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Who really said it

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom

Attributed to Stephen Covey 1932–2012 · American educator, consultant & author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Documented in Covey’s own book — but Covey said the words were not his In copyright

The exact wording really is printed in Covey’s First Things First, at page 59 of the 2003 Free Press printing (copyright 1994) — but Covey introduced it as “the essence of” an idea he found in a university-library book whose author and title he never wrote down, so the sentences cannot be confirmed as his own composition. Quote Investigator ↗ concludes the original author is still unidentified — and that Viktor Frankl, who gets the credit almost everywhere, did not write it.

Last verified 30 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom” Stephen Covey, First Things First (New York: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2003; copyright 1994), p. 59, where he presented the lines as "the essence of" an idea from a library book he never identified. Widely credited to Viktor Frankl, who did not write it. Provenance detailed at quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Stephen R. Covey’s estate with A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill · Simon & Schuster (Free Press)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Stephen Covey — American educator, businessman & motivational author. Theme: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

Where the wording is actually documented

Work
First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy
Authors
Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill & Rebecca R. Merrill
First published
1994 · Simon & Schuster, New York
Location
Section One (“The Clock and the Compass”), chapter 3, page 59 — page verified in the 2003 Free Press printing, copyright 1994

[Covey describes browsing the stacks of a university library, opening a book, and meeting one of the most powerful ideas he had ever come across. He then gives what he calls “the essence of it”:] “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Preceding: Covey’s account of the library book

Two things in this passage are usually stripped away when the quotation is shared. First, Covey’s framing: “the essence of it” signals that he is reconstructing someone else’s wording, not transcribing it — which is why the sentences cannot be treated as either the unknown author’s exact words or Covey’s own composition. Second, the comma after “response” in the first sentence, present in the printing Quote Investigator consulted, is absent from the popular form the quotation now travels in — including QI’s own article title.

Scanned printing (1995)
Borrow the 1st Fireside printing of First Things First at the Internet Archive
Quote Investigator’s full chronology, 1917 to 2008

How the wording got here

  • 1963 — the closest documented antecedent, and Quote Investigator’s top candidate for what Covey read: Rollo May on the human capacity “to pause between stimulus and response and thus to throw his weight”. QI notes the phrasing differs while the vocabulary and idea are close ↗.
  • 1989 — Covey puts the thought in his own words in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, page 70, without the three-sentence form: “Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.” Transcribed by QI ↗.
  • 1994 — the exact wording appears on page 59 of First Things First, introduced as “the essence of” an idea from a university-library book Covey never identified. Covey’s own companion volume First Things First Every Day reprints the sentences and cites p. 59 — visible in Open Library’s full-text search ↗.
  • 2008 — Covey closes the door on the citation himself: “I did not note the name of the author, so I’ve never been able to give proper attribution.” By then a reworded version was being credited straight to Frankl — a credit Frankl’s own institute rejects ↗.
In copyright

These sentences are published text from First Things First, first issued in 1994 by Simon & Schuster and firmly inside US copyright — which is why this page quotes only the three sentences under examination and Covey’s short framing phrase. No public-domain source can be offered as an alternative either: the passage’s original author has never been identified, so there is no earlier printing to point to.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What actually goes wrong with this one

This is one of the odder attribution knots on the internet. The three sentences are printed in a Stephen Covey book — yet Covey said the words were not his, and almost everyone credits a third person entirely.

Viktor E. Frankl Not in his works

Frankl’s name is on this quotation nearly everywhere it appears, and it is wrong. Quote Investigator reports that researchers have been unable to find the passage in Frankl’s works ↗, and concludes flatly that it was not written by him. The Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna says the same ↗: Covey “found the quote in a library book,” thought it fitted Frankl’s views, and never recorded the book’s author or title.

A drifting text Reworded

QI notes that Covey altered the words over time, and that by 2004 one version had been ascribed directly to Frankl. The variant that travels as Frankl’s differs at three points from the version on this page — “lies a space” for “there is a space,” “our freedom and power” for “our power,” and it ends on “happiness” rather than “freedom.” Wikiquote records that variant and marks it as Covey’s summary, incorrectly credited to Frankl ↗.

B. F. Skinner No evidence

QI’s chronology logs a 2001 Usenet message attaching the lines to the behaviourist B. F. Skinner, with nothing offered to support it. See the 2001 entry in QI’s chronology ↗.

Covey’s own 1989 phrasing Different words

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989) Covey wrote the idea in his own voice, without the famous triad: “Between stimulus and response is our greatest power—the freedom to choose.” Anyone hunting the quotation in 7 Habits is looking in the wrong book — QI transcribes the passage from page 70, in the Habit 1 chapter ↗.

