Active Listening Quotes

Active participation is an engaging exchange of information. ~ Asa Don Brown

One of the issues I kept saying to my students is you have to learn to interrupt. When you raise your hand at a meeting, by the time they get to you, the point is not germane. So the bottom line is active listening. If you are going to interrupt, you look for opportunities. You have to know what you're talking about. ~ Madeleine Albright

Don't just listen with your two ears only. Listen attentively. Listen with every fiber of your being! ~ Assegid Habtewold

As a father, we need to actively listen. ~ Asa Don Brown

Active Listening provides parents with a way of moving in and offering to help the child define the problem for herself, and starting up the process of problem-solving within the child. ~ Thomas Gordon

Effective communication requires active listening skills. ~ Farshad Asl

People's problems are like onions - they come in layers. Only after the outside layers are peeled off do they get down to the core problem. Sometimes people know what the real problem is but are afraid to start there; more often they are not even aware of what is underneath. When a person starts out talking to you about some bothersome problem, you generally hear only the 'presenting problem.' Active Listening effectively facilitates the helpee to move through the presenting problem and finally get down to the core problem. ~ Dr. Thomas Gordon

But why bother? Why exert all this effort to focus totally on the boring prattlings of a six-year-old?
First, your willingness to do so is the best possible concrete evidence of your esteem you can give your child. If you give your child the same esteem you would give a great lecturer, then the child will know him- or herself to be valued and therefore will feel valuable. There is no better and ultimately no other way to teach your children that they are valuable people than by valuing them.
Second, the more children feel valuable, the more they will begin to say things of value. They will rise to your expectation of them.
Third, the more you listen to your child, the more you will realize that in amongst the pauses, the stutterings, the seemingly innocent chatter, your child does indeed have valuable things to say. The dictum that great wisdom comes from "the mouths of babes" is recognized as an absolute fact by anyone who truly listens to children. Listen to your child enough and you will come to realize that he or she is quite an extraordinary individual. And the more extraordinary you realize your child to be, the more you will be willing to listen. And the more you will learn.
Fourth, the more you know about your child, the more you will be able to teach. Know little about your children, and usually you will be teaching things that either they are not ready to learn or they already know and perhaps understand better than you.
Finally, the more ch ~ M. Scott Peck

Active listening involves both demonstration and perception. ~ James Pyle

Listening doesn't always equate to hearing.

Hearing doesn't always lead to understanding

but active listening helps each person
truly "see" the other. ~ Sanjo Jendayi

The ear plays the role of the guide in the museum in the concert I'm taking now. We don't have an oral guide, we have to provide it ourselves. One reason why active listening is absolutely essential. ~ Daniel Barenboim

When we spend time with people who live in extreme poverty, and we listen to their stories, it creates dignity and connectedness - something they usually lack. ~ Chris Marlow

Not everyone with a problem needs you to solve it. Sometimes all a person needs is to feel like they've been heard. Listening without judging can be more effective than injecting your opinions or trying to solve a problem that doesn't have an easy answer. ~ Zero Dean

The third facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that the client is experiencing and communicates this understanding to the client. When functioning best, the therapist is so much inside the private world of the other that he or she can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. This kind of sensitive, active listening is exceedingly rare in our lives. 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 R. Rogers

Positive thinking by itself does not work. Your embodied vision, partnered with vibrant and energetic thinking, and balanced with active listening, followed with intentional action - will clear the path for your miracles. ~ Sumner Davenport

For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics? ~ Richard Courant

Rostov was not listening to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes dancing above the fire and remembered the Russian winter with a warm, bright house, a fluffy fur coat, swift sleighs, a healthy body, and all the love and care of a family. "And why did I come here?" he wondered. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I'm very active when I'm not pregnant, but I think fitness should be a natural part of your life, not something you have to force yourself to do. ~ Jessica Capshaw

Look, dude, you've sampled your life, mixed those sounds with a funk precedent, and established a sixteen-bar system of government for the entire rhythm nation. Set the Dj up as the executive, the legislative, and judicial branches. I mean, after listening to your beat, anything I've heard on the pop radio in the last five years feels like a violation of my civil rights. ~ Paul Beatty

Organized religion is sane and not silly when read as myth and poetry rather than science and law. Religion speaks nonsense when taken literally, but reveals some of the deepest truths of humankind when understood mythically, poetically, and even allegorically-that is when it is read with an active and creative imagination. ~ Rami M. Shapiro

