The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Quotes

“If you don’t make a conscious effort to visualize who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“Highly effective people do not really manage time—they manage themselves.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“We are limited, but we can push back the borders of our limitations.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Personal Workbook

“You have control over three things: what you think, what you say, and how you behave. To make a change in your life, you must recognize these gifts are the most powerful tools you possess in shaping the form of your life. —SONYA FRIEDMAN”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“YOUR LIFE DOESN’T JUST “HAPPEN.” Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you—or carelessly designed by you.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind®. Another Quadrant II activity is to take the time and initiative to develop a mission statement based on principles. A good mission statement is the key that effective people use to discern which things are important—”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“the present moment. What can you get done today, tomorrow, or next week that will bring you that much closer to your final destination? See if you can project a bit and schedule just the first three steps on your list into your planning system. The rest will come later. Then go for it! Move ahead each day with the vision of that goal in mind and keep pressing forward.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“Highly effective people do not really manage time—they manage themselves. While most of the world spins around in Quadrant I, reacting to urgent matters and managing one crisis after another, people who spend a majority of their time in Quadrant II are leading balanced, serene, and ordered lives. They are planning and executing according to their highest priorities.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“Now it’s time to bring it all together. On the opposite page you’ll see a goal-planning tool. In the section marked Long-Term Goal (What), write the name of the goal you selected for the “how” game. In the space marked Deadline (When), write the deadline you selected. In the section Importance to Mission/Roles (Why), summarize your “why” responses. In the section Steps (How), list the goal steps in the order you prioritized them. And finally, in the Deadlines (When) column to the right, try to give each step a potential deadline.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“You live your life in terms of roles—not in the sense of role-playing, but in the sense of authentic relationships and responsibilities you’ve committed to. You may have important roles in your family, in the community, at work, or in other areas of your life. Roles represent responsibilities, relationships, and areas of contribution.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“How many times have you made assumptions similar to the store manager’s? It’s easy to do, because we all see things in different ways. We all have different paradigms or frames of reference—like eyeglasses through which we see the world. We see the world not as it is, but as we are—or sometimes as we are conditioned to see it.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“To change the situation, you must first change yourself. To change yourself, you must first change your perceptions.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Personal Workbook

“That person values the differences because those differences add to his knowledge, to his understanding of reality. When we're left to our own experiences, we constantly suffer from a shortage of data. Is it logical that two people can disagree and both can be right? It's not logical: it's psychological. And it's very real. You see the young lady; I see the old woman. We're both looking at the same picture, and both of us are right. We see the same black lines, the same white spaces. But we interpret them differently because we've been conditioned to interpret them differently. And unless we value the differences in our perceptions, unless we value each other and give credence to the possibility that we're both right. . .we will never be able to transcend the limits of that conditioning. . .I value you. I value your perception. I want to understand.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Personal Workbook

“If two people have the same opinion, one is unnecessary.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Personal Workbook

“For some reason, our methods weren't working. . .so we had to change our methods.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Personal Workbook

“It's the nature of reactive people to absolve themselves of responsibility. It's so much safer to say, "I am not responsible." If I say "I am responsible," I might have to say, "I am irresponsible." It would be very hard for me to say that I have the power to choose my response and that the response I have chosen has resulted in my involvement in a negative, collusive environment, especially if for years I have absolved myself of responsibility for results in the name of someone else's weaknesses.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Personal Workbook

“many so-called mental and emotional illnesses are really symptoms of an underlying sense of meaninglessness or emptiness.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Personal Workbook

“SO, WHAT DO YOU WANT to be when you grow up? That question may appear a little trite at first, but just think about it for a moment. Are you— right now—who you want to be, what you dreamed you’d be, doing what you always wanted to do? Now, be honest. Well, are you?”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“Most of us learn to base our self-worth on comparisons and competition. We think about succeeding in terms of someone else failing—that is, if I win, you lose; or if you win, I lose. Life is a zero-sum game. There is only so much pie, and if you get a big piece, there is less for me.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“True effectiveness is a function of two things: that which is produced (the golden eggs), and the producing asset or capacity to produce (the goose).”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“ONCE EINSTEIN SAW the needle of a compass at the age of four, he always understood that there had to be “something behind things, something deeply hidden.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook

“Personal Mission Statement.”
― Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook