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Quotations About Listening

Listening Quotations Archive

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. — Ralph Nichols

Our first responsibility as effective listeners is to understand ourselves as communicators. Just as the sources of the communication message shout be trained in self-intrapersonal communication, so, too, should listeners know themselves. -- Andrew Wolvin & Carolyn Coakley, Listening

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. Listening is a primitive act of love in which a person gives himself to another’s word, making himself accessible and vulnerable to that word. -- William Stringfellow, Friend’s Journal

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one’s own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker’s world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually and extension and enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will fell less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is begun again. -- M. Scott Peck, MD, The Road Less Traveled

"Usually a person relates to another under the tacit assumption that the other shares his view of reality, that indeed there is only one reality...." -- Paul Watzlawick - Psychologist

We need a definite purpose, a specific reason for listening, other wise we don’t pay attention and don’t really hear or understand. -- Robert Montgomery - Listening Made Easy

The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished. -- George Bernard Shaw

The reason you don’t understand me Edith is because I’m talkin’ to you in English and you’re listening in dingbat! -- Archie Bunker, All In The Family

"As friends, we don’t see eye to eye, but then we don’t hear ear to ear either. -- Buster Keaton

"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer." -- Henry David Thoreau

"If I can listen to what he tells me, if I can understand how it seems to him if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then will be releasing the portent forces of change within him."

"Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively, skillfully, and with understanding to another person." -- Carl Rogers, psychologist.

"Few people... have had much training in listening. Living in a competitive culture, most of us are most of the time chiefly concerned with getting our own view across, and we tend to find other people’s speeches a tedious interruption of the our of our own ideas. -- S.I. Hayakawa, How to Attend a Conference

"The art of listening needs it highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we’re saying." -- Sidney Harris, columnist

"One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who take the trouble to listen to us as we consider our problems, can change our whole outlook on the work." -- Elton Mayo, behavioral scientist

"When a person knows that he has a good listener to talk to, he’ll share his thoughts more fully, which in turn, makes it easier for the caseworker to help him with his problems. And, moreover, as he talks, the person needing help often finds a good solution to his problems himself. -- Florence Holis, social worker

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

Small talk deserves small talk responses. -- Thomas G. Banville

Because of their inner rigidities, fears and anxieties, these listeners dread the mutual exchange of ideas and beliefs. They listen only to what they feel they should be attentive to, blotting out larger areas of wariness and thus avoiding the basic truth involved in issues an situations. They are constantly suspicious and cautious about other people’s reactions and set up emotional filters which disturb effective listening. Because of their hypersensitivity to criticism and rebuff, they are constantly on their guard and on the defensive. They listen with prejudiced opinions, preconceived notions, condemnations and cynical attitudes.

They fear facing or listening to the truth about themselves and as a result their hearing becomes colored with absolute judgments, "black and white" evaluations and distorted emotional reactions. -- Dominick A. Barbara, The Art Of Listening

...Adult listening behaviors become habitual. Our listening behaviors have been acquired and reinforced over a long period of time. As adults we rarely think about how we listen or consider that it takes time to change old habits. We listen the way we do because we have learned to listen that way.

Among the most influential operating factors during communication are the filtering agents of senders and receivers. Similar to filters used with a camera lens, filtering agents allows the passage or blockage or coloring of other elements. Consider how professional photographers use filters designed to let in some rays of light while screening out other rays that may ruin or distort a picture. While a filter is in use, it becomes a part of the camera and affects the final outcomes of the picture. Camera filters are changed to get desired results. Similar to a camera lens, filter agents communication with others. Filtering agents such as past work experiences, educational training, opinions, emotions, attitudes, feelings, and language abilities influences how you send and receive messages. Understanding your personal filtering agents puts you in a position to maximize your communication and listening success.

Effective listeners remember that "words have no meaning - people have meaning." The assignment of meaning to a term is an internal process; meaning comes from inside us. And although our experiences, knowledge and attitudes differ, we often misinterpret each other’s messages while under the illusion that a common understanding has been achieved. -- Lyman K. Steil, Larry L. Barker, & Kittie W. Watson, Effective Listening Key To Your Success

Like walking and thinking and breathing and talking, like all of the things that we seen to be doing naturally, we take our understanding of the [communication - mine] process for granted. We assume we know what we’re talking about. We smile knowingly and nod knowingly at each other when we discuss communication.