I grew up listening to gospel. That was the only thing that I had reference to because that was what my family was involved with. ~ Katy Perry

What would white people become if they (we) actually confronted the fact that being white was not inherent in a person, in ourselves and others, but actually a demand that others make on us, a role we must play to fulfill a certain responsibility? Part of what is demanded is that we see others as different, yet attribute that difference to those others and not to ourselves, who are told to see it. Who would white people become if they saw their own eye as an active agent in the production of race though that eye's attribution to others? The so-called colorblindness that has become a prevalent notion these days would be impossible. Is the essence of race, for which color is a symbol (of the imposed categorization), exists in the eye itself and not in the object seen by the eye, which has its own qualities, to what could the eye be blinding itself? Who would we become if we saw those others not as different but as living under an imposition of difference? Who would we become if we saw that imposition as something in which we were not only implicated but active agents in producing? Who would we become if we sought to interpose ourselves in that process of imposition, to obstruct it in its primordial moment? Who would white people become if they saw themselves through the eyes of those on whom they impose themselves? ~ Steve Martinot

Anytime we're not converting to others the same glorious realities that sealed our own redemption in Christ, we're always an inch or less away from doing something wicked to somebody else - from not listening to them, not caring about them, not working hard for them, not valuing them, and all the various, ugly expressions that our lack of real love can embody. We won't give people the benefit of the doubt. We won't feel inclined to be gracious. We'll all too quickly assume our attack positions, establishing ourselves on a war footing. We'll flare up at perceived injustices and fight back with counterstrikes. We'll turn against people. We'll do it all. And know we're doing it. And sometimes, we won't even care. ~ Matt Chandler

The boys have to have a chance to be at peace, at rest, without someone listening, to favor or despise them depending on the way they talk act and think. ~ Orson Scott Card

I have a routine for a day I'm in the office and not really physically active. Or a day when I'm in the gym once or in the gym twice. Then I've got a road course routine and an oval routine because they're different physically. ~ Charlie Kimball

We are always completely, and therefore equally, known to God. That is our destiny whether we like it or not. But though this knowledge never varies, the quality of our being known can….Ordinarily, to be known by God is to be, for this purpose, in the category of things. We are, like earthworms, cabbages, and nebulae, objects of Divine knowledge, But when we (a) become aware of this fact--the present fact, not the generalization--and (b) assent with all our will to be known, then we treat ourselves, in relation to God, not as things but as persons. We have unveiled. Not that any veil could have baffled his sight. The change is in us. The passive changes to the active. Instead of merely being known, we show, we tell, we offer ourselves to view. ~ C.S. Lewis

Like most of the movies I have participated in before, it's not a far departure from my actual self. TJ is a Special Forces, hand-to-hand combat expert. He's got a big heart. He has a sense of duty that never ends, whether he is active duty or as you find him in Check Point, retired. ~ Bill Goldberg

I always tell kids, you have two eyes and one mouth. Keep two open and one closed. You never learn anything if you're the one talking. ~ Gordie Howe

The poet was, of course, always present to assist the debater. Though the logic of Lewis's Christian apologetics may be fallible, the imagination of the writing with its brilliantly-conceived analogies is itself enough to win a reader to his side. As Austin Farrer expressed it, We think we are listening to an argument; in fact we are presented with a vision; and it is the vision that carries conviction. ~ Humphrey Carpenter

You guys are seriously missing out unless you all start listening to girls. ~ Kathleen Hanna

Mary Lou suddenly realizes that Mack calls the temperature number because he is afraid to talk on the telephone, and by listening to a recording, he doesn't have to reply. It's his way of pretending that he's involved. He wants it to snow so he won't have to go outside. He is afraid of what might happen. But it occurs to her that what he must really be afraid of is women. Then Mary Lou feels so sick and heavy with her power over him that she wants to cry. She sees the way her husband is standing there in a frozen pose. Mack looks as though he could stand there all night with the telephone receiver against his ear. ~ Bobbie Ann Mason

