Listen / Listening - Quotes

A bore finds it easy to start talking, and even easier to get others to stop listening. - Evan Esar

A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something. - Wilson Mizner

A good listener tries to understand thoroughly what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but before he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with. - Kenneth A. Wells

A good listener truly wants to know the speaker. - John Powell

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him. - Brendan Francis

A man who won't listen can't hear. - George R. R. Martin

A polite man is one who listens with interest to things he knows all about when they are told by a person who knows nothing about them. - Charles de Morny

An appreciative listener is always stimulating. - Agatha Christie

Be a good listener. It is only when one listens that one gets and learns ideas different from one’s own. - Unknown

Be eager to listen to others rather than display our own learning. - Unknown

Be quick to listen to what others have to say, but be slow to respond with your own opinion. - Unknown

Being a good listener is easy – simply listen with your ears, as well as your heart. - Chad Lieberman

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable. - David W. Augsburger

Deep listening is miraculous for both listener and speaker. When someone receives us with open-hearted, non-judging, intensely interested listening, our spirits expand. - Sue Patton Thoele

Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less. If you want to help him to correct his perception, you wait for another time. For now, you don’t interrupt. You don’t argue. If you do, he loses his chance. You just listen with compassion and help him to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Do not just listen to what someone is saying. Listen to why they are saying it. - Unknown

Don’t listen to people who tell you what to do. Listen to people who encourage you to do what you know in your heart is right. - Unknown

Give every man thy ear but few thy voice. - Unknown

Good listeners are active. They get involved with what they hear. - Mary Mayesky

Good listeners are good catchers because they give their speakers a target and then move that target to capture the information that is being sent. When good listeners aren't understanding their speakers, they will send signals to the speaker about what they expect next, or how the speaker can change the speed of delivery to suit the listener. - Namrata Palta

Good listeners are popular. Everyone wants to be heard. - Diane J. Ackerman

Good listeners are rare; most of us have to squelch our natural inclination to talk. - Jerrold S. Greenberg, Clint E. Brutes & Sarah C. Conklin

Good listeners, like precious gems, are to be treasured. - Walter Anderson

Good listening is a process of showing respect and validating a person's worth. - Michelle Lucas

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen. - Ernest Hemingway

I think the willingness to listen is really a matter of confidence. You can't be so super confident in your abilities that you ignore what others say, and you can't be so diffident in your abilities that you think that if they say something, you will be so taken in that you will do the wrong thing. When you are confident about your abilities and also fully aware of what you don't know you are willing to listen to outside experts with the full sense that if you don't find it worthwhile you will ignore it. - Raghuram G. Rajan

If both people and conversation are trying to be interesting, there is no one left to genuinely listen. - John Yokoyama

If people listened to themselves more often, they’d talk less. - Unknown

If you can’t get people to listen to you any other way, tell them it’s confidential. - Unknown

If you spend more time asking appropriate questions rather than giving answers or opinions, your listening skills will increase. - Unknown

If you want to be listened to, you should put in time listening. - Unknown

It takes a disciplined person to listen to convictions which are different from their own. - Dorothy Fuldheim

It takes a great man to be a good listener. - Calvin Coolidge

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly. - Plutarch

Listen if you would learn. - Myrddin

Listen once in a while. It’s amazing what you can hear. - Russell Baker

Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf. - American Indian Proverb

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear. - Richard Bach

Listening is a commitment and a compliment. It's a commitment to understanding how other people feel, how they see their world. It means putting aside your own prejudices and beliefs, your anxieties and self-interest, so that you can step behind the other person's eyes. You try to look at things from the other person's perspective. Listening is a compliment because it says to the other person, "I care about what's happening to you; your life and your experience are important." People usually respond to the compliment of listening by liking and appreciating you. - Mathew McKay, Martha Davis and Patrick Fanning

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. - Karl A. Menninger

Listening is a rare happening among human beings; you cannot listen to the word another is speaking if you are preoccupied with your appearance or with impressing the other, or are trying to decide what you are going to say when the other stops talking, or are debating about whether what is being said is true or relevant or agreeable. Such matters have their place, but only after listening to the word as the word is being uttered. - Unknown

Listening is an act of love. - David Isay

Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals. - J. Isham

Listening is an intensive degree of hearing. We hear involuntarily; we listen with intention. Those who have sound ears cannot help hearing. We may hear persons talking without listening to what they say. - George Frederick Graham

Listening is harvesting what is in the speaker's mind. - Michael Prost

Listening is one of the keys to success in all areas of your life. - Richard West & Lynn Turner

Listening is seeking synchronicity with the speaker. - Michael Rost

Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don’t have to do anything else. We don’t have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen. - Unknown

Listening is the first step in making people feel valued. - Rebecca Z. Shafir

Listening is the process of creating meaning in the speaker. - Michael Rost

Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides. - Frank Tyger

Mindful listening is one of the highest compliments we can pay to others because it conveys the relationship-level meaning that they matter to us. - Julia Wood

Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking. - Bernard Baruch

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply. - Stephen R Covey

No one really listens to anyone else. Try it for a while, and you’ll see why. - Mignon McLaughlin

Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room. - Charles Dickens

One who cares is one who listens. - J. Richard Clarke

People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer. - Alice Duer Miller

People will feel safer around you and speak truthfully to you when they feel you are listening intently to them. - Unknown

Really listening to others is an art – one that we must be continually cultivating. So many of us are working so hard at making ourselves heard, that we forget that the better half of communicating is listening. - Leo Buscaglia

Remain open-minded, even when you believe yourself to be a king among peasants. You never know what blessings can be gained or crises averted just by listening. - A. J. Darkholme

Showing people that you sincerely care about them can often be as easy as listening to them. - Unknown

Skilful listening is the best remedy for loneliness, loquaciousness and laryngitis. - Unknown

Sometimes it is a great joy just to listen to someone we love talking. - Vincent McNabb

Sometimes listening itself may not be enough – some people must be prodded if you are to find out what they're thinking. - Mary Kay Ash

Sometimes, being a good listener means listening to the silence in between words. - Chad Love Lieberman

Spend time every day listening to what your muse is trying to tell you. - Unknown

The activity of interpreting might be understood as listening for the song beneath the words. - Ronald A. Heifetz

The aim of talk should be like the aim of a flying arrow – to hit the mark; but to this end there must be a mark to hit, that is, there must be a listener. - Charles Dickens

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard. - William Hazlitt

The art of conversation lies in listening. - Malcolm Forbes

The best listener is someone who puts himself in the other person’s shoes. - Unknown

The best way to make a long story short is to stop listening. - Evans Esar

The final stage ... of listening is responding. All the effort involved in sensing, interpreting, and evaluating lead to this point, and the process of listening is not complete without it. - Chris Battell

The humble listen to their brothers and sisters because they assume they have something to learn. They are open to correction, and they become wiser through it. - Thomas Hardy

The only thing worse than being on the wrong side of an argument is to be on the right side with no one listening. - Evan Sesar

The receptive attitude enables one mind to fix itself to another as by spiritual grappling-irons. When you see that every word you utter is taken in, and weighed, and measured by your listener, you cannot free yourself from the influence of his presence. You are compelled to have in your thoughts not only the words you utter, but the man to whom they are spoken. You must not only talk, and talk well, but you must talk to him. - Charles Dickens

The talker has found a hearer but not a listener; and though he may talk his very best for his own sake, you will find that his mental movements are erratic: they have no fixed centre and no definite object. His talk is like the water of a canal whose banks have given way, which rolls aimlessly hither and thither, without fulfilling any useful function, though it is the same water which was so helpful and serviceable, when it was confined within clearly marked limits by the restraining force of its earthy boundaries. - Charles Dickens

The word listening is defined as making an effort to hear something; to pay attention or heed. It is different from hearing, which is the physiological process of the ear absorbing sound waves and transferring them along neural pathways to parts of the brain. Hearing is necessary for listening, but listening is much more than processing sound. Someone may hear very well but be a very poor listener. - Lisa J. Downs

The world has always needed good listeners, for only good listeners are truthful tellers. - Ernest Kurtz & Katherine Ketcham

The worst of all listeners is the man who does nothing but listen. - Charles Dickens

There is a basic truth in everyone we meet. Look closely and listen well, and the true meaning of a fellowman will be revealed. - George Petavine

There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak. - Lisa Ford

There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing. - G. K. Chesterton

There's more than one way to tell each other things, and there's more than one way to listen, too. - Katherine Hannigan

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going. - Sarah Dessen

Those who care about you can hear you even when you’re quiet. - Steve Maraboli

To be agreeable you must learn to be a good listener. A man who monopolizes a conversation is a bore, no matter how great his knowledge. - Unknown

To listen – first shut up! - Sterling G. Ellsworth

We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say. - Zeno of Citium

We never listen when we are eager to speak. - Luise von Francois

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. - Ernest Hemingway

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions, you should just listen to him; just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things as they are with him and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. - Unknown

While the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes the right important. - Unknown

When you know how to listen, everybody is the guru. - Ram Dass

When you say something to someone, he may not accept it, but do not try to make him understand it intellectually. Do not argue with him. Just listen to his objections until he himself finds something wrong with them. - Unknown

Whole-hearted listening is the greatest spiritual gift you can give to the other person. - Harriet Lerner

Wisdom comes with talking less frivolously and listening more seriously. The latter implies a learning attitude; the former assumes an air of omniscience that does not exist. - S. K. Chakraborty

You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to. - Joh Green

Your aim is not to make speakers perceive you as working hard to listen. False listening is worse than no listening at all. - Rebecca Z. Shafir