Stephen Richards Covey was an American educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker. His most popular book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Stephen Covey quotes will motivate you in life.
Best Stephen Covey Quotes
- “To achieve goals you’ve never achieved before, you need to start doing things you’ve never done before.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Make small commitments and keep them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be a part of the solution, not the problem.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “While we cannot always choose what happens to us, we can choose our responses.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction.” ~ Stephen Covey Quotes
- “You can learn great things from your mistakes when you aren’t busy denying them.” ~ Stephen Covey
-
“Link yourself to your potential, not to your past.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “You can’t change the fruit without changing the root.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Look at the word responsibility-“response-ability”-the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.” ~ Stephen Covey
-
“Seek to understand before you seek to be understood.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “When you really listen to another person from their point of view and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “The greatest risk is the risk of riskless living.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “We immediately become more effective when we decide to change ourselves rather than asking things to change for us.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Our struggle to put first things first can be characterized by the contrast between two powerful tools that direct us: the clock and the compass. The clock represents our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, activities – what we do with, and how we manage our time. The compass represents our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, direction – what we feel is important and how we lead our lives. In an effort to close the gap between the clock and the compass in our lives, many of us turn to the field of “time management.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “The reality is that everybody makes mistakes. The issue isn’t whether you will make them, it’s what you will do about them. It’s whether you will choose the path of humility and courage or the path of ego and pride.” ~ Stephen Covey
-
“There are three constants in life… change, choice, and principles.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “We judge ourselves by our intentions. And others by their actions.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “If you can hire people whose passion intersects with the job, they won’t require any supervision at all. They will manage themselves better than anyone could ever manage them. Their fire comes from within, not from without. Their motivation is internal, not external.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “You can retire from a job, but don’t ever retire from making extremely meaningful contributions in life.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Humility is the mother of all virtues, courage the father, integrity the child, and wisdom the grandchild.” ~ Stephen Covey
-
“Little kindness and courtesies are so important. In relationships, the little things are the big things.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “What you do has far greater impact than what you say.” ~ Stephen Covey Quotes
- “Be sure that, as you scramble up the ladder of success, it is leaning against the right building.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values – carefully thought about, selected, and internalized values.” ~ Stephen Covey
-
“I teach people how to treat me by what I will allow.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “If you put good people in bad systems you get bad results. You have to water the flowers you want to grow.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “If I were to summarize in one sentence the single most important principle I have learned in the field of interpersonal relations, it would be this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This principle is the key to effective interpersonal communication.” ~ Stephen Covey Quotes
-
“Live your life by a compass, not a clock.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Be a light, not a judge, be a model, not a critic. Little by little, your circle of influence will explode and you will avoid the emotional metastasizing cancers of complaining, criticizing, competing, comparing, and cynicism, all which reflect victimization, all of which are the opposite of being proactive.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Improve relationships with others by assuming that they can hear everything you say about them” ~ Stephen Covey
- “It’s not enough to have values without vision; you want to be good, but you want to be good for something. On the other hand, vision without values can create a Hitler. An empowering mission statement deals with both character and competence; what you want to be and what you want to do in your life.” ~ Stephen Covey
-
“See every problem as an opportunity to exercise creative energy.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “When parents see their children’s problems as opportunities to build the relationship instead of as negative, burdensome irritations, it totally changes the nature of parent-child interaction. Parents become more willing, even excited, about deeply understanding and helping their children. . . . This paradigm is powerful in business as well.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “A long, healthy, and happy life is the result of making contributions, of having meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Habit 1: Be Proactive Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind Habit 3: Put First Things First Habit 4: Think Win/Win Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood Habit 6: Synergize Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw” ~ Stephen Covey
-
“Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “If two people have the same opinion, one is unnecessary. … I don’t want to talk, to communicate, with someone who agrees with me; I want to communicate with you because you see it differently. I value that difference.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “Efficient management without effective leadership is, as one individual phrased, it, “like straightening deck chairs on the Titanic”.” ~ Stephen Covey