I use my mom's shampoo sometimes," I blurt out. "I know I shouldn't. I know it's lady shampoo. But it smells better than mine, and I think my hair might like it better, and – but that doesn't change the fact that that stuff, that's for chicks. And, that, that's probably
gay, isn't it? Like, at least a little."
"I don't know whether - "
"And I cried once listening to 'The Scientist' by Coldplay. I don't know, I was in sort of a lousy mood anyway, but it's not like that excuses that stuff. Like, that was gay, wasn't it? Guys don't just sit around and cry over Coldplay."
"Howie - "
"And I loved Mamma Mia. Like, loved it. Amber made me watch it with her on TV once, and I didn't want to, and she wound up thinking it was this sentimental piece of crap, but I loved it. It was all sunny and happy and there was all that blue sky and blue ocean, and everyone was just, like, so chill, all bouncing and singing and being so happy, and I just wanted to, I don't know, live there or something. Jump right into the screen and sing
backup to Dancing Queen. That's gay, right? That's queeriest queerdom. There's no way that's not totally gay. It's gay. It's so gay. I'm … I …"
"If I may," Arthur says.
I take a deep breath. "Yeah, okay."
"I don't like any of those things," Arthur says, "and I am gay. So maybe you're just
girly."
That?
That's his answer?
"I'm not girly," I say, affronted.
"Just an observation," Arthur replies innoc ~ Hannah Johnson

doing God's will, eating the meat of the Word, is not listening to a Bible teacher, but going and doing what it says, especially as it relates to working in the harvest fields. ~ Bill Johnson

tonight this room is smoky
and I am alone
listening to the silence.
I am tired of waiting on life,
it was so slow to arrive and so quick to leave.
the streets and the cities are empty,
love is on the damned cross and death laughs in the back room.
at the edge, the edge, the edge. ~ Charles Bukowski

The paranoid one's wards are still active. They keep me several feet from the building."
"But not his car," I said, a smile tugging at my lips. Barrons would go nuts if he knew that V'lane had touched his Viper. And stretched out on it nude? He'd have an aneurysm. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Alex:
OK, that sounds like a challenge! Well firstly, I would have brought you to a hotel along the coast so that your suite would have the best sea view in the hotel. You could fall asleep listening to the waves crashing against the rocks, I would sprinkle the bed with red rose petals and have candles lit all around the room, I would have your favorite CD playing quietly in the background.
But I wouldn't propose to you there. I would bring you to where there was a huge crowd of people so they could all gasp when I got down on one knee and proposed. Or something like that. Note I have italicized all important buzz words.
Rosie:
Oh.
Alex:
Oh? That's all you can say? One word for the most important night of our lives? ~ Cecelia Ahern

If I had an ear 2 confide in
I would cry among my treasured friends
But who do u know that stops that long
to help another carry on
The world moves fast and it would rather pass u by
than 2 stop and c what makes u cry ~ Tupac Shakur

She slid a slim volume of poetry off the shelf and returned to her chair, swishing her rather unnattractive skirts before she sat down.
Benedict frowned. He'd never really noticed before how ugly her dress was. Not as bad as the one Mrs. Cabtree had lent her, but certainly not anything designed to bring out the best in a woman.
He ought to buy her a new dress. She would never accept it,of course, but maybe if her current garments were accidentally burned...
"Mr. Bridgerton?"
But how could he manage to burn her dress? She'd have to not be wearing it, and that posed a certain challenge in and of itself...
"Are you even listening to me?" Sophie demanded.
"Hmmm?"
"You're not listening to me."
"Sorry," he admitted. "My apologies. My mind got away from me. Please continue."
She began anew, and in his attempt to show how much attention he was paying her, he focused his eyes on her lips, which proved to be a big mistake.
Because suddenly those lips were all he could see, and he couldn't stop thinking about kissing her, and he knew- absolutely knew-that if one of them didn't leave the room in the next thirty seconds, he was going to do something for which he'd owe her a thousand apologies.
Not that he didn't plan to seduce her. Just that he'd rather do it with a bit more finesse.
"Oh, dear," he blurted out.
Sophie gave him an odd look. He didn't blame her. He sounded like a complete idiot. He didn't think he'd uttered t ~ Julia Quinn

Very often, when you're listening to a piece for the first time, you're listening through a model of other pieces that you know. At a certain point, a piece becomes idiosyncratic and you start to understand it on its own terms. ~ Paul Lansky

If you aren't creeped out by the No Birth Control Left Behind rhetoric of the White House and Planned Parenthood, you aren't listening closely enough. The anesthetic of progressive benevolence always dulls the senses. Wake up. ~ Michelle Malkin