The three sentences are Stephen Covey’s published formulation — page 59 of First Things First — of an idea he said he read in a library book he was never able to identify. Viktor Frankl did not write them, and no one has yet established who did ↗.

Context

Why this one is strange

A quotation about owning your response has spent thirty years unable to account for itself. Covey met the idea in a library, could never find the book again, and said so plainly — in 2008 he wrote, “I did not note the name of the author, so I’ve never been able to give proper attribution.” The lines then travelled under the name of Viktor Frankl, the Auschwitz survivor who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, because Covey had offered them as a distillation of Frankl’s thinking and because they sound exactly like something Frankl would say. Sounding like someone is not evidence, and researchers have not found the passage in Frankl’s works ↗.

The underlying idea, meanwhile, has a long and perfectly respectable paper trail in psychology — it simply is not this paragraph. What Covey added was the shape: three short sentences that escalate from space, to choice, to freedom. That shape is why it is on a million posters, and also why it detached from its footnote so easily.

“I did not note the name of the author, so I’ve never been able to give proper attribution.” — Stephen Covey, 2008

The longer paper trail behind the idea

Quote Investigator’s chronology runs from 1917 to 2008, with citation years 1917, 1963, 1967, 1975, 1976, 1989, 1994, 2001, 2004 and 2008. The phrase “between stimulus and response” appears in Thomas Walton Galloway’s The Use of Motives in Teaching Morals and Religion (1917), in Rollo May in 1963 and again in The Courage to Create (1975), and in Sheldon P. Stoff’s essay “The Currency of Freedom” in the 1976 collection Opening Up Education, edited by Gene Thibadeau — but as ordinary psychological vocabulary, not as this quotation. See QI’s full chronology ↗.

QI names a 1963 Rollo May passage as the top candidate for what Covey read, noting the phrasing differs while the vocabulary and underlying idea are close. May’s sentence — on the human capacity “to pause between stimulus and response and thus to throw his weight” — also circulates in his essay collection Psychology and the Human Dilemma, as Open Library’s full-text search shows ↗.

Covey’s own account, as reported by QI, places the discovery on a sabbatical in 1969, where he “read three lines that truly changed my life” — with no identifying details of the book.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Freedom Growth Character

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Origin: Between Stimulus and Response There Is a Spacequoteinvestigator.com

The authoritative investigation: the 1917–2008 citation chronology, the transcription from First Things First p. 59, and the conclusion that Frankl did not write it and the author is unknown.
Wikiquote: Viktor Franklen.wikiquote.org

Lists the circulating version under “Quotes about Viktor Frankl” and flags it as Covey summarising a thought he attributed to Frankl, “widely attributed directly, and incorrectly, to Frankl.”
Viktor Frankl Institute Vienna — on this quotationviktorfrankl.org

The Frankl institute’s own page on the line: Covey found it in a library book, thought it fitted Frankl’s views, and did not note the book’s author or title.
Wikiquote: Stephen Coveyen.wikiquote.org

Covey’s sourced stimulus/response lines — First Things First p. 167 and The 8th Habit p. 62 — showing how he phrased the idea elsewhere. The famous triad is not among them.
Open Library full-text search for the closing sentenceopenlibrary.org

Shows how far the wording spread: Covey’s own First Things First Every Day carries it citing p. 59, while a string of later self-help titles print it as Viktor Frankl’s.
Stephen Covey — biographyen.wikipedia.org

Life dates (24 October 1932 – 16 July 2012), career, and the 1994 publication of First Things First with the Merrills.

The name on the page

Who was Stephen Covey?

Stephen Covey

1932–2012 · American educator, businessman & motivational author

Stephen Richards Covey (24 October 1932 – 16 July 2012) was an American educator, businessman and motivational speaker whose 1989 book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People became one of the most widely read business books ever published. His first habit, Be Proactive, rests on exactly the idea in this quotation: that between what happens to you and what you do about it there is room to choose. First Things First (1994), written with A. Roger Merrill and Rebecca R. Merrill, extended that framework to time and priorities — and is where these three sentences appear in print.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Where the wording is documented

Stephen R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill, First Things First: To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy (New York: Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2003; copyright 1994), 59 — where the lines are given as “the essence of” an unidentified book. Chronology per Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Between Stimulus and Response There Is a Space,” 18 February 2018.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom’?” Last verified 30 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/between-stimulus-and-response-there-is-a-space-in-that/

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