Listening

Neal A. Maxwell

“Listening is one of the forms of love.”
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Author Unknown
“Who speaks, sows; Who listens, reaps.”
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Robert Schuller
“Big egos have little ears.”
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Lao Tzu
“Silence is a source of great strength.”
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Author Unknown
"If speaking is silver, then listening is gold."
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Richard Moss
“The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.”
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Paul Tillich
“The first duty of love is to listen.”
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Author Unknown
“Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf.”
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M. Scott Peck
"You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time."
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Peter F. Drucher
“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.”
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Author Unknown
“My wife says I never listen to her.  At least I think that's what she said.” 
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Thich Nhat Hanh
“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.”  
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Eli Khamarov
“I guess I've spent my life listening to what wasn't being said.” 
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Woodrow Wilson
"The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people."
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Robert Greenleaf
“Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.”
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Joyce Brothers
“Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.”

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Calvin Coolidge
“No man ever listened himself out of a job.”
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Ernest Hemingway
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
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Frank Tyger
“Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.”
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Stephen R. Covey
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
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Robert Greenleaf
“Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.”
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Ambrose Bierce
“Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen."
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Epictetus
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”
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Carl Rogers
“Man's inability to communicate is a result of his failure to listen effectively.”
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Dean Rusk
“One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears - by listening to them.”
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Josh Billings
“The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.”
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Wilson Mizner
“A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.”
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D.J. Kaufman
“Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening ... when you'd have preferred to talk.”
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Oliver Wendell Holmes
“It is the province of knowledge to speak. And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.”
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Michael P. Nichols
“There's a big difference between showing interest and really taking interest.”
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Chip Bell
“Effective questioning brings insight, which fuels curiosity, which cultivates wisdom.”
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Diane Sawyer
“I think the one lesson I have learned is that there is no substitute for paying attention.”
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Harvey Mackay
“You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen—not just money, but respect.”
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Oliver Wendell Holmes
“It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.”
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Doug Larson
“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk.”
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Ralph Nichols
"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."
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Richard L. Evans
“One of our urgent opportunities is to respond to a child when he earnestly asks, remembering that they don't always ask.”
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Ezra Taft Benson
“Strong families cultivate an attribute of effective communication. They talk out their problems, make plans.”
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Richard L. Evans
“The interruption we now impatiently put off may be the most important thing we could be doing at this particular time?”
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Richard L. Evans
“Young people are going to go to someone, somewhere.  And we had better see that that 'someone' is us.”
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Richard L. Evans
“What better can parents and children give to each other than respectful, understanding attention.”
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James Reston
“I learned the advantage of the dumb-boy technique. I found that people love to talk about themselves.”
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Epictitus
“Nature has given to men one tongue, but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”
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Marvin J. Ashton
“Proper communication will always be a main ingredient for building family solidarity and permanence.”
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Albert Guinon
“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."
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Francois de La Rochefoucauld
“To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.”
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Sharon G. Larsen
“Love is listening when they are ready to talk---midnight, 6:00 A.M. on their way to seminary, or when you’re busy with your urgencies.”
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James Nathan Miller
“There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation.”
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Winston Churchill
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
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Deborah Tannen
“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.”
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Heath Herber
“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.”
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Rene McPherson
“The way to stay fresh is you never stop traveling, you never stop listening. You never stop asking people what they think.”
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Larry King
