Quotes About Listening

Silence might not be...entirely silent.

So much of being a good interrogator was just knowing how to actively listen to someone

client?" "I asked the same question. Hort wouldn't tell me. For your ears only. But if you want to share, I'm a good listener." I said

For me, the ability to listen carefully to another person's perspective, rather than summarily deciding what that person means, is in keeping with the behavior one expects of an elder. And the ability to understand what someone else is thinking is the foundation of stable social order.

To this list I would add one more thing. Elders are more often listeners than speakers. And when they speak, they can talk for a long while without using the word I.

We might mean different things. How can you tell? Only by reading each of us carefully and seeing what each of us has to say—not by pretending that we are both saying the same thing. We're often saying very different things.

He taught me a lot. But before the teaching, he listened.

Jack stood in the dining room just outside the batwing doors leading into the Colorado Lounge, his head cocked, listening. He was smiling faintly. Around him, he could hear the Overlook Hotel coming to life. It

Music matters," he told me once. "Pop fiction goes away, TV shows go away, and I defy you to tell me what you saw at the movies two years ago. But music lasts, even pop music. Especially pop music. Sneer at 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head' if you want to, but people will still be listening to that silly piece of shit fifty

the secret of chanting is in the listening, not the voicing, and a circuit is completed between mind and heart that opens intuition and gently increases the volume of the still small voice within.

It is a great art of living to be able to hear truth in the mouth of your enemies. Even those who hate you and mean to hurt you may still be right about what they see in your life. Though they shout their observations and probably intend them to wound you rather than help you, still they are giving you insight that can help you improve.

From what I can tell, the chief distinguishing factor between children and adults is that children hear everything while appearing not to and adults hear nothing while pretending to listen.

Pure prayer begins at the threshold of silence. It says nothing, asks for nothing. It is a kind of listening. The deeper the listening, the less we listen for, until silence itself becomes the voice of God.

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

Most believe that the key to influence is communication—getting your point across clearly and speaking persuasively. In fact, if you think about it, don't you find that, while others are speaking to you, instead of really listening to understand, you are often busy preparing your response?

Unless you're influenced by my uniqueness, I'm not going to be influenced by your advice. So if you want to be really effective in the habit of interpersonal communication, you cannot do it with technique alone. You have to build the skills of empathic listening on a base of character that inspires openness and trust. And you have to build the Emotional Bank Accounts that create a commerce between hearts.

The real beginning of influence comes as others sense you are being influenced by them—when they feel understood by you—that you have listened deeply and sincerely, and that you are open. But most people are too vulnerable emotionally to listen deeply—to suspend their agenda long enough to focus on understanding before they communicate their own ideas.

But knowing I need to listen and knowing how to listen is not enough. Unless I want to listen, unless I have the desire, it won't be a habit in my life. Creating a habit requires work in all three dimensions.

Just listen and seek to understand.

Empathic listening is also risky. It takes a great deal of security to go into a deep listening experience because you open yourself up to be influenced. You become vulnerable. It's a paradox, in a sense, because in order to have influence, you have to be influenced. That means you have to really understand.

5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood).

To relate effectively with a wife, a husband, children, friends, or working associates, we must learn to listen. And this requires emotional strength. Listening involves patience, openness, and the desire to understand—highly developed qualities of character. It's so much easier to operate from a low emotional level and to give high-level advice.

First seek to understand, then to be understood.

there are times to teach and times not to teach.