Stephen R. Covey

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.

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

We are not animals. We are not a product of what has happened to us in our past. We have the power of choice.

In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment-independent will-that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day.

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

We are the creative force of our life, and through our own decisions rather than our conditions, if we carefully learn to do certain things, we can accomplish those goals.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.

Courage is on display every day, and only the courageous wring the most out of life.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

Success is not to be measured by the position someone has reached in life, but the obstacles he has overcome while trying to succeed.

Sometimes understanding other people’s problems is the key to finding opportunities.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.

There are no speed limits on the road to success.

Relish the opportunity to be an outsider. Embrace that label – being an outsider is fine, embrace the label – because it’s the outsiders who change the world and who make a real and lasting difference.

The very best thing you can do for the whole world is to make the most of yourself.

You will never know true freedom until you achieve financial freedom.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

Thinking should become your capital asset, no matter whatever ups and downs you come across in your life.

Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.

I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big. Most people think small, because most people are afraid of success, afraid of making decisions, afraid of winning. And that gives people like me a great advantage.