I’ve blogged about this before about the power of listening. If there’s one skill that we all can get better at, to become better listeners.
Today, I gathered some of the greatest leaders, writers, and thinkers of all time.
Here are 15 of my favorite quotes about the all-important skill of listening:
“Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.” –Doug Larson
“One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.” –Bryant H. McGill
“If you make listening and observation of your occupation, you will gain much more than you can by talk.” –Robert Baden-Powell
“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 A. Menninger
“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” –Bernard Baruch
“Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.” –Alan Alda
“Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.” –Jeanette Winterson
“There is as much wisdom in listening as there is in speaking–and that goes for all relationships, not just romantic ones.” –Daniel Dae Kim
“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said” –Peter Drucker
“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” –Ernest Hemingway
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” –Stephen R. Covey
“Friends are those rare people who ask how we are, and then wait to hear the answer.” –Ed Cunningham
“The art of conversation lies in listening.” –Malcolm Forbes
“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.” –M. Scott Peck
“We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.” –Diogenes
Recently Seth Godin wrote:
Listening is difficult
Hearing happens when we’re able to recognize a sound.
Listening happens when we put in the effort to understand what it means.
It not only requires focus, but it also requires a commitment to encountering the experience, intent, and emotion behind the words. And that commitment can be scary. Because if we’re exposed to that emotion and those ideas, we discover things we might be avoiding
