Browsing Quotes By Stephen Covey, page 1
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Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Speaker: Stephen CoveyPosted: 22 Oct 2008 at 9:34 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
You can’t fight someone who’s trying to understand you.
Speaker: Stephen CoveyPosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 1:31 PMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
People will come to know the truth to the degree that they are true to the truth.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 9:02 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
[Doing] assists the education of the conscience and reinforces its knowledge in ways that no amount of church attending or studying can. Doing actually changes the fiber of a person’s nature – his soul, his conscience, his character. Doing changes his view of himself. A person’s behavior is largely a product of such self-made fuel.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 9:02 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Interestingly, a person can allow himself to be vulnerable on the surface of his life if he still retains a deep God/Christ-centered invulnerability. Then he can afford to be gentle and soft, to give and take, to give love without demanding anything in return – and that of course leaves him open to rebuffs and disappointments on occasion. But when a person is deeply vulnerable, centered on something other than God and therefore not securely rooted, he can’t afford to be vulnerable on the surface, or he risks being simply wiped out.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 9:00 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
What a person is teaches far more eloquently than what a person says or even does. It communicates quietly, subtly; it is a constant radiation, and others, though unable to identify or articulate it, still understand it, sense it, absorb it, and respond to it.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 9:00 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I am convinced that in the long run no one can hurt another without the other’s consent; that is, hurt him in a deeply significant, personal, internal sense. This is because we always have the power to choose a response to what someone else does to us. This may be the reason why failure to forgive someone else is a greater sin than that which he has done to us. That is, it causes more damage to the unforgiving one – a damage in the mind and heart – than that caused by what the other person may do to him externally.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:59 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Inevitably, any time we are too vulnerable we feel the need to protect ourselves from further wounds. Often the best defense is a good offense, and sometimes this manifests itself in cynicism, the defense of the mind, for when we expect nothing we will never be disappointed. So the attack frequently manifests itself in sarcasm, in cutting humor, in sharpness of tongue, in criticalness, and in anything which will keep from exposing the soft, vulnerable tenderness within. Each partner then will tend to wait upon the initiative of the other for love, only again to be disappointed but also to be confirmed as to the rightness of his or her own past accusations.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:57 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
For most of us, one of the great needs in life is to be brought to visualize our potential and be motivated to reach for it.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:56 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
In modern revelation, the Lord defines truth as “knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come.” (D&C 93:24) Notice very carefully the words used to describe truth. Truth is a knowledge of things. In other words, it is an internal mental understanding or grasping of the way things really are; it is the subjective accurately reflecting the objective, the personal correctly reflecting the real, the map truly reflecting the territory.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:56 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Freedom is born of obedience; the freedom to play the piano comes entirely from obedience to the laws of piano playing, from disciplined practicing, from sacrificing alternative activities to cultivate this talent. This is true in developing any talent, any skill, and virtually everyone accepts it as a fact. Why, then, is there resistance to the concept of obeying God, to keeping the commandments in the moral and spiritual realms?
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:54 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
[Keeping the commandments] is at once the most universally needed yet the most individualistic instruction possible.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:54 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
The way we live, particularly under strain and threat, is our clearest testimony. Over time it reflects what we really believe. If it is in harmony with what we say we believe, the Lord will use us and bear testimony though us in some way to every person we meet.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:53 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
We simply can’t repent of our sins unless we repent of sinning. Unless we change our lifestyle by rooting gout of our nature these deeply-embedded habits and dispositions, we will continue on in a self-deceiving circular process of making and breaking resolutions to change and improve. In other words, we need to change our method of changing ourselves. We need a power source to help us, one which is stronger and more penetrating than the strength and depth of these habits.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:52 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
A missionary once asked President Harold B. Lee, “What is the most important commandment in the gospel?” President Lee thought for a moment and then gave this profound, personalized response to the missionary. “Elder, the most important commandment of all is the one you’re having the greatest difficulty in living.”
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:52 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
I believe that most of us horribly neglect this creative power within us. We live too much out of our memories, too little out of our imaginations. Realize it or not, control it or not, the spiritual (mental) creation precedes the physical creation in all things. Always begin with the end in mind. Most of life’s battles are really lost in private, not in public.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:49 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
We feel neither the pulse of God nor the pulse of His children unless we feel both. We can’t serve God and ignore or mistreat His children. Neither can we serve His children and ignore our common Father.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:48 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
We are exhausted far more from the tension of internal disharmony – not doing what we know we should – than from hard, unremitting work. And, naturally, the very effort to escape such tension – pleasure-seeking, self-indulgence, escapism – produces more tension.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:47 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
The next time someone offends you, strive for the God/Christ-centeredness and bless them in return. Pray for those who persecute you and speak evil against you. Realize that this is one of the missions to which you have been called, and don’t ask to be saved from it.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:45 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment! -
Empathy – deep, genuine listening – is risky business, and unless we are inwardly secure we will not feel that we can afford that risk, but it is certainly one of the most powerful expressions of love.
Speaker: Stephen CoveySource: Divine Center, thePosted: 21 Aug 2008 at 8:44 AMComments: None... Be the first to comment!