Hacker with Bullhorn: "Save your money! Accept one of our free tanks! It is invulnerable, and can drive across rocks and swamps at ninety miles an hour while getting a hundred miles to the gallon!"
Prospective Station Wagon Buyer: "I know what you say is true ... but ... er ... I don't know how to maintain a tank!"
Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!"
Buyer: "But this dealership has mechanics on staff. If something goes wrong with my station wagon, I can take a day off work, bring it here, and pay them to work on it while I sit in the waiting room for hours, listening to elevator music."
Bullhorn: "But if you accept one of our free tanks, we will send volunteers to your house to fix it for free while you sleep!"
Buyer: "Stay away from my house, you freak! ~ Neal Stephenson

In living things, nature springs an ontological surprise in which the world-accident of terrestrial conditions brings to light an entirely new possibility of being: systems of matter that are unities of a manifold, not in virtue of a synthesizing perception whose object they happen to be, nor by the mere concurrence of the forces that bind their parts together, but in virtue of themselves, for the sake of themselves, and continually sustained by themselves. Here wholeness is self-integrating in active performance, and form for once is the cause rather than the result of the material collections in which it successively subsists. Unity here is self-unifying, by means of changing multiplicity. Sameness, while it last, (and it does not last inertially, in the manner of static identity or of on-moving continuity), is perpetual self-renewal through process, borne on the shift of otherness. This active self-integration of life alone gives substance to the term "individual": it alone yields the ontological concept of an individual as against a merely phenomenological one. The ontological individual, its very existence at any moment, its duration and its identity in duration is, then, essentially its own function, its own concern, its own continuous achievement. In this process of self-sustained being, the relation of the organism to its own concern, its own continuous achievement.
In this process of self-sustained being, the relation of the organism to its material substance is ~ Hans Jonas

Toby. - It was how I was always told you could get women into bed. By doing something called 'listening to their problems'. It's a contemptible tactic.
Kyra. - You wouldn't do it?
Toby. - No. Of course not. You know me, Kyra. I wouldn't stoop to it. Either they want you or else they don't. Listening's halfway to begging. ~ David Hare

, listening to the storm outside as it left the city, knowing that I was going to lose her but also knowing that, for a few minutes, we had belonged to one another, and to nobody else. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic. This may appear a surprising claim, which would not have seemed even remotely
conceivable at the start of the century and which is bound to encounter fierce resistance even now. However, when the time comes to look back at the century, it seems very likely that future literary historians, detached from the squabbles of our present, will see as its most representative and distinctive works books like J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and also George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, William Golding's Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle, Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot-49 and Gravity's Rainbow. The list could readily be extended, back to the late nineteenth century with H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau and The War of the Worlds, and up to writers currently active like Stephen R. Donaldson and George R.R. Martin. It could take in authors as different, not to say opposed, as Kingsley and Martin Amis, Anthony Burgess, Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Don DeLillo, and Julian Barnes. By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode.

This is not the same, one should note, as fantasy as a literary genre – of the authors l ~ Tom Shippey

I wonder where they'll go," Jake continued, frowning a little. "There's wolves out there, and all sorts of beasts."
"No self-respecting wolf would dare to confront that duenna of hers, not with that umbrella she wields," Ian snapped, but he felt a little uneasy.
"Oho!" said Jake with a hearty laugh. "So that's what she was? I thought they'd come to court you together. Personally, I'd be afraid to close my eyes with that gray-haired hag in bed next to me."
Ian was not listening. Idly he unfolded the note, knowing that Elizabeth Cameron probably wasn't foolish enough to have written it in her own girlish, illegible scrawl. His first thought as he scanned the neat, scratchy script was that she'd gotten someone else to write it for her…but then he recognized the words, which were strangely familiar, because he'd spoken them himself:

Your suggestion has merit. I'm leaving for Scotland on the first of next month and cannot delay the trip again. Would prefer the meeting take place there, in any case. A map is enclosed for direction to the cottage. Cordially-Ian.

