quotations about listening
Maybe you're so good at listening that you have no idea when to speak.
S. M. BOYCE
Lichgates
I think the willingness to listen is really a matter of confidence. You can't be so superconfident in your abilities that you ignore what others say, and you can't be so diffident in your abilities that you think that if they say something, you will be so taken in that you will do the wrong thing. When you are confident about your abilities and also fully aware of what you don't know you are willing to listen to outside experts with the full sense that if you don't find it worthwhile you will ignore it.
RAGHURAM G. RAJAN
"A Conversation with Chief Economic Adviser Raghuram G. Rajan", The New York Times, Oct. 6, 2012
You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you're trying to listen to.
JOHN GREEN
Paper Towns
This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.
SARAH DESSEN
Just Listen
Sometimes listening itself may not be enough -- some people must be prodded if you are to find out what they're thinking.
MARY KAY ASH
On People Management
Your aim is not to make speakers perceive you as working hard to listen. False listening is worse than no listening at all.
REBECCA Z. SHAFIR
The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction
The planets in their station listening stood.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Listening is an underrated asset. People these days, they don't listen as much as they should. I read a lot, I travel a lot and I'm always listening.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Telegraph, November 16, 2015
To be agreeable you must learn to be a good listener. A man who monopolizes a conversation is a bore, no matter how great his knowledge.
ANONYMOUS
"Art of Conversation", The Chautauquan
Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.
DAVID W. AUGSBURGER
Caring Enough to Hear and Be Heard
Good listeners are rare; most of us have to squelch our natural inclination to talk.
JERROLD S. GREENBERG, CLINT E. BRUESS & SARAH C. CONKLIN
Exploring the Dimensions of Human Sexuality
In listening mood she seemed to stand,
The guardian Naiad of the strand.
SIR WALTER SCOTT
The Lady of the Lake