Quotes about Principles

When we value correct principles, we have truth—a knowledge of things as they are.

The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our circle of influence, our own character.2 As we become independent—proactive, centered in correct principles, value-driven, and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity—we can choose to become interdependent: capable of building rich, enduring, productive relationships with other people.

You can't become principle-centered without first being aware of your paradigms and understanding how to shift them and align them with principles.

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—

A "PEOPLE" DIMENSION. You also need a tool that deals with people, not just schedules. 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. There are times when principle-centered Quadrant II living requires the subordination of schedules to people.

Conscience is the endowment that senses our congruence or disparity with correct principles and lifts us toward them—when it's in shape.

Just as junk food and lack of exercise can ruin an athlete's condition, those things that are obscene, crude, or pornographic can breed an inner darkness that numbs our higher sensibilities and substitutes the social conscience of "Will I be found out?" for the natural or divine conscience of "What is right and wrong?

So the place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our Circle of Influence, our own character. As we become independent—proactive, centered in correct principles, value driven and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity—we then can choose to become interdependent—capable of building rich, enduring, highly productive relationships with other people.

Principles are deep, fundamental truths, classic truths, generic common denominators. They are tightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty, and strength through the fabric of life.

If we work upon marble, it will perish. If we work upon brass, time will efface it. But if we work upon immortal minds, and instill into them just principles, we are then engraving upon tablets which no time will efface but will brighten and brighten to all eternity.

It means to be responsible for my own first creation, to rescript myself so that the paradigms from which my behavior and attitude flow are congruent with my deepest values and in harmony with correct principles.

But people who end up with the good jobs are the proactive ones who are solutions to problems, not problems themselves, who seize the initiative to do whatever is necessary, consistent with correct principles, to get the job done.