"God help that silly bastard if he ever crosses my path!" Ian said savagely.
"Who d'you mean?"
"Peters!"
"Peters?" Jake said, gaping. "Your secretary? The one you sacked for mixin' up all your letters?"
"I should have strangled him! This is the note I meant for Dickinson Verley. He sent it to Cameron instead."
In furious disgust Ian raked his hand through his hair ~ Judith McNaught

For most of human history, we could only watch, like bystanders, the beautiful dance of Nature. But today, we are on the cusp of an epoch-making transition, from being passive observers of Nature to being active choreographers of Nature. The Age of Discovery in science is coming to a close, opening up an Age of Mastery. ~ Michio Kaku

I said very little. I knew that for the time being I was the open air, the place to put the words, not a real interlocutor. And then, ekthout a transition of any kind, she began to tell me .... {p. 134} ~ Siri Hustvedt

And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good ~ Brenda Ueland

I've always been on the side of science that tries to help man. I play an active part with the foundations I'm involved in. Science gives hope. If it were offered to me? Never say never. But I wouldn't kill or steal to have my sight. My blindness doesn't define my life. ~ Andrea Bocelli

As he talked a good deal, had seen active service, and was naturally regarded as a man of energy and spirit, he was much sought after and listened to by simpletons. ~ Emile Zola

We cannot know the consequences of suppressing a child's spontaneity when he is just beginning to be active. We may even suffocate life itself. That humanity which is revealed in all its intellectual splendor during the sweet and tender age of childhood should be respected with a kind of religious veneration. It is like the sun which appears at dawn or a flower just beginning to bloom. Education cannot be effective unless it helps a child to open up himself to life. ~ Maria Montessori

It's too bad music can't be like movies. For me, playing music and listening to music and creating music is very environmental. It creates a certain environment; it sets a specific mood. ~ Avey Tare

The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death's dominion. But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it. ~ Charles Dickens

God never ceases to speak to us, but the noise of the world without and the tumult of our passions within bewilder us and prevent us from listening to him ~ Francois Fenelon

I enter into conference, and dispute with great liberty and facility, forasmuch as opinion meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, and wherein to take any deep root; no propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, though never so contrary to my own; there is no so frivolous and extravagant fancy that does not seem to me suitable to the production of human wit. We, who deprive our judgment of the right of determining, look indifferently upon the diverse opinions, and if we incline not our judgment to them, yet we easily give them the hearing. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Dog's listen, or appear to listen. I think they hear blah, blah, blah, FOOD, blah, blah, blah. They appear to be listening to you. ~ Tim Allen

Perhaps we don't like what we see: our hips, our loss of hair, our shoe size, our dimples, our knuckles too big, our eating habits, our disposition. We have disclosed these things in secret, likes and dislikes, behind doors with locks, our lonely rooms, our messy desks, our empty hearts, our sudden bursts of energy, our sudden bouts of depression. Don't worry. Put away your mirrors and your beauty magazines and your books on tape. There is someone right here who knows you more than you do, who is making room on the couch, who is fixing a meal, who is putting on your favorite record, who is listening intently to what you have to say, who is standing there with you, face to face, hand to hand, eye to eye, mouth to mouth. There is no space left uncovered. This is where you belong. ~ Sufjan Stevens

Always listen to your soul... it speaks to you, only if you listen! ~ Angie Karan

I love Africa....... Each day each breath, she consumes me. I have never changed so much In such a short time Each day I feel more part of her. Her colour, smell, her smiles , the ever changing landscapes. Vast deserts rolling hills plaines & Mountains. Her beauty and her majesty. Like sweet wine flowing through my veins, my heart sings as I wave to all those faces going by. Back home to my Grandmothers Birth place. They said "welcome home", those village boys. How did they know? You all said I would cry, I thought no, but yes I often do. Not for their pain but for their happiness . I cry now, together hearts will sing ," I love Africa". See her now as I write.. Kilimanjaro , it doesn't get much better .Tears on a hard mans face. There is no time but now , no words just peace. Thousands of smiling faces, the mass of souls are singing out . Yes I see and feel it now.... In those trees I sense the Spirits of our saving , could it be our looking for? Sailing ships a familiar shore, now I'm crying happy and singing . Thoughts intense of please no more. I love Africa. An epiphany I can't explain .Not like the ancient rituals , sound of rain, and men together by campfires. Beginning to end but there really is no such thing as time, just imaginings. We still love sitting by the camp fire and we love listening to the rain? I love Africa the Eden and our Birthplace , Man.
How can I explain to you my friend what I have seen and felt unless you too have seen it all ... Africa. ~ Michael Burke

I've never been a junkie, and never will be. I just like going out late to clubs with friends and listening to music. Always have done. It's not that unusual for girls of 26. ~ Lindsay Lohan