Quotes About Listening

If I had it to do again, I'd ask more questions and interrupt fewer answers.

A child seldom needs a good talking to as a good listening to.

You never get people's fuller attention than when you're listening to them.

Looking back, you realize that everything would have explained itself if you had only stopped interrupting.

If animals could talk, the world would lose its best listeners.

A man sometimes wins an argument, but a woman always wins a silence.

As parents, we guide by our unspoken example. It is only when we're talking to them that our kids aren't listening.

The easiest way to meet people is to just look like someone who is willing to listen.

If we would listen to our kids, we'd discover that they are largely self-explanatory.

As a friend, you first give your understanding, then you try to understand.

I look at it this way. I'm not an eavesdropper; I have an attention surplus disorder.

"Let me not live," said Aretine's Antonia, "if I had not rather hear thy discourse than see a play."

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.

Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener. Leonardo

Conforming to social norms, you will listen more to others than to your own voice.

Las ostras se abren por completo en luna llena; y cuando el cangrejo ve una, arroja en ella una piedra o alga marina y la ostra no puede volver a cerrarse, así que sirve de alimento al cangrejo. Tal es el destino de quien abre demasiado la boca y se pone de ese modo a merced del oyente. LEONARDO DA VINCI, 1452-1519

The University of Michigan's Karl Weick advises, "Fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.

Listen to those under your supervision. Really listen. Don't act as if you're listening and let it go in one ear and out the other. Faking it is worse than not doing it at all.

Women often seemed to leave things unsaid, and in his limited experience it was what they did not say that proved the most trouble.

When you ask questions, Lini used to say, then you have to hear the answers whether you want to or not.

Are you deaf as well as blind, woman? I'm not a carpet to walk over, and I distinctly heard myself speak. If I pinch your bottom, you can slap my face, but until I do, I expect a civil word for a civil word!

Men listened closer to calm tones than to the loudest shouts, so long as firmness and certainty accompanied the calm.

He strains to hear a whisper who refuses to hear a shout.

He kept up a constant chatter as they hunted through the packed streets. Rand made an effort to listen, and even to say something now and then, but it was an effort. He was not tired; he did not want to sleep. He just felt as if he were drifting.