To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don't pay the price day in and day out, you'll never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Techniques]

Management works in the system; Leadership works on the system.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Time and Time Management]

We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Time and Time Management]

Seek first to understand and then to be understood.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Understanding]

Private victories precede public victories. You can't invert that process any more than you can harvest a crop before you plant it.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Victory]

It's easy to say ''no!'' when there's a deeper ''yes!'' burning inside.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Vision]

Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people's lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Potential]

Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Power]

You can't live principals you can't understand.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Principles]

Priority is a function of context.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Priorities]

The ''Inside-Out'' approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self -- with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Relationships]

The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Relationships]

Accountability breeds response-ability.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Responsibility]

Security represents your sense of worth, your identity, your emotional anchorage, your self-esteem, your basic personal strength or lack of it.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Security]

As a principle-centered person you try to stand apart from the emotion of the situation and from other factors that would act on you, and evaluate the options. Looking at the balanced whole--the work needs, the family needs, the other needs that may be involved, and the possible implications of the various alternatives -- you'll try to come up with the best solution taking all factors into consideration. We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Limitation]

Love - THE FEELING - is a fruit of love, the verb.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Love]

Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Management]

The ability to manage well doesn't make much difference if you're not even in the right jungle.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Management]

Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it -- immediately.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Mistakes]

Lose/Win people bury a lot of feelings. And unexpressed feelings come forth later in uglier ways. Psychosomatic illnesses often are the reincarnation of cumulative resentment, deep disappointment and disillusionment repressed by the Lose/Win mentality. Disproportionate rage or anger, overreaction to minor provocation, and cynicism are other embodiments of suppressed emotion. People who are constantly repressing, not transcending feelings toward a higher meaning find that it affects the quality of their relationships with others.
~ Stephen R. Covey - [Feelings]