....It’s extremely difficult to introduce vital new knowledge when everybody assumes he already knows all that needs to be known."

At best. That task is a most difficult one. If you believe you already know most of what you need to know or could know about human communication; if you think all that’s left to be learned about human communication is a few techniques; if you found yourself nodding your head with an "Ah, yes, this is about communication - I know what it’s about"... Then we have a real communication problem!

Human communicating is not a science. It is very much still - and perhaps always will be - essentially an art.

Technically, we can no more understand communicating by being able to utter, "there’s a communication problem here’ than we could understand nuclear physics through our sheer ability to say: "this looks to me like a problem in nuclear physics." Listening to a noisy automobile engine and musing, "sounds like the tappets to me," is not the same as being able to repair or adjust noisy tappets.

An even more formidable obstacle is our inclination to assume we understand human communication simply because we do it.

As a result of the sort of education and training in communication that has been available, it seems natural for us to think in terms of how-t0-communicate rather than how-to-be-communicated-with. Yet the one is no more important that the other. The ability to be communicated-with is just as important to personal or professional competence as is the ability to communicate-to others. Perhaps more so.

Further, our inclination to think of communication essentially in terms of manipulating or affecting others- of communicating-to others - stands as an obstacle to a more advantageous view of communication as something when occurs in the receiver. Overemphasis on the origination of statements to be transmitted detracts for the primary focus that should be placed upon the creating of the message within the receiver, the message upon which he will base his thinking and his behavior. -- Lee Thayer, Communication And Communication Systems

Our first responsibility as effective listeners is to understand ourselves as communicators. Just as the sources of the communication message shout be trained in self-intrapersonal communication, so, too, should listeners know themselves. Brook states his case eloquently: -- Andrew Wolvin & Carolyn Coakley, Listening

To see one’s self accurately; to understand and know one’s self clearly and honestly’ to have acquired those abilities an characteristics associated with a strong, wholesome, self-concept-these objectives are directly related to liking one’s self, being confident in one’s self, and in relating and living effectively and satisfyingly with others. -- William D Brooks, Speech Communication

Chapter 10

Rogers and Farson (1973) note the risks taken by one who practices active listening in order to empathize with the speaker. In achieving understanding of a situation from the speaker’s point of view, one risks being changed by the experience to coming to see within oneself the world as that other person does. One will sense deeply the feelings of someone else so that one understands the meaning that person’s experience have for him. When one achieves this, one risks a shift in thinking to the terms of another. One may come to see the world as this person sees it; to find it threatening to set aside, even for a short time, one’s own beliefs to try to interpret and evaluate from anther’s view point. The willingness to do this requires a strong sense of one’s self. It requires confidence in one’s own feeling and values.

Everyone has a basic human need to be recognized and acknowledged by others. Listening is one of the most fundamental means by which this is achieved. When someone engages in the act of listening, having chosen to listen to a particular person, that person’s existence is affirmed, as is his importance as a speaker. By nonverbal actions alone, the listener tells that person he has importance in the listener’s frame of reference. Another result of acknowledging the speaker will be that there will be better speakers to listen to: if one listens better, most speakers may be stimulated to speak more effectively.

Anyone who wishes to improve skill in listening must be willing to expend the time and effort to permit others to express their feelings and ideas. To do this, one must be willing to give something of oneself. This requires that the person must, first of all, be receptive. Receptiveness is a deliberate action, consciously performed with the intention of relating in some way to the other. -- Vonicle Smith, A Handbook Of Communication Skills, edited By Owen Hargie

You can’t walk a mile in someone else’s shoes until you take off your own shoes .

Communication works for those who work at it.

A good listener truly wants to know the speaker -- John Powell S.J. "Will The Real Me Please Stand Up?"

To communicate is risky, to not communicate is riskier. -- Anonymous

"Ya know, I ain’t use to talking to a closed door." -- Sylvester Stallone - Rocky

Ingratitude is sharper than a serpents tooth. -- King Lear, Act 1 scene 1

Listen

When I ask you to listen to me

And you start giving advice,

You have not done what I asked.

