Listeners Quotes

There are many more languages than one imagines. And man reveals himself much more often than he wishes. So many things that speak! But there are always so few listeners, so that man, so to speak, only chatters in a void when he engages in confessions. He wastes his truths just as the sun wastes its light. Isn't it too bad that the void has no ears? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I tore open the closet door and began feverishly sorting through the shirts piled on the floor in the vain hope that inside that pile there might be some wondrously perfect shirt down there, a nice and tough but I'm also a surprisingly good listener with a true and abiding passion for cheers and those who lead them. ~ John Green

I read everything aloud, novels as well as picture books. I believe the eye and ear are different listeners. So as writers, we have to please both. ~ Jane Yolen

There's going to be a lot of eating. My listeners have tweeted me and said "You've just got to keep eating, keep your energy up and have someone on duty to give you a massage if you need it." It will be a case of getting it done and making sure I don't get too cold, because that's crucial for the muscles. So that's all going to be taken care of. But really there's not much you can do - if you start cramping up you've just got to get on with it. ~ Greg James

I treat everybody equal, and so I want to be sure that my listeners and my followers do the same if they're gonna represent me. And if I'm gonna represent them, then I also want to do it in a good way. ~ ASAP Rocky

It was the quartets of Beethoven (numbers 12,13,14, and 15) which over fifty years, created and expanded the the audience of listeners to the quartets of Beethoven, thus achieving, as all masterpieces do, progress if not in the quality of artists, at least in the company of minds, which is largely composed these days of what was missing when the work appeared: people capable of liking it. ~ Marcel Proust

I would hope to inspire in my listeners a feeling of freedom - of speech, thought and political activity. ~ John Hall

If the music has a logic of its own - as I think my music has - an open-minded listener will apprehend and understand. ~ Paul Lansky

A suffering person does not need a lecture - he needs a listener. ~ Billy Graham

Songs are about whatever you want them to be about. For me it might mean something completely different than what it means to you. So I'd say it's about whatever the listener thinks it's about. ~ Norah Jones

I knew Frank Herbert for more than thirty-eight years. He was a magnificent human being, a man of great honor and distinction, and the most interesting person at any gathering, drawing listeners around him like a magnet. To say he was an intellectual giant would be an understatement, since he seemed to contain all of the knowledge of the universe in his marvelous mind. He was my father, and I loved him deeply. ~ Frank Herbert

Writing original songs is much, much harder (I think) because you only have yourself to conjure up EVERY single moment a listener is going to hear. It's a craft that goes directly from your brain to their ears. You can never be sure that what you're writing is gonna be good enough to keep a listener engaged and truly experience something. It's a shot in the dark. ~ Alex Goot

If I were to name my favorite pastime, I'd have to say talking about myself. I love it and I think most other people do too. We need, people like us, more listeners and less talkers. ~ Hedy Lamarr

Dying wasn't the joke, it was the punchline, the final guffaw, the crack-up, when your listeners' eyes should be streaming and your woman pees in her pants with laughing. You had to live with sufficient panache that the punchline worked. ~ Jane Messer

To be a deep listener, one of the first things we have to do is give up the need and the desire to give advice. Knowing answers does not require stating them; there are times when offering answers is not helpful, as when a person is in the middle of their own learning process. ~ John Earle

Good leaders motivate others by their listening skills. We are to: avoid prejudicial first impressions; become less self-centered; withhold initial criticism; stay calm; listen with empathy; be active listeners; clarify what we hear; and recognize the healing power of listening. Then we are to act on what we hear ~ John C. Maxwell

It's a band singing on how metal should be played, the effect it has on the band and its listeners. ~ Christopher Lee

radio is what moves through the microphone and speakers into the ears of the discerning listener. Radio is what it transmits to the listener at any moment in time. Who sits behind the microphone makes the microphone worth the ears of great and noble listeners. The impact of radio lies less in the name of the radio and much in what it transmits each passing second ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The medium of podcasting and the personal nature of it, the relationship you build with your listeners and the relationship they have with you - they could be just sitting there, chuckling and listening ... there's nothing like that. ~ Marc Maron

Cats themselves may be very chatty, but they seem to resent it in anyone else. Cats like listeners. ~ Robin Hobb

to some parts of biblical teaching," and "B" beliefs, which contradict Christian truth ("B" doctrines) and "lead listeners to find some Christian doctrines implausible or overtly offensive." Take a moment to identify a key "A" doctrine - a teaching from the Bible that would be generally accepted and affirmed by your target culture - and how it expresses itself in the culture through "A" beliefs. What is an example of a "B" belief in your culture, and what "B" doctrines does it conflict with directly? 4. Keller writes, "It is important to learn how to distinguish a culture's A.' doctrines from its 'B' doctrines because knowing which are which provides the key to compelling confrontation. This happens when we base our argument for 'B' doctrines directly on the A.' doctrines." Using the examples you discussed ~ Timothy J. Keller