“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."
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J. Isham
“Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals.”
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Henry David Thoreau
“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.”
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E. H. Mayo
“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.”
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Richard L. Evans
“What better can parents and children give to each other than respectful, understanding attention---with a turning of their hearts to each other, which is one of life's most important privileges and pursuits.”
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Marvin J. Ashton
“Often parents communicate most effectively with their children by the way they listen to and address each other.  Their conversations showing gentleness and love are heard by our ever-alert, impressionable children.”
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Karl Menninger
“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.”
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Kenneth A. Wells
“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.”
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Lee Iacocca
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.
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Lionel Kendrick
“Our communications reflect in our countenance.  Therefore, we must be careful not only what we communicate, but also how we do so.  Souls can be strengthened or shattered by the message and the manner in which we communicate.”
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Marvin J. Ashton
“A willingness to practice patience. Patience in communication is that certain ingredient of conduct we hope others will exhibit toward us when we fail to measure up. Our own patience is developed when we are patient with others.”
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Lord Chesterfield
“I would rather be in company with a dead man, than with an absent one; for if the dead man gives me no pleasure, at least he shows me no contempt; whereas, the absent man, silently indeed, but very plainly, tells me that he does not think me worth his attention.”
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John Bryan
“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.”
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Mao Tse-tung
“We should never pretend to know what we don't know, we should not feel ashamed to ask and learn from people below, and we should listen carefully to the views of the cadres at the lowest levels. Be a pupil before you become a teacher; learn from the cadres at the lower levels before you issue orders.”
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Peter Nulty
“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.”
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Ezra Taft Benson
“Encourage your children to come to you for counsel with their problems and questions by listening to them every day.  Discuss with them such important matters as dating, sex, and other matters affecting their growth and development, and do it early enough so they will not obtain information from questionable sources.”
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William R. Bradford
“Within each of us there is an intense need to feel that we belong. This feeling of unity and togetherness comes through the warmth of a smile, a handshake, or a hug, through laughter and unspoken demonstrations of love.  It comes in the quiet, reverent moments of soft conversation and in listening.”
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Spencer W. Kimball
“And you fathers, are you so busy making a living, playing golf, bowling, hunting, that you do not have time to talk to your boys and hold them close to you and win their confidence?  Or do you brush them off, so that they dare not come and talk about these things with you?”
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William R. Bradford
“Within each of us there is an intense need to feel that we belong. This feeling of unity and togetherness comes through the warmth of a smile, a handshake, or a hug, through laughter and unspoken demonstrations of love.  It comes in the quiet, reverent moments of soft conversation and in listening."
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Ezra Taft Benson
“Take time to be a real friend to your children.  Listen to your children, really listen.  Talk with them, laugh and joke with them, sing with them, cry with them, hug them, honestly praise them.  Yes, regularly spend unused one-one-one time with each child.  Be a real friend to your children.”
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Larry Barker
“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."
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Spencer W. Kimball
“Mothers, are you so busy with social life, [with projects], with clubs, with working out of the home, or with housework, that you have not time to sit down and talk to your little girls and tell them the things they should know when they are nine, and ten, and eleven, and older?  Can you be frank and loving to them so that they in turn can be frank in giving you their confidences?”
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Marvin J. Ashton
“Listening is more than being quiet. Listening is much more than silence. Listening requires undivided attention. The time to listen is when someone needs to be heard. The time to deal with a person with a problem is when he has the problem. The time to listen is the time when our interest and love are vital to the one who seeks our ear, our heart, our help, and our empathy.”
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Robert C. Murphy
“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.”
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Peter Senge
“To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning."
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Karl A. Menninger
"I just tell myself to listen with affection to anyone who talks to me, to be in their shoes when they talk, to try to know them without my mind pressing against theirs, or arguing, or changing the subject.  My attitude is: 'Tell me more!' This person is showing me his soul.  It is a little dry and meager and full of grinding talk, just now, but presently he will begin to think, not just automatically to talk.  He will show his true self.  Then he will be wonderfully alive.”
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Marvin J. Ashton
“A willingness to listen. Listening is more than being quiet. Listening is much more than silence. Listening requires undivided attention. The time to listen is when someone needs to be heard. The time to deal with a person with a problem is when he has the problem. The time to listen is the time when our interest and love are vital to the one who seeks our ear, our heart, our help, and our empathy. We should all increase our ability to ask comfortable questions, and then listen—intently, naturally. Listening is a tied-in part of loving.”
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