 

When I ask you to listen to me

And you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way,

You’re trampling on my feelings.

 

When I ask you to listen to me

And you feel you have to do something to solve my problems,

You have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen!

All I ask was that you listen, not talk or do.

Just hear me.

 

Advice is cheap:

25 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.

 

And I can do for myself; I am not helpless.

Maybe discouraged and faltering,

Maybe lonely and isolated and grieving and searching, But not helpless.

 

When you do something for me that I can do and need to do for myself, You contribute to my fear and to my weakness.

But when you accept, as a simple fact, that I do feel what I feel,

No matter how irrational,

Then I can quite trying to convince you

And you can get about the business of understanding What’s behind this irrational feeling.

And when that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice.

Perhaps that’s why prayer works, sometimes, for some people, Because God is mute and doesn’t try to give advice or try to fix things. He just listens, and lets you work it out for yourself.

 

So please listen and just hear me.

And if you want to talk,

Wait a minute for your turn.

And I’ll listen to you.

The Wall

Their wedding picture mocked them from the table, these two, Whose minds no longer touched each other.

They lived with such a heavy barricade between them that neither Battering ram of words nor artilleries of touch could break it down.

Somewhere, between the oldest child’s first tooth and the youngest Daughter’s graduation, they lost each other.

Throughout the years, each slowly unraveled that tangled ball of string Called self, and as they tugged at stubborn knots, each his Searching self from the other.

Sometime she cried at night an begged the whispering darkness to tell her who she was.

He lay beside her, snoring like a hibernating bear, unaware of her winter.

Once, after they had made love, he wanted to tell her how afraid he Was of dying, but fearing to show his naked soul, he spoke Instead of the beauty of her eyes.

She took a course in modern art, trying to find her self in colors Splashed upon a canvas, and complained to other women about Men who were insensitive.

He climbed into a tomb called "the office," wrapped his mind in a shroud Of paper figures and buried himself in customers.

Slowly, the wall between them rose, cemented my the mortar of indifference.

One day, reaching out to touch each other, they found a barrier they Could not penetrate, and recoiling from the coldness of the stone, Each retreated from the stranger on the other side.

For when love dies, it is not in a moment of angry battle, nor when Fiery bodies lose their heat.

It lies panting, exhausted, expiring at the bottom of a wall It could not scale.

Improved listening skills will not necessarily result in improved listening. We must apply these skills. We must be convinced that it pays to listen. The combination of desire (I want to listen), effort (I’m going to work at it), and skill (I know how to do it) will result in improved listening. -- Donald L. Kirkpatrick, No-Nonsense Communication

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit. -- e.e. cummings

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them. -- James Baldwin

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force….When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life…. When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other...and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom.… Well, it is when people really listen to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way." -- Brenda Ueland

"To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is small wonder that people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself and for knowing that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes frightened." -- Robert C. Murphy

"You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." -- M. Scott Peck

"If speaking is silver, then listening is gold." -- Turkish Proverb

"The principle of listening, someone has said, is to develop a big ear rather than a big mouth." -- Howard G. and Jeanne Hendricks

"Now a man cannot listen to another while he will have all the talk and discourse to himself." -- C.H. Spurgeon

"Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens." -- Alastair Farrugia

"Like the Bard’s King Harry before Agincourt she [Princess Diana] captured the hearts of the footsoldiers of a nation, wandering among her fellow Britons and listening." -- "Diana" (an editorial) CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Sept. 2, 1997 (p. 20)

Easy listening exists only on the radio. -- David Barkan

The best way to persuade people is with your ears — by listening to them. -- Dean Rusk

I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention. -- Diane Sawyer

Instead of listening to that is being said to them, many managers are already listening to what they are going to say. -- Anonymous

The way to stay fresh is you never stop traveling, you never stop listening. You never stop asking people what they think. -- Rene McPherson, former chairman, Dana

It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal. -- Shakespeare

The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say. It's terribly important for everyone to get involved. Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys. -- Sam Walton

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

You're not listening... well, your heart is not. -- Merlin in Excalibur (1981)

Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see. And learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be. Careful before you say, "Listen to me." Children will listen. -- Witch in Into the Woods (1990) (TV)

The jungle speaks to me because I know how to listen. -- Mowgli in The Jungle Book (1994)

It is difficult for anyone to speak when you listen only to yourself. -- Lorna Bounty in The Man with a Cloak (1951)

In listening mood she seemed to stand,
The guardian Naiad of the strand. -- Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake. Canto i. Stanza 17.

