Stephen Covey Quotes

Children learn a lot from what their parents say. But they learn a lot more from what their parents do.

To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while. Your children need your presence more than your presents.

If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father's vices: thou canst not rebuke that in them, that they behold practised in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts: such as thy behaviour is before thy children's faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents' backs.

As a child, you are influenced by your parents' actions.

It must be emphasized that as a father, you are always teaching. For good or ill your family learns your ways, your beliefs, your heart, your ideas, your concerns. Your children may or may not choose to follow you, but the example you give is the greatest light you hold before your children, and you are accountable for that light.

As the fathers live, so the children play.

The question isn't so much "Are you parenting the right way?" as it is: "Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?"

The most important influence on a child is the character of its parents, rather than this or that single event.

Fathers are very, very important in building the foundations and self-esteem of children. For me, the way that I was raised, consideration, courtesy and manners are really key and I think the father plays a big role in setting an example to children in how to behave out in the world and how to treat people. It's a little bit different when it comes from the dad rather than the mum somehow.

I'm not a role model. I say parents should parent and monitor their kids.

Good mothers and good fathers and good families don't always have great children.

I love being the person my kids depend on to learn. Everything they learn, for the most part, comes from you - how they treat people, how they look at the world, how they process things. I love being that example for them, just like my parents were for me.

There is no job more important than parenting. This I believe.

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

Parents should be the most important examples for their children.

If you have children, you know you're responsible for somebody. You realize you are being imitated; your belief systems and priorities have a direct influence on these children, who are like flowers in a garden.

Parents are the ultimate role models for children. Every word, movement and action has an effect. No other person or outside force has a greater influence on a child than the parent.

I wish parents at the end would think a little bit about how everything we do affects the lives of our kids and defines who they're going to be.

One of the things that I learned at a very young age is the power of a parent's words to their children.

Let us first fulfill Christ's injunction ourselves and only then venture to expect it of our children. Otherwise we are not fathers, but enemies of our children, and they are not our children, but our enemies, and we have made them our enemies ourselves.

So much does the moral health depend upon the moral atmosphere that is breathed, and so great is the influence daily exercised by parents over their children by living a life before their eyes, that perhaps the best system of parental instruction might be summed up in these two words: 'Improve thyself.'

There is nothing more important than parents passing on a generational legacy of faith and values to their children.

A lot of things I try to instill in my children comes off of what I've learned from my parents. First of all, you have to lead by example. You can't say one thing and behave another way. Kids learn more from watching you in life than what you say to them. So I try to be the best example I can be to them.

Was it Gorky who had said, "If your children are no better than you are, you have fathered them in vain, indeed you have lived in vain".

You can't teach children to be good. The best you can do for your child is to live a good life yourself. What a parent knows and believes, the child will lean on.