Stephen R. Covey

The ability to manage well doesn’t make much difference if you’re not even in the right jungle.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships.

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.

But until a person can say deeply and honestly, ‘I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday’, that person cannot say, ‘I choose otherwise’.

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.

You’ll find out that nothing that comes easy is worth a dime. As a matter of fact, I never saw a football player make a tackle with a smile on his face. Never.

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.

… be aware that even before you have reached your ultimate professional destination … you can and should have a substantial impact on the world in which you live.

Sometimes you find out what you are supposed to be doing by doing the things you are not supposed to do.

I have always said that everyone is in sales. Maybe you don’t hold the title of salesperson, but if the business you are in requires you to deal with people, you, my friend, are in sales.

Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you.

It’s a fact that more people watch television and get their information that way than read books. I find new technology and new ways of communication very exciting and would like to do more in this field.

“Success in life is knowing the difference between ham and eggs; the chicken’s involved, the pig is committed.”

The mind that opens to a new idea never comes back to its original size.

Dream big dreams. Only big dreams have the power to move men’s souls.

When you stop chasing the wrong things you give the right things a chance to catch you.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

If my life has had a theme, I suppose it has been a typical American theme in that, for most of it, I have been looking for happiness and success.

Knowledge is that which benefits, not that which is memorised.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.