Quotes from Stephen R. Covey

to be proactive you must learn to act and not be acted upon.

in reaping for so long where we have not sown, perhaps we have forgotten the need to sow.

writing truly imprints the brain

Management is the breaking down, the analysis, the sequencing, the specific application, the time-bound left-brain aspect of effective self-government. My own maxim of personal effectiveness is this: Manage from the left; lead from the right.

Seek first to understand. Before the problems come up, before you try to evaluate and prescribe, before you try to present your own ideas—seek to understand.

Most of life is an interdependent, not an independent, reality.

More than doing things right, it's focused on doing the right things.

We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.

Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values.

Each of us tends to think we see things as they are, that we are objective. But this is not the case. We see the world, not as it is, but as we are—or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms. When other people disagree with us, we immediately think something is wrong with them.

Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life.

Insecure people think that all reality should be amenable to their paradigms. They have a high need to clone others, to mold them over into their own thinking. They don't realize that the very strength of the relationship is in having another point of view. Sameness is not oneness; uniformity is not unity. Unity, or oneness, is complementariness, not sameness. Sameness is uncreative… and boring. The essence of synergy is to value the differences.

Taking initiative does not mean being pushy, obnoxious, or aggressive. It does mean recognizing our responsibility to make things happen.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.

Then love her. If the feeling isn't there, that's a good reason to love her." "But how do you love when you don't love?" "My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?

But borrowing strength builds weakness. It builds weakness in the borrower because it reinforces dependence on external factors to get things done. It builds weakness in the person forced to acquiesce

Leo Roskin taught, "It is the weak who are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.

many so-called mental and emotional illnesses are really symptoms of an underlying sense of meaninglessness or emptiness.

Being is seeing in the human dimension. And what we see is highly interrelated to what we are.

To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of

You can buy a person's hand, but you can not buy his heart.

Vivimos demasiado del recuerdo y demasiado poco de nuestra imaginación. Demasiado de lo que es o de lo que ya ha sido y demasiado poco de lo que podría ser.

We're dealing with a very dramatic and very fundamental paradigm shift here. You may try to lubricate your social interactions with personality techniques and skills, but in the process, you may truncate the vital character base. You can't have the fruits without the roots. It's the principle of sequencing: Private Victory precedes Public Victory. Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.