Stephen Covey Quotes

Your one certainty in life, your power as a human being, is that you have a choice in every situation about what you do next and about how you take what has happened to you.

You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go.

Here is the crux of the matter, the distilled essence, the only thing you need to remember: When considering whether to say yes or no, you must choose the response that feels like freedom. Period.

It is for men to choose whether they will govern themselves or be governed.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation.

Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self.

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.

As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is our responsibility.

I've made mistakes, and I know why I made them, but I made that choice. Nobody's ever made a choice for me.

A character is a completely fashioned will.

The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.

Freedom begins as we become conscious of it.

Decision is a risk rooted in the courage of being free.

I've always told Will, 'You can do whatever you want as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror and be okay.' Because at the end of the day, Will is his own man. I'm here as his partner, but he is his own man. He has to decide who he wants to be, and that's not for me to do for him. Or vice versa.

Liberty is the condition of duty, the guardian of conscience. It grows as conscience grows. The domains of both grow together. Liberty is safety from all hindrances, even sin. So that Liberty ends by being Free Will.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.

It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.

Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

Man is pre-eminently endowed with the power of voluntarily and consciously determining his own point of view.

You always do what you want to do. This is true with every act. You may say that you had to do something, or that you were forced to, but actually, whatever you do, you do by choice. Only you have the power to choose for yourself.

When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.

I do have the freedom to choose what I want to do and I'll continue to do that.