These Listening quotes will inspire you.
Below you will find a collection of motivating, knowledgeable, and encouraging listening quotes, listening sayings, and listening proverbs.
Inspirational Listening Quotes
- “I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.” ~ Doug Larson
- “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” ~ Leo Buscaglia
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“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.” ~ Carl Rogers
- “With the gift of listening comes the gift of healing.” ~ Catherine Doherty
- “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” ~ Jimi Hendrix
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“Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” ~ Robert Fulghum
- “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” ~ Winston Churchill
- “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.” ~ Woodrow Wilson , Leadership listening quotes
- “We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.” ~ Diogenes
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“One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” ~ Bryant H. McGill
- “The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention” ~ Richard Moss
- “So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti
- “All things and all people, so to speak, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen. They want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being. But we can give it to them only through the love that listens.” ~ Paul Tillich
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“Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.” ~ Plutarch
- “Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.” ~ Nancy Lopez , Listening quotes inner voice
- “A person hears only what they understand.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “The first duty of love is to listen.” ~ Paul Tillich
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“One who cares is one who listens.” ~ J. Richard Clarke
- “Be a good listener…It makes the person who’s speaking to you feel loved, cared for, and worthy of being heard.” ~ Wayne Dyer
- “It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
- “The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen , Listening quotes power
- “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
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“Good listeners, like precious gems, are to be treasured.” ~ Walter Anderson
- “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” ~ Epictetus
- “Hear much; speak little.” ~ Bias of Priene
- “It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “Listen with your heart, you will understand.” ~ Pocahontas
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“Before you speak, listen.” ~ William Arthur Ward
- “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” ~ Stephen Covey
- “It takes a great man to be a good listener.” ~ Calvin Coolidge
- “If animals could talk, the world would lose its best listeners.” ~ Robert Breault
- “Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” ~ Bernard Baruch
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“Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” ~ Shel Silverstein
- “A good leader leads from the front. Don’t get stuck in the office. Get out, meet people and listen to their stories.” ~ Richard Branson
- “Passion is listening.” ~ Rahul Gandhi
- “Live life as though nobody is watching, and express yourself as though everyone is listening.” ~ Nelson Mandela
- “I’ve had so many people tell me that they are shocked that AM radio still even exists with all the different listening options.” ~ Rush Limbaugh
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“The word ‘listen’ contains the same letters as the word ‘silent.'” ~ Alfred Brendel
- “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
- “One of the best ways to persuade others is by listening to them.” ~ Dean Rusk
- “The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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“Silence is a sounding thing, To one who listens hungrily” ~ Gwendolyn B. Bennett
- “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.” ~ James N. Miller
- “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” ~ James A. Baldwin
- “Being receptive, being able to listen openly and well, is a crucial skill for creative problem-solving.” ~ Paul A. Kaufman
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“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.” ~ Robert Frost
- “You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen – not just money, but respect.” ~ Harvey Mackay
- “We never listen when we are eager to speak.” ~ Louise von Francois
- “Good listening works magic… Listen intently intentionally!” ~ Frank Bettger
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“Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.” ~ Donald Rumsfeld
- “Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.” ~ Alice Miller
- “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common – this is my symphony.” ~ William Ellery Channing
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“Clean out your ears, don’t listen for what you already know.” ~ Rumi
- “The silence of prayer is the silence of listening.” ~ Elizabeth O’Connor
- “Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.” ~ George Washington Carver
- “There’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton , Listening quotes & hearing
- “One of my patients told me that when she tried to tell her story people often interrupted her to tell her that they once had something just like that happen to them. Subtly her pain became a story about themselves. Eventually, she stopped talking to most people. It was just too lonely. We connect through listening. When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that we understand, we move the focus of attention to ourselves. When we listen, they know we care. Many people with cancer talk about the relief of having someone just listen.” ~ Rachel Naomi Remen
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“Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.” ~ W. H. Auden
- “The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft; and gathering swallows twitter in the skies.” ~ John Keats
- “When I speak of the gifted listener, I am thinking of the nonmusician primarily, of the listener who intends to retain his amateur status. It is the thought of just such a listener that excites the composer in me.” ~ Aaron Copland
- “Again and again one can listen: this is my opinion, I think this or that… As if it matters, what one or the other thinks! The point is much more to what the truth is!” ~ Rudolf Steiner
Summary: Effective Listening, in today’s high-tech, high-speed, high-stress world, communication is more important than ever, yet we seem to devote less and less time to really listening to one another. Genuine listening has become a rare gift—the gift of time.
