Quotes About Understanding

You may be right, dead right, as you speed along in your argument; but as far as changing another's mind is concerned, you will probably be just as futile as if you were wrong.

My mother always said two people can't fight if one person doesn't want to

it was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish.

If a man's heart is rankling with discord and ill feeling toward you, you can't win him to your way of thinking with all the logic in Christendom. Scolding parents and domineering bosses and husbands and nagging wives ought to realize that people don't want to change their minds. They can't be forced or driven to agree with you or me. But they may possibly be led to, if we are gentle and friendly, ever so gentle and ever so friendly.

PRINCIPLE 8 Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view. PRINCIPLE 9 Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires. PRINCIPLE 10 Appeal to the nobler motives. PRINCIPLE 11 Dramatize your ideas. PRINCIPLE 12 Throw down a challenge.

Publilius Syrus, remarked: 'We are interested in others when they are interested in us.

Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let him save his face? He didn't ask for your opinion. He didn't want it. Why argue with him? Always avoid the acute angle.

Remember that the people you are talking to are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.

Try your best to develop an ability to let others look into your head and heart. Learn to make your thoughts, your ideas, clear to others, individually, in groups, in public. You will find, as you improve in your effort to do this, that you—your real self—are making an impression, an impact, on people such as you never made before.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not And things unknown proposed as things forgot.

For Roosevelt knew, as all leaders know, that the royal road to a person's heart is to talk about the things he or she treasures most.

I am convinced now that nothing good is accomplished and a lot of damage can be done if you tell a person straight out that he or she is wrong. You only succeed in stripping that person of self-dignity and making yourself an unwelcome part of any discussion.

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.

to influence others to act, you must first connect to a core desire within them.

Influencing others is not a matter of outsmarting them. It is a matter of discerning what they truly want and offering it to them in a mutually beneficial package. "He knows so little and accomplishes so much

We ride roughshod over the feelings of others, getting our own way, finding fault, issuing threats, criticising a child or an employee in front of others, without even considering the hurt to the other person's pride. Whereas a few minutes' thought, a considerate word or two, a genuine understanding of the other person's attitude, would go so far toward alleviating the sting!

Once you take the time to consider the other person's perspective, you will become sympathetic to his feel ins and ideas. You will be able to authentically and honestly say, I don't blame you for feeling as you do. If I were in your position, I would feel just as you do.

I have discovered from personal experience that one can win the attention and time and cooperation of even the most sought-after people by becoming genuinely interested in them.

Very important people have told me that they prefer good listeners to good talkers, but the ability to listen seems rarer than almost any other good trait.

Wouldn't you like to have a magic phrase that would stop arguments, eliminate ill feeling, create good will, and make the other person listen attentively? Yes? All right. Here it is: "I don't blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you do.

I would rather walk the sidewalk in front of a person's office for two hours before an interview than step into that office without a perfectly clear idea of what I was going to say and what that person—from my knowledge of his or her interests and motives—was likely to answer.

To repeat Professor Overstreet's wise advice: First, arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.

Affirmation, in contrast to flattery, requires seeing someone well enough to sense what to affirm, knowing someone well enough to be aware of what really matters. Flattery is usually an admittance of insensibility, a betrayal of trust. We say things we think we should say, but in reality we aren't thinking at all. What message does flattery send? "You don't matter enough for me to pay you much mind.