Stephen R. Covey

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.

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.

Accountability breeds response-ability.

To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.

Live out of your imagination, not your history.

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.

He who thinks he leads, but has no followers, is only taking a walk.

First they think you’re crazy, then they fight you, and then, all of a sudden, you change the world.

It is true that integrity alone won’t make you a leader, but without integrity you will never be one.

There were no role models, there were no other people I knew who were dealing with the same issues that I was dealing with. I had no idea if this was a stage I was going through or not. But I go to the draft board in Brooklyn and I fill out the form and there was a question that said ‘Do you have homosexual tendencies?’ and I check yes. But where-ever I was on line I’d see people I went to high school with and I was afraid of anyone knowing this about me so I kept on falling back into line and falling back into line. If you said you had homosexual tendencies they sent you to a psychiatrist. He said ‘I see here you’ve checked the box?’ And I said ‘yup’. He said ‘So do you think you’d have a problem serving in the armed forces?’ I said well you know ‘So many men.’ And I was out of the service.

Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no help at all.

You were born to win, but to be a winner you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.

You have to care about how good you are and how good you feel, but not about how good people think you are or how good people think you look.

Done is better than perfect.

Sometimes you just got to give yourself what you wish someone else would give you.

Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.

Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen, and some ask what happened.

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation.

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.

Sometimes Tina Fey is like a very talented bungee-jumping expert. All it takes Tina to softly say, ‘We can do this, right?’ and I suddenly feel like I can jump off a bridge.