Management is efficiency in climbing the ladder of success; leadership determines whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.
The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
Live out of your imagination, not your history.
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.
Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent and not enough time on what is important.
Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren't important. They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II...Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management.
While you can think in terms of efficiency in dealing with time, a principle-centered person thinks in terms of effectiveness in dealing with people.
...to learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know.
How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.
If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.
You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.
One of the best ways to educate our hearts is to look at our interaction with other people, because our relationships with others are fundamentally a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.
Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment.
As long as you think the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem
Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.
People are your most valuable asset. Only people can be made to appreciate in value.
The way we see the problem is the problem.
But until a person can say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise.
Begin with the end in mind.
If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster.
Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.
We judge ourselves by our intentions. And others by their actions.
Improve relationships with others by assuming that they can hear everything you say about them
I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.