Stephen Covey Quotes

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.

I think it is important to remind people of the extent of our free will.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. (p. 100)

We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.

Everything is something you decide to do, and there is nothing you have to do.

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

A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.

We human beings do have some genuine freedom of choice and therefore some effective control over our own destinies. I am not a determinist. But I also believe that the decisive choice is seldom the latest choice in the series. More often than not, it will turn out to be some choice made relatively far back in the past.

I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill.

Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing.

But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals.

A man can surely do what he wills to do, but cannot determine what he wills.

Do whatever you will, but first be such as are able to will.

If I decide to be indecisive, that's my decision.

One of the greatest gifts that God has given us is free will. Even though it's free, we don't take advantage of it as much as we could when it comes to matters of the heart.

I'm picking and choosing what I want to do.

The intuition of free will gives us the truth.

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.

I pick and choose what I want to do at any given time, and what not to do, importantly. My agents, I won't hear about any offers or options.

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

You decide the things that ultimately you do. You have choices in this world, and that's how I live.

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

I never do anything that I don't want to do.