Stephen Covey Quotes

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

I choose to live, not just exist.

I want to try to live my own values as consciously and purposefully as I can.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.

The animal is one with its life activity. It does not distinguish the activity from itself. It is its activity. But man makes hislife activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has a conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he is completely identified.

People will want you to behave a certain way, to make a certain choice because it reinforces the way they see the world...But you have to do what's right for you.

If people knew the story of their lives, how many would then elect to live them?

You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.

You will follow me, if we are what we are, you and I, if we live, if the world exists, if you know the meaning of this moment and can't let it slip by, as others let it slip, into the senselessness of the unwilled and unreached.

We are responsible to ourselves for our own existence; consequently we want to be the true helmsman of this existence and refuse to allow our existence to resemble a mindless act of chance.

No one lives like a robot. We all make choices from the moment we wake up in the morning.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive... To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.

Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them.

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally 'being lived.' They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates, and society.

We're talking about everybody's free right to have choice. And so what we're also getting are interesting messages like you really need to obey the command of Allah and put a scarf on your head. And what we caution well-intentioned Americans and others to think about is whether the scarf matches their own values related to issues of honor and shame.

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

You are not in charge of the universe; you are in charge of yourself.

Happiness does not come from a job. It comes from knowing what you truly value, and behaving in a way that’s consistent with those beliefs. Many people today resent the suggestion that they’re in charge of the way they feel.Those people are mistaken. That was a big lesson and I learned it several hundred times before it stuck. What you do, who you’re with, and how you feel about the world around you, is completely up to you.

When you don't take an aggressive role in shaping your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, you become a helpless passenger floating through the universe like a ghost ship, merely reacting to wherever it takes you.

Freedom is based on the anarch’s awareness that he can kill himself. He carries this awareness around; it accompanies him like a shadow that he can conjure up. “A leap from this bridge will set me free.

Inside us lies every possibility that is available to a sentient being. Every darkness, every light. It is the choices we make that decide who or what we will be.

You can do whatever you want to do as long as it is correct according to your conscience and heart.

Man is a unique individual. He can never be put in a system where he becomes just another notch. Another nail.

Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

Perhaps he had to be close in order to keep a reason for the things he did. To make the things he did be themselves Life. And not merely a delightful exercise of technical skill which man had been able to achieve because he, of all the animals, had a fine thumb. Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life.