foundation for effective interdependence.

It was not the luck of being at the right moment in history that separated Bill Gates, but his proactive response to being at the right moment

My experience has been that there are times to teach and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. But to take the child alone, quietly, when the relationship is good and to discuss the teaching or the value seems to have much greater impact. It may have been that the emotional maturity to do that was beyond my level of patience and internal control at the time.

Dependent people need others to get what they want. Independent people can get what they want through their own efforts.

Look at the word responsibility—"response-ability"—the ability to choose your response.

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.

all of the world-class athletes and other peak performers are visualizers. They see it; they feel it; they experience it before they actually do it. They begin with the end in mind.

ONCE EINSTEIN SAW the needle of a compass at the age of four, he always understood that there had to be "something behind things, something deeply hidden.

Maturity is the balance between courage and consideration.