Listening Quotes I Love

Listening was the skill of the month for September. All month long we delved into the the why and how of listening. Addressing attitudes, using examples, and giving tips on how to become a better listener. 

Here is a recap of  the topics this month:

What listening is

Myths about listening

How to listen with your body

How listening is a way of showing respect

How poor listening could affect your health

Offered a listening quiz

Showed you how to use technology to listen

How to listen in 4 easy steps

To end our month long intensive, I wanted to share 30 quotes on listening that I love. One for each day of the month. CEOs, TV personalities, doctors, professors, researchers, and many others have seen the value of listening and commented on it. My favorites are 3, 8, 9, 19, 20, and 30 but I love them all for the different perspectives they give.

Which one is your favorite? Share in the comments

1. "Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively."

                                                                 ~Carl Rogers [Tweet]

2. "Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request."

~Phillip Stanhope,Earl of Chesterfield [Tweet]

3. "You have to be willing sometimes to listen to some remarkable bad opinions. Because if you say to someone, 'That's the silliest thing I've ever heard; get on out of here!'—then you'll never get anything out of that person again, and you might as well have a puppet on a string or a robot." 

~John Bryan

4. "The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them."

~Ralph Nichols

5. "Effective listeners remember that "words have no meaning - people have meaning." The assignment of meaning to a term is an internal process; meaning comes from inside us. And although our experiences, knowledge and attitudes differ, we often misinterpret each other’s messages while under the illusion that a common understanding has been achieved."

~Larry Barke

6. "Just because I didn’t do what you told me, doesn’t mean I wasn’t listening to you!"

~Hank Ketcham [Tweet]

7. "One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider a problem, can change our whole outlook on the world."

~Dr. E. H. Mayo

8. "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

~Winston Churchill [Tweet]

9. "Big egos have little ears." ~Robert Schuller [Tweet]

10. "The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer."

~Henry David Thoreau [Tweet]

11. "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 frightened."

~Robert C. Murphy

12. "A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something."

~Wilson Mizner

13."Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery."

~Dr Joyce Brothers [Tweet]

14."Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening ... when you'd have preferred to talk."

~D.J. Kaufman [Tweet]

15. "An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually and extension and enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will fell less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is begun again."

~M. Scott Peck, MD

16. "Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand." 

~Karl Menninger

17. "There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves."

~Albert Guinon

18. "No man ever listened himself out of a job."

~Calvin Coolidge

19. "To say that a person feels listened to means a lot more than just their ideas get heard. It's a sign of respect. It makes people feel valued."

~Deborah Tannen Author and Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University

20. I only wish I could find an institute that teaches people how to listen. Business people need to listen at least as much as they need to talk. Too many people fail to realize that real communication goes in both directions." 

~Lee Iacocca, Former CEO Chrysler Corporation

21. "I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention."

~Diane Sawyer, ABC Television Anchor [Tweet]

22. "Seek first to understand, then to be understood."

~Stephen R. Covey,7 Habits of Highly Effective People [Tweet]

23. "Just being available and attentive is a great way to use listening as a management tool. Some employees will come in, talk for twenty minutes, and leave having solved their problems entirely by themselves."

~Nicholas V. Luppa

24. "I would say that listening to the other person's emotions may be the most important thing I've learned in twenty years of business."

~Heath Herber, Herber Company

25. "Of all the skills of leadership, listening is the most valuable—and one of the least understood. Most captains of industry listen only sometimes, and they remain ordinary leaders. But a few, the great ones, never stop listening. That's how they get word before anyone else of unseen problems and opportunities."

~Peter Nulty, National Business Hall of Fame Fortune Magazine

26. "A good listener tries to understand what the other person is saying. In the end he may disagree sharply, but because he disagrees, he wants to know exactly what it is he is disagreeing with."

~Kenneth A. Wells

27. "I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I'm going to learn, I must do it by listening."

~Larry King

28. "Who speaks, sows; Who listens, reaps."

~Argentine Proverb [Tweet]

29. "You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen—not just money, but respect."

~Harvey Mackay [Tweet]

30. "To learn through listening, practice it naively and actively. Naively means that you listen openly, ready to learn something, as opposed to listening defensively, ready to rebut. Listening actively means you acknowledge what you heard and act accordingly."

~Betsy Sanders,Former Senior Vice President & General Manager Nordstrom