Quotes from Stephen Covey

IBM stands for three things: the dignity of the individual, excellence, and service.

Stand apart from your dreams. Look at them. Wrestle with them until you're convinced they're based on principles that will bring results. Then use your creative imagination to explore new applications, new ways of doing things that have the principle-based power to translate dreaming into doing.

Success in any endeavor is always derived from acting in harmony with the principles to which the success is tied.

What difference would a clear vision of my principles, values, and ultimate objectives make in the way I spend my time? How would I feel about my life if I knew what was ultimately important for me? Would a written statement of my life's purpose be valuable to me? Would it affect the way I spend my time and energy? How would a weekly reconnection to such a statement affect the things I choose to do during the week?

Hands the first step to the solution. Changing our habits, changing our methods of influence and changing the way we see our no control problems are all within our Circle of Influence.

The more we know of correct principles, the greater is our personal freedom to act wisely.

If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent.

The person who is truly effective has the humility and reverence to recognize his own perceptual limitations and to appreciate the rich resources available through interactions with the hearts and minds of other human beings. That person values the differences because those differences add to his knowledge, to his understanding of reality. When we're left to our own experiences, we constantly suffer from a shortage of data.

It is inspiring to realize that in choosing our response to circumstance, we powerfully affect our circumstance. When we change one part of the chemical formula, we change the nature of the results. • •

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.

You have to build the skills of empathic listening on a base of character that inspires openness and trust. And you have to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that create a commerce between hearts.

You might work on your attitude—you could think more positively. You still wouldn't get to the right place, but perhaps you wouldn't care. Your attitude would be so positive, you'd be happy wherever you were.