Sometimes I try to figure out why I always push things to talk about the really dark stuff in interviews, and I just think it's healing - for the listener, and for the guest. ~ Alison Rosen

When listeners become leaders, the world changes. ~ Rev. Kellen Roggenbuck

The casual listener won't be around forever. ~ Mike Shinoda

A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom. ~ Richard Rohr

Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519 ~ Robert Greene

The Constitution guarantees free speech, but it doesn't guarantee listeners. ~ John C. Maxwell

Slowing down your responses and becoming a better listeners aids you in becoming a more peaceful person ~ Richard Carlson

Make the verses flow together. If a following verse has nothing to do with the previous, you may lose our listener/reader. You want a smooth flow to hear or read, and it's easier to memorize. ~ Margaret Atwood

A good listener truly wants to know the speaker. ~ John Powell

Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation. ~ Marya Mannes

Sing your own song. There are always some earnest listeners. ~ Amit Ray

No one wants to hear anything like the truth during these landmark times. It has to be one emotion, a positive one - unless it's a quiet, heartfelt confession of fear or nervousness that can utterly disarm listeners and give them the opportunity to be reassuring - just to keep the social wheels turning in the way that makes everyone feel secure. ~ Emma Newman

Cause when you're sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last. ~ Dave Grohl

Any sermon that tells listeners only how they should live without putting that standard into the context of the gospel gives them the impression that they might be complete enough to pull themselves together if they really try hard. Ed Clowney points out that if we ever tell a particular Bible story without putting it into the Bible story (about Christ), we actually change its meaning for us. It becomes a moralistic exhortation to "try harder" rather than a call to live by faith in the work of Christ. There are, in the end, only two ways to read the Bible: Is it basically about me or basically about Jesus? In other words, is it basically about what I must do or basically about what he has done? ~ Timothy Keller

Good listeners believe they can learn something from everyone. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

The private reader of listener can become an executant of felt meaning when he learns the poem or the musical passage by heart. To learn by heart is to afford the text or music an indwelling clarity and life-force. ~ George Steiner

The stage is close to being in the middle of the hall, so that the performers are surrounded by the listeners. I feel that we are all experiencing the music together. ~ Emanuel Ax

President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, 'I haven't communicated enough.' He said his job is to 'tell a story to the American people' - as if that's the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners? ~ Paul Ryan

It was about finding creative, original musicians. Musicians who are strong composers. Flexible, empathetic musicians, who are great individually but who also have a great sense for cooperation and collaboration, great listeners as well as great players. ~ Joshua Redman

Each time, storytellers clothed the naked body of the myth in their own traditions, so that listeners could relate more easily to its deeper meaning. ~ Joan D. Vinge

If music serves to convey feelings through the interaction of physical gestures and sound, the musician needs his brain state to match the emotional state he is trying to express. Although the studies haven't been performed yet, I'm willing to bet that when B.B. King is playing the blues and when he is feeling the blues, the neural signatures are very similar. (Of course there will be differences, too, and part of the scientific hurdle will be subtracting out the processes involved in issuing motor commands and listening to music, versus just sitting on a chair, head in hands, and feeling down.) And as listeners, there is every reason to believe that some of our brain states will match those of the musicians we are listening to. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

If as a family we must be selective listeners, then let us pay more attention to the words of the heart and less to the words of anger ~ Wes Fesler

And while from inside we would hear coughs and stirrings, there was never a rustle in the listeners out the door. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

Sometimes a radio station will get ONE phone call from ONE person who screams that he is going to complain to the FCC. Instead of the guy at the stating thinking about how many listeners love the song, want to hear it again, and will support the station for playing it, usually the guy panics
and takes my records off the air. I object that.
It has never mattered to me that thirty million people might think 'I'm wrong.' The number of people who thought Hitler was 'right' did not make him 'right.' The same principle should be applied to anyone who has an individualistic attitude. Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are? ~ Frank Zappa

Abraham Maslow became a towering figure in my life. He was the inspiration for me to look at psychology from a 180-degree-turnabout position. Rather than studying what was weak, infirm, or limited in clients and make an assessment based on overcoming ailments, I began looking for the highest qualities of self-actualization and encouraging clients - and ultimately readers and listeners - to seek their own innate greatness and aspire to these pinnacles. I reasoned that if some among us could be self-actualized, then so could I and anyone else who understood that it was possible. This became a major focus of my professional life and the compass I set for myself to live the principles that Maslow delineated in his writing. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Inspiring communicators always expect a lot from their listeners. ~ John C. Maxwell

