"Most people think of leadership as a position and therefore don't see themselves as leaders."

"Management works in the system; Leadership works on the system."

"The ''Inside-Out'' approach to personal and interpersonal effectiveness means to start first with self; even more fundamentally, to start with the most inside part of self / with your paradigms, your character, and your motives. The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves recedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves."

"Power is the faculty or capacity to act, the strength and potency to accomplish something. It is the vital energy to make choices and decisions. It also includes the capacity to overcome deeply embedded habits and to cultivate higher, more effective ones."

"You can't live principals you can't understand."

"Ineffective people live day after day with unused potential. They experience synergy only in small, peripheral ways in their lives. But creative experiences can be produced regularly, consistently, almost daily in people's lives. It requires enormous personal security and openness and a spirit of adventure."

"The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques (the Personality Ethic) rather than from our own inner core (the Character Ethic), others will sense that duplicity. We simply won't be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence."

"Private victories precede public victories. You can't invert that process any more than you can harvest a crop before you plant it."

"It's easy to say ''no!'' when there's a deeper ''yes!'' burning inside."

"Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness."

"Seek first to understand and then to be understood."

"Until we take how we see ourselves (and how we see others) into account, we will be unable to understand how others see and feel about themselves and their world. Unaware, we will project our intentions on their behavior and call ourselves objective."

"Between stimulus and response, one has the freedom to choose."

"Don't argue for other people's weaknesses. Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it -- immediately."

"We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be. And our attitudes and behaviors grow out of these assumptions."

"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.'"

"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."

"You can't talk your way out of what you've behaved yourself into."

"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."

"Only after we can learn to forgive ourselves can we accept others as they are because we don't feel threatened by anything about them which is better than us."

"If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster."

"Win win agreements are tremendously liberating. But as the product of isolatedtechniques, they won't hold up. Even if you set them up in the beginning, there isno way to maintain them without personal integrity and a relationship of trust."

"Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us."

"Between stimulus and response is our greatest power - the freedom to choose"

"People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally ''being lived.'' They are acting out scripts written by parents, associates and society."

"The character ethic, which I believe to be the foundation of success, teaches that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character."

"You can’t talk your way out of what you’ve behaved yourself into."

"It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize."

"If you're proactive, you don't have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own."

"Security represents your sense of worth, your identity, your emotional anchorage, your self-esteem, your basic personal strength or lack of it."

"Once you have a clear picture of your priorities that is values, goals, and highleverage activities organize around them."

"To judge individuals before understanding them is a form of human rejection andfeeds upon itself."

"I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a transformer in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader."

"It doesn't matter where you're coming from? all that matters is where you aregoing. You can't talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into."

"Admission of ignorance is often the first step in our education"

"Love - THE FEELING - is a fruit of love, the verb."

"As a principle-centered person you try to stand apart from the emotion of the situation and from other factors that would act on you, and evaluate the options. Looking at the balanced whole--the work needs, the family needs, the other needs that may be involved, and the possible implications of the various alternatives -- you'll try to come up with the best solution taking all factors into consideration. We are limited but we can push back the borders of our limitations."

"Lose/Win people bury a lot of feelings. And unexpressed feelings come forth later in uglier ways. Psychosomatic illnesses often are the reincarnation of cumulative resentment, deep disappointment and disillusionment repressed by the Lose/Win mentality. Disproportionate rage or anger, overreaction to minor provocation, and cynicism are other embodiments of suppressed emotion. People who are constantly repressing, not transcending feelings toward a higher meaning find that it affects the quality of their relationships with others."

"Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly."

"Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We cansubordinate feelings to values."

"In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do."

"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"

"Interdependency follows independence."

"In addition to self-awareness, imagination and conscience, it is the fourth human endowment-independent will-that really makes effective self-management possible. It is the ability to make decisions and choices and to act in accordance with them. It is the ability to act rather than to be acted upon, to proactively carry out the program we have developed through the other three endowments. Empowerment comes from learning how to use this great endowment in the decisions we make every day."

"Live out of your imagination, not your history."

"There are three constants in life... change, choice and principles."

"A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships."

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."

"Our character is basically a composite of our habits. Because they are consistent, often unconcious patterns, they constantly, daily, express our character."