Angels listen when she speaks:
She 's my delight, all mankind's wonder;
But my jealous heart would break
Should we live one day asunder. -- Earl of Rochester

It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear. -- Pooh's Little Instruction Book, inspired by A. A. Milne

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 Menninger

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is small wonder that people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself and for knowing that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes frigthened. -- Robert C. Murphy

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

Opportunities are often missed because we are broadcasting when we should be listening. -- Author Unknown

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing. -- Author Unknown

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery. -- Dr. Joyce Brothers

Our first responsibility as effective listeners is to understand ourselves as communicators. Just as the sources of the communication message shout be trained in self-intrapersonal communication, so, too, should listeners know themselves. -- Andrew Wolvin & Carolyn Coakley, Listening

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. Listening is a primitive act of love in which a person gives himself to another’s word, making himself accessible and vulnerable to that word. -- William Stringfellow, Friend’s Journal

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one’s own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker’s world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually and extension and enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will fell less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is begun again. -- M. Scott Peck, MD, The Road Less Traveled

"Usually a person relates to another under the tacit assumption that the other shares his view of reality, that indeed there is only one reality...." -- Paul Watzlawick - Psychologist

We need a definite purpose, a specific reason for listening, other wise we don’t pay attention and don’t really hear or understand. -- Robert Montgomery - Listening Made Easy

The greatest problem in communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished. -- Daniel W. Davenport

The reason you don’t understand me Edith is because I’m talkin’ to you in English and you’re listening in dingbat! -- Archie Bunker, All In The Family

"As friends, we don’t see eye to eye, but then we don’t hear ear to ear either. -- Buster Keaton

"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer." -- Henry David Thoreau

"If I can listen to what he tells me, if I can understand how it seems to him if I can sense the emotional flavor which it has for him, then will be releasing the portent forces of change within him."

"Man’s inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively, skillfully, and with understanding to another person." -- Carl Rogers, psychologist.

"Few people... have had much training in listening. Living in a competitive culture, most of us are most of the time chiefly concerned with getting our own view across, and we tend to find other people’s speeches a tedious interruption of the our of our own ideas. -- S.I. Hayakawa, How to Attend a Conference

"The art of listening needs it highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we’re saying." -- Sidney Harris, columnist

"One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who take the trouble to listen to us as we consider our problems, can change our whole outlook on the work." -- Elton Mayo, behavioral scientist

"When a person knows that he has a good listener to talk to, he’ll share his thoughts more fully, which in turn, makes it easier for the caseworker to help him with his problems. And, moreover, as he talks, the person needing help often finds a good solution to his problems himself. -- Florence Holis, social worker

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

Small talk deserves small talk responses. -- Thomas G. Banville

Because of their inner rigidities, fears and anxieties, these listeners dread the mutual exchange of ideas and beliefs. They listen only to what they feel they should be attentive to, blotting out larger areas of wariness and thus avoiding the basic truth involved in issues an situations. They are constantly suspicious and cautious about other people’s reactions and set up emotional filters which disturb effective listening. Because of their hypersensitivity to criticism and rebuff, they are constantly on their guard and on the defensive. They listen with prejudiced opinions, preconceived notions, condemnations and cynical attitudes.

They fear facing or listening to the truth about themselves and as a result their hearing becomes colored with absolute judgments, "black and white" evaluations and distorted emotional reactions. -- Dominick A. Barbara, The Art Of Listening

...Adult listening behaviors become habitual. Our listening behaviors have been acquired and reinforced over a long period of time. As adults we rarely think about how we listen or consider that it takes time to change old habits. We listen the way we do because we have learned to listen that way.

