How many on their deathbeds wished they'd spent more time at the office - or watching TV? The answer is, No one.
Stephen CoveyRead
We are product of neither nature nor nurture; we are a product of choice, because there is always a space between stimulus and response. As we wisely exercise our power to choose based on principles, the space will become larger.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our choices define us more than our biology or upbringing.
This quote emphasizes that individuals are not merely shaped by their inherent nature or their environment, but rather by the choices they make. It suggests that there exists a critical space between what happens to us (stimulus) and how we react (response), and that by consciously exercising our ability to choose in accordance with our principles, we can expand this space and make more informed and meaningful choices in life.
Themes
ChoiceRespondPrinciplesFreedomDecision
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal development, to illustrate the power of choice.
More from Stephen Covey
All quotes →If you want to have a more pleasant, cooperative teenager, be a more understanding, empathic, consistent, loving parent. If you want to have more freedom, more latitude in your job, be a more responsible, a more helpful, a more contributing employee.
Stephen CoveyRead
Listen with your eyes for feelings.
Stephen CoveyRead
If we live out of our memory, we're tied to the past and to that which is finite. When we live out of our imagination, _x000D_ we're tied to that which is infinite.
Stephen CoveyRead
Synergy is the highest activity of life; it creates new untapped alternatives; it values and exploits the mental, emotional, and psychological differences between people.
Stephen CoveyRead
Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent and urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things.
Stephen CoveyRead
Similar quotes
If my desire is possible, it means the system is already letting something else through.
Helene CixousRead
This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.
Joseph RotblatRead
The world was reduced to the surface of her skin and her inner self was safe from all bitterness.
Gabriel Garcia MarquezRead
See the good in people and help them.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Surely what a man does when he is taken off guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is. If there are rats in a cellar, you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly. But the suddenness does not create the rats; it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me ill tempered; it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.
C. S. LewisRead
Dangerous acts can be done safely in a community which thinks and feels rightly, which would be the way to hell if they were executed by those who think and feel wrongly.
John Maynard KeynesRead