Listening Quotes

In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn’t do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the young—-well, not even the young anymore—-need to obey. Funny, because the root of the word obey is from the French verb meaning “to listen, or to give ear to.” It was never intended as a militant word, but one of hearing, of understanding. Of getting it. For a world obsessed with staying in constant communication, we aren’t really very good listeners.

~ Heather Choate Davis

If, however, we pursue what is expressed in the phrase 'the language of things', we are pointed in a similar direction. The language of things too is something to which we should pay better attention. This expression also has a kind of polemical accent. It expresses the fact that, in general, we are not at all ready to hear things in there own being, that they are subjected to man's calculus and to his domination of nature through the rationality of science.

~ Gadamer

You can talk all you want about freedom of speech, but it's freedom of hearing that counts.

~ Tommy Smothers

If I tell you I am upset about everything that's going on around me, you will probably ask me why, half listening, half wandering away in your own train of thoughts...If I tell you I am happy, you will probably not bother to know why, congratulating me and forgetting..I should rather tell you I am fine, satisfied, you will probably tell me your own issues then, for which I will be all ears

~ Sanhita Baruah

I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a graph and join them; you now have a curve with certain characteristics. Extend that curve while maintaining the characteristics, and it has meaning, up where no dots were plotted.In just this way I learned to extend the curve of a grass-blade and of a protruding root, of the bent edges of wetness on a drying headstone. I quit smoking so I could sharpen my sense of smell, because the scent of earth after a rain has a clarifying effect on graveyard reading, as if the page were made whiter and the ink darker. I began to listen to the wind, and to the voices of birds and small animals, insects and people; because to the educated ear, every sound is filtered through the story written on graves, and becomes a part of it.(The Graveyard Reader)

~ Theodore Sturgeon

We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening.

~ Marcel Proust

The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.

~ Kin Hubbard

There is a saying that, paper is more patient than man.

~ Anne Frank

Surround yourself with music. Just be sure to turn the radio on.

~ Lisa M. Cronkhite

It comes down to this: If you want to be seen, heard and understood in the most genuine way possible, be open to the possiblity of vulnerability. Allow yourself to be open. I know it’s a scary place, a place very few people dare to venture, but just try it. Try moving the masks away and really looking at a person the next time they engaged in conversation with you.

~ Leigh Hershkovich

I'd much rather hear someone's unique interpretation of their own experience. Those who negate or override someone else's experience in order to one-up them or to show off their own knowledge or perceived abilities are in truth showing off their lack of listening skills and wisdom.

~ Tonya Sheridan

The best listeners are often those with the quietest heart.

~ Marie Sabillo

Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.

~ Amy Tan

Our civic life is heavily marked—indeed, pocked—by debates in which each side is so certain of its position that any movement is effectively impossible. For that matter, debate—in its original sense of “to consider something, to deliberate”—is impossible. We wind up with so much sound and fury and nothing gained.

~ Leah Hager Cohen

The intelligent talk and the wise listen.

~ Raheel Farooq

You really pay attention to things, don’t you?” “Just with people I care about,” he said with a smile, “I think I get that from my mother. She was a really kind and giving person from what I remember, and she used to tell me, ‘Don’t just listen to people, hear them.’ I never forgot that.” “Wow,” I responded, “That’s so true. How many people really hear what we say?

~ Jackie Pilossoph

Elizabeth was so sweet this afternoon trying to show P.B. his sitting room. He became absorbed in some jungle prints along the passage and would not come. The corners of her mouth went down after the third attempt & putting both hands on his shoulders she said angelically: ‘Bertie do listen to me.’ He kissed her and came at once.

~ William Shawcross

I always felt as if I'd been handed a cardboard box crammed full of monkeys. I'd take the monkeys out of the box one at a time, carefully brush off the dust, give them a pat on the bottom, and send them scurrying off into the fields. I never knew where they went from there.

~ Haruki Murakami

They listened more than they talked, but that was the way of wise men and women.

~ Lee Goff

It 'appens to be true. An' if'n yew want ter stay moi friend, yew'd best 'old yer turpitudinous twaddle of a tongue an' listen fer once.

~ Peter St. John

Samuel finally understood the sound of the wind after all these years: The winds were a chorus of the prairie’s ever-present heartaches.

~ Andrew Galasetti

I always listen to what I can leave out.

~ Miles Davis

I love to write and to get to know the people who are listening.

~ Emilie Autumn

The only problem is the heart is quiet. It takes a very special kind of person to hear what the heart says. Most can't hear it at all and they have to guess. There are a lot of people walking around just guessing.

~ Suzanne Palmieri

Each of us has one. Each voice is distinct and has something to say. Each voice deserves to be heard. But it requires the act of listening.

~ Terry Tempest Williams

Where the rivers meetyou tell me of your black dreams.Your memories make me uneasy.But I listen because I knowmy listening, like all other listeningallows you to heal.

~ Holly Lynn Payne

The art of hearing what somebody has to say is actually, listening.

~ Colette Ruland Parrino

If God places a child before you, and you are too busy to wield either a positive or negative influence...you just did the later! You communicated that the child doesn't matter and isn't important.

~ Wess Stafford

She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul.

~ Henry James

What good was speaking when I'd determined none of the world listened to one another, especially not when a woman was speaking.

~ Leanna Renee Hieber

...you listen first with the ears - then, you wait and listen for what your heart feels - then you consider what they've said - then, you reply ...

~ John Geddes

Like most so-called debates between liberals and conservatives, they weren’t interested in listening or responding to each other. They were solely concerned with making sound bites.

~ Bob Frey

How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?

~ Alexander Mccall Smith

You hope people are going to be listening to you after you're gone. And they like you better after you're gone.

~ Tom Waits

In Kenya, I met wonderful girls; girls who wanted to help their communities. I was with them in their school, listening to their dreams. They still have hope. They want to be doctor and teachers and engineers.

~ Malala Yousafzai

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Grace, respect, reserve, and empathetic listening are qualities sorely missing from the public discourse now.

~ Meryl Streep

Of all human activities, man's listening to God is the supreme act of his reasoning and will.

~ Pope Paul Vi

Follow your intuition, listening to your dreams, your inner voice to guide you.

~ Katori Hall

I've woken up from dreams and the whole song is there. I'm listening to it in my dreams. I consciously have to wake myself up and get a tape recorder because I hear it like a record.

~ Lenny Kravitz