Among the most influential operating factors during communication are the filtering agents of senders and receivers. Similar to filters used with a camera lens, filtering agents allows the passage or blockage or coloring of other elements. Consider how professional photographers use filters designed to let in some rays of light while screening out other rays that may ruin or distort a picture. While a filter is in use, it becomes a part of the camera and affects the final outcomes of the picture. Camera filters are changed to get desired results. Similar to a camera lens, filter agents communication with others. Filtering agents such as past work experiences, educational training, opinions, emotions, attitudes, feelings, and language abilities influences how you send and receive messages. Understanding your personal filtering agents puts you in a position to maximize your communication and listening success.

Effective listeners remember that "words have no meaning - people have meaning." The assignment of meaning to a term is an internal process; meaning comes from inside us. And although our experiences, knowledge and attitudes differ, we often misinterpret each other’s messages while under the illusion that a common understanding has been achieved. -- Lyman K. Steil, Larry L. Barker, & Kittie W. Watson, Effective Listening Key To Your Success

Like walking and thinking and breathing and talking, like all of the things that we seen to be doing naturally, we take our understanding of the [communication - mine] process for granted. We assume we know what we’re talking about. We smile knowingly and nod knowingly at each other when we discuss communication.

....It’s extremely difficult to introduce vital new knowledge when everybody assumes he already knows all that needs to be known."

At best. That task is a most difficult one. If you believe you already know most of what you need to know or could know about human communication; if you think all that’s left to be learned about human communication is a few techniques; if you found yourself nodding your head with an "Ah, yes, this is about communication - I know what it’s about"... Then we have a real communication problem!

Human communicating is not a science. It is very much still - and perhaps always will be - essentially an art.

Technically, we can no more understand communicating by being able to utter, "there’s a communication problem here’ than we could understand nuclear physics through our sheer ability to say: "this looks to me like a problem in nuclear physics." Listening to a noisy automobile engine and musing, "sounds like the tappets to me," is not the same as being able to repair or adjust noisy tappets.

An even more formidable obstacle is our inclination to assume we understand human communication simply because we do it.

As a result of the sort of education and training in communication that has been available, it seems natural for us to think in terms of how-t0-communicate rather than how-to-be-communicated-with. Yet the one is no more important that the other. The ability to be communicated-with is just as important to personal or professional competence as is the ability to communicate-to others. Perhaps more so.

Further, our inclination to think of communication essentially in terms of manipulating or affecting others- of communicating-to others - stands as an obstacle to a more advantageous view of communication as something when occurs in the receiver. Overemphasis on the origination of statements to be transmitted detracts for the primary focus that should be placed upon the creating of the message within the receiver, the message upon which he will base his thinking and his behavior. -- Lee Thayer, Communication And Communication Systems

Our first responsibility as effective listeners is to understand ourselves as communicators. Just as the sources of the communication message shout be trained in self-intrapersonal communication, so, too, should listeners know themselves. Brook states his case eloquently: -- Andrew Wolvin & Carolyn Coakley, Listening

To see one’s self accurately; to understand and know one’s self clearly and honestly’ to have acquired those abilities an characteristics associated with a strong, wholesome, self-concept-these objectives are directly related to liking one’s self, being confident in one’s self, and in relating and living effectively and satisfyingly with others. -- William D Brooks, Speech Communication

Chapter 10

Rogers and Farson (1973) note the risks taken by one who practices active listening in order to empathize with the speaker. In achieving understanding of a situation from the speaker’s point of view, one risks being changed by the experience to coming to see within oneself the world as that other person does. One will sense deeply the feelings of someone else so that one understands the meaning that person’s experience have for him. When one achieves this, one risks a shift in thinking to the terms of another. One may come to see the world as this person sees it; to find it threatening to set aside, even for a short time, one’s own beliefs to try to interpret and evaluate from anther’s view point. The willingness to do this requires a strong sense of one’s self. It requires confidence in one’s own feeling and values.

Everyone has a basic human need to be recognized and acknowledged by others. Listening is one of the most fundamental means by which this is achieved. When someone engages in the act of listening, having chosen to listen to a particular person, that person’s existence is affirmed, as is his importance as a speaker. By nonverbal actions alone, the listener tells that person he has importance in the listener’s frame of reference. Another result of acknowledging the speaker will be that there will be better speakers to listen to: if one listens better, most speakers may be stimulated to speak more effectively.

