Listening Quotes

So how long do I have before—what were their names? Carl and Rosa? Yeah, that’s them. How long do I have before they come back?”“I don’t know. Maybe...maybe an hour or so?” My hands felt incredibly small in his.That lopsided grin was back. “I doubt they’d be happy to find me here.”“Why?”His brows rose. “Maybe I’m wrong. They used to coming home to find some strange guy sitting on their couch?”I rolled my eyes.“That’s it, isn’t it?” Rider tugged on my hands, and I rose, letting him pull me down to the couch beside him. He leaned back, sliding one arm around my shoulders and tucking me against his side. “Just par for the course with you, huh?”I didn’t know what to do with my hands since he’d let go of them, so I folded them in my lap. “I’ve never had a...guy here.”Rider stiffened and then he twisted his neck so he was looking at me.Did I seriously admit that out loud? Squeezing my eyes shut, I sighed. “I’m just...going to shut up now.”He chuckled. “Don’t do that. I like listening to you talk.

~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The practice of deep listening is the practice of open inquiry, without assumption or judgement.

~ Sharon Weil

If a man seeks you to understand him; listen closely, for what is really going on is nothing more that you manifesting your desire to seek yourself on a plateau of awareness that is not tangible

~ Jeremy Aldana

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

~ William Hazlitt

To listen to a person is not passive.

~ Elizabeth Strout

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

One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Communication creates collaboration. Big ears are better than big egos. When you’re not listening, ask good questions.

~ Bill Walsh

When Arecibo is not listening to anything else, it hears the voice of creation.

~ Ted Chiang

Effective communication requires active listening skills.

~ Farshad Asl

One of the benchmarks of great communicators is their ability to listen not just to what's being said, but to what's not being said as well. They listen between the lines.

~ Laurie Buchanan

Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.

~ Fred Rogers

Listen with your eyes as well as your ears.

~ Graham Speechley

The biggest barrier in communication is that tendency of listening to reply and not to understand.

~ Wilson M. Mukama

The biggest communication problem is we do not listen to understand. We listen to reply.

~ Stephen R. Covey

He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.

~ Peter S. Beagle

When you are standing in the middle of a storm you have two choices: Pray to God that it goes away. Or, start praying to God that he gives you the wisdom to figure out why you're standing in the middle of a storm.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Don't assume, because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated, that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen.

~ Robert K. Greenleaf

She told me she loved me. She told me a lot of things. Some of those things were true, and some of those may or may not have been true. It’s kind of hard to tell, because to be honest, I wasn’t listening.


~ Dark Jar Tin Zoo

Communication is defined not by what is being said but by what is being heard. For this reason, it is vital that you gain a good appreciation of how other people will listen—interpret, process, and assign meaning— to what you have to say before you can influence them effectively.

~ Margie Warrell

Speaking to people does not have the same personal intensity as listening to them. The question I put to myself is not 'How many people have you spoken to about Christ this week?' but 'How many people have you listened to in Christ this week?

~ Eugene H. Peterson

Listening over and over to the voices through a family of instruments allowed us to recognize and appreciate the dignity and uniqueness of each living thing in the meadow and forest.

~ Terry Tempest Williams

The world is in sore need of good listeners. And in our own lives, it’s amazing to recognize just how valuable listening can be for us. How many mistakes have you made because you didn’t listen well? Personally, I’ve made many—and I’ve missed out on some wonderful opportunities because I was more interested in sharing what I had to say than I was in listening to what someone else had to say.

~ Tom Walsh

Anyone who takes the time to attentively listen is either an old soul or a romantic one.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Anyone who takes the time to listen is either an old soul or a romantic one.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I do listen. I just wait for the words to stop and your eyes to speak.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Having someonewho listensis a great gift,but to be truly heardis a treasure.

~ Tatjana Urbic

Patience is a virtue as they say and listening is an exercise in patience.

~ Kaleb Kilton

You listen to people, you listen so deeply that you can hear their past lives,The crackle of their funeral pyres

~ Dick Allen

Winning or losing achieves the same result--change.

~ Shannon L. Alder

.keep the child inside you alive..

~ Boris Kovalík

When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.

~ Frank Mccourt

A good teacher is one, that never stops listening; a good listener is one, that never stops teaching.

~ Anthony Liccione

When someone refuses listening to reason disaster will surely follow.

~ Ken Poirot

... But these skeptics are only selectively skeptical. They think themselves enlightened for resisting all this new proof and remaining steadfast in mistrusting anything that someone else says. But it is a false enlightenment to accept only those ideas that align with one's worldview and reject those that don't.

~ Ken Ilgunas

Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.

~ Zora Neale Hurston

I have witnessed how the power of listening, storytelling and embracing gray areas breaks through the rigid 'us vs. them.

~ Aspen Baker

Everything that happens to us, everything that we say or hear, everything that we see with our own eyes or we articulate with our tongue, everything that enters through our ears, everything we are witness to (and for which we are therefore partially responsible) must find a recipient outside ourselves and we choose that recipient according to what happens, or what we are told or even according to what we ourselves say. Each thing must be told to someone—though not necessarily to the same person—and each thing will undergo a selection process, the way someone out shopping might scrutinize, set aside, and assess presents for the season to come. Everything must be told at least once, although...it must be told when the time is right, or, which comes to the same thing, at the right moment, and sometimes, if you fail to recognize that right moment or deliberately let it pass, there will never again be another.

~ Javier Marías

This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places - the activities that are intimately associated with boredom - are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well. With this the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears. For storytelling is always the art of repeated stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained.

~ Walter Benjamin

Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people.

~ Bryce Courtenay