Anyone who wishes to improve skill in listening must be willing to expend the time and effort to permit others to express their feelings and ideas. To do this, one must be willing to give something of oneself. This requires that the person must, first of all, be receptive. Receptiveness is a deliberate action, consciously performed with the intention of relating in some way to the other. -- Vonicle Smith, A Handbook Of Communication Skills, edited By Owen Hargie

You can’t walk a mile in someone else’s shoes until you take off your own shoes .

Communication works for those who work at it.

A good listener truly wants to know the speaker -- John Powell S.J. "Will The Real Me Please Stand Up?"

To communicate is risky, to not communicate is riskier. -- Anonymous

"Ya know, I ain’t use to talking to a closed door." -- Sylvester Stallone - Rocky

Ingratitude is sharper than a serpents tooth. -- King Lear, Act 1 scene 1

Listen

When I ask you to listen to me

And you start giving advice,

You have not done what I asked.

 

When I ask you to listen to me

And you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way,

You’re trampling on my feelings.

 

When I ask you to listen to me

And you feel you have to do something to solve my problems,

You have failed me, strange as that may seem.

Listen!

All I ask was that you listen, not talk or do.

Just hear me.

 

Advice is cheap:

25 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.

 

And I can do for myself; I am not helpless.

Maybe discouraged and faltering,

Maybe lonely and isolated and grieving and searching, But not helpless.

 

When you do something for me that I can do and need to do for myself, You contribute to my fear and to my weakness.

But when you accept, as a simple fact, that I do feel what I feel,

No matter how irrational,

Then I can quite trying to convince you

And you can get about the business of understanding What’s behind this irrational feeling.

And when that’s clear, the answers are obvious and I don’t need advice.

Perhaps that’s why prayer works, sometimes, for some people, Because God is mute and doesn’t try to give advice or try to fix things. He just listens, and lets you work it out for yourself.

 

So please listen and just hear me.

And if you want to talk,

Wait a minute for your turn.

And I’ll listen to you.

The Wall

Their wedding picture mocked them from the table, these two, Whose minds no longer touched each other.

They lived with such a heavy barricade between them that neither Battering ram of words nor artilleries of touch could break it down.

Somewhere, between the oldest child’s first tooth and the youngest Daughter’s graduation, they lost each other.

Throughout the years, each slowly unraveled that tangled ball of string Called self, and as they tugged at stubborn knots, each his Searching self from the other.

Sometime she cried at night an begged the whispering darkness to tell her who she was.

He lay beside her, snoring like a hibernating bear, unaware of her winter.

Once, after they had made love, he wanted to tell her how afraid he Was of dying, but fearing to show his naked soul, he spoke Instead of the beauty of her eyes.

She took a course in modern art, trying to find her self in colors Splashed upon a canvas, and complained to other women about Men who were insensitive.

He climbed into a tomb called "the office," wrapped his mind in a shroud Of paper figures and buried himself in customers.

Slowly, the wall between them rose, cemented my the mortar of indifference.

One day, reaching out to touch each other, they found a barrier they Could not penetrate, and recoiling from the coldness of the stone, Each retreated from the stranger on the other side.

For when love dies, it is not in a moment of angry battle, nor when Fiery bodies lose their heat.

It lies panting, exhausted, expiring at the bottom of a wall It could not scale.

Improved listening skills will not necessarily result in improved listening. We must apply these skills. We must be convinced that it pays to listen. The combination of desire (I want to listen), effort (I’m going to work at it), and skill (I know how to do it) will result in improved listening. -- Donald L. Kirkpatrick, No-Nonsense Communication

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn 
Stand shadowless like Silence, listening 
To silence. -- Thomas Hood Ode: Autumn

Still, as a storyteller, I'm fascinated how a person's sense of consciousness can be... so transformed by nothing more magical than listening to words. Mere words. -- The X-Files, Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'

The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals to you but in what he cannot reveal to you. Therefore, if you would understand him, listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say. -- Kahlil Gibran 

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you hear what is sounding outside. And only he who listens can speak. -- Dag Hammarskjold

Our first responsibility as effective listeners is to understand ourselves as communicators. Just as the sources of the communication message shout be trained in self-intrapersonal communication, so, too, should listeners know themselves. -- Andrew Wolvin & Carolyn Coakley, Listening

The spoken word belongs half to him who speaks, and half to him who listens. -- French Proverb

I think I'll learn more from listening. Anything I would say I already know. -- Anonymous student explaining while she did not wish to participate in a discussion, quoted in Christian Science Monitor

It takes a rare person to want to hear what he doesn't want to hear. -- Dick Cavett

The only time some people really listen is when they are the ones asking the questions. -- Angela Bright

Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.

One of the hardest things to do in life is to listen without intent to reply.

It is all right to hold a conversation but you should let go of it now and then. -- Richard Armour

You can judge a good listener by asking the talker at the end of the conversation what the listener's position is on the topic. If the talker doesn't know, then the listener has probably done a good job of listening.

Every person I work with knows something better than me. My job is to listen long enough to find it and use it. -- Jack Nichols

No one ever listened themselves out of a job. -- Calvin Coolidge

Listen. Don't explain or justify. -- William G. Dyer

One of the most valuable things we can do to heal one another is listen to each other's stories. -- Rebecca Falls

A person who is a poor tennis player cannot suddenly become a good one by resolving to do so, nor can a poor listener suddenly become a good one by an act of will. -- Bryan Bell

A little-recognized value of listening and inquiring relates to the realization that in human relationships, it is frequently not what the facts are, but what people think the facts are, which is truly important.  There is benefit in learning what someone else's concept of the reality of the situation is, no matter how wrong it might be. -- Bryan Bell

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

"But can you persuade us, if we refuse to listen to you?" he said.
"Certainly not," replied Glaucon.
"Then we are not going to listen; of that you can be assured." -- Plato, The Republic

Listening starts in the womb. -- Tomatis

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. -- Winston Churchill

An open ear is the only believable sign of an open heart. -- David Augsburger

Greet everyone you meet with a warm smile. No matter how busy you are, don't rush encounters with coworkers, family, and friends. Speak softly. Listen attentively. Act as if every conversation you have is the most important thing on your mind today. Look your children and your partner in the eyes when they talk to you. Stroke the cat, carress the dog. Lavish love on every living being you meet. See how different you feel it the end of the day. -- Sarah Ban Breathnach

The older I grow the more I listen to people who don't talk much. -- Germain G. Glien

Listening well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well. -- John Marshall

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

The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention. -- Richard Moss

There is only one rule to become a good talker: learn how to listen. -- Source Unknown

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

Hearing is a faculty; listening is an art.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen. -- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) 

“The word listen is derived from two Anglo-Saxon words.  One world is hlystan, which means hearing. The other is hlosnian, which means to wait in suspense.   Listening, then, is the combination of hearing what the other person says and a suspenseful waiting, an intense psychological involvement with the other person." -- John Stewart

“Listening is the single skill that makes the difference between a mediocre and a great company.” -- Lee Iacocca 

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." -- Robert Frost

 “Listening to another individual is like Michelangelo’s description of sculpting: I chip away at a block of stone to reveal the work of art already inside.” -- Peter deLisser

“You can’t fake listening.  It shows.” -- Raquel Welch

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answers.” -- Henry David Thoreau

“When you listen to somebody else, whether you like it or not, what they say becomes part of you.” -- David Bohm

“History repeats itself because no one listens the first time.” -- From a Salada Orange Pekoe Tea Bag

“Just being available and attentive is a great way to use listening as a management tool.  Some employees will come in, talk for twenty minutes, and leave having solved their problems entirely by themselves.” -- Nicholas V. Luppa

“The best salespeople are great listeners – that’s how you find out what the buyer wants.” -- Spencer Johnson and Larry Wilson 

“Congress is so strange.  A man gets up to speak and says nothing, nobody listens and then everybody disagrees.” -- Will Rogers 

“The funny thing about human beings is that we tend to respect the intelligence of, and eventually to like, those who listen attentively to our ideas even if they continue to disagree with us.” -- S. I. Hayakawa

“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.” -- M. Scott Peck

"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 Menninger

"One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider a problem, can change our whole outlook on the world.” -- Dr. E. H. Mayo

“Listening is a search to find the treasure of the true person as revealed verbally and non-verbally.” -- John Powell, Theologian