Don't fear to sing alone. If your song is right and melodies are touching, listeners will appear. ~ Debasish Mridha

Anyone can create and put stuff out there, so then as viewers and listeners, we have access to a lot of different unique view points. ~ Gia Coppola

The writer, without softening his vision, is obliged to capture or conjure readers. And this means any kind of reader. It means whatever is there. I used to think that it should be possible to write for some supposed elite, for the people who attend the universities and sometimes know how to read, but I have since found that though you may publish your stories in the Yale Review, if they are any good at all you are eventually going to get a letter from some old lady in California, or some inmate of the Federal Penitentiary, or the state in sane asylum, or the local poorhouse, telling you where you have failed to meet his needs. And his need of course is to be lifted up. There is something in us as story-tellers, and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance of restoration. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but he has forgotten the cost of it. His sense of evil is deluded or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. He has forgotten the price of truth, even in fiction. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Our listeners asked us:
"What is chaos?"
We're answering:
"We do not comment on economic policy. ~ John Vaillant

There are musicians who want to make a living making music. There are listeners who want to listen to music. Complicating this relationship is a whole bunch of history: some of the music I want to listen to was made a while ago in a different economy. Some of the models of making a living making music are no longer valid but persist. ~ Kent Beck

Become better listeners. Practice the art of listening in everything you do. Not just listening to yourself and your body, but listening to the people around you, listening to the plant world, the animal world. Really open your ears to what's coming at you. From there, see if you can have the ability to respond instead of react. And that usually comes with listening. If the observation and the listening are deep, then your action will be deep also. ~ Rodney Yee

Getting the correct "big idea" will transform your message from tedious to tremendous and will allow the power of God's Word to transform the lives of your listeners. ~ J. Kent Edwards

Who can confidently say what ignites a certain combination of words, causing them to explode in the mind? Who knows why certain notes in music are capable of stirring the listener deeply, though the same notes slightly rearranged are impotent? These are high mysteries, and this chapter is a mystery story, thinly disguised. ~ E.B. White

Listeners, that brings us to the end of another Potterwatch. We don't know when it will be possible to broadcast again, but you can be sure we shall be back. Keep twiddling those dials: the next password will be 'Mad-Eye.' Keep each other safe. Keep faith. Good night. ~ J.K. Rowling

My work should be judged as it enters the ears and heads of listeners, not as it is described to the eyes of readers. ~ Arnold Schoenberg

It has been said that D. M. Lloyd-Jones wasn't always excited by people taking notes on his sermons. He felt that that was more appropriate to a lecture. The job of the preacher, he believed, was to make the knowledge live. Lloyd-Jones and Edwards believed preaching should aim to make an impression on the listener, and that impression is more important than "information takeaways." I would say that it's fine if listeners are taking notes in the first part of the sermon, but if they are doing so at the end, you are probably not reaching their affections. ~ Timothy Keller

There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Fanzines are very important for sharing stuff that you're in to, with the readers and listeners. We met through the love of discovering music and it makes sense, to want to share that music with other people. ~ Faris Badwan

More negatives write than call. It's a cheap shot for me to go on the air with the critical letters or E-mail I get because the reaction of the listeners is always an instantaneous expression of sympathy for me and contempt for the poor critic. ~ John Hall

I see rock music as the best example of modernday storytelling that exists in our society. Songs are narratives that help the listeners cope with the reality of life that can't be easily spoken about in everyday conversation. It is a hugely powerful process of helping people find themselves through music. ~ Stephan Jenkins

A lot of the listeners don't realize that the Daytona 24 Hours is the most difficult race in the world. It's 24 hours, a lot of darkness because it's held at the end of January, so you're talking about 13-14 hours of darkness. ~ Scott Pruett

The question isn't whether or not to censor artists who espouse misogynistic views. The question is whether or not we support them as listeners and consumers. ~ Dessa Darling

Radio listeners often have a very fertile imagination when it comes to body shape. ~ Tamsin Greig

According to horses, a good friend is someone who listens, appreciates your company and teases you, but is protective at the same time. ~ Sheikha Hissa Hamdan Al Maktoum

There remains a problem with race in America because of the church's failure to understand the issues from a biblical perspective."

"Rather than being called into a different community by Scripture, we see our broken communities as justified by Scripture."

"Rather than challenge the worldly status quo, religious groups perpetuate stereotypes, sectarianism, and schisms when accepting ethnic denominational identities- inverting Pentecost by reading in multiple languages unrecognized by listeners and offering separate worship services according to musical preference."

"Ultimately, our aim is to draw attention to the biblical narrative from which comes to the strength for the long road of reconciliation. ~ Joy Moore

And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them. ~ John Steinbeck

Listening is so basic that we take it for granted. Unfortunately, most of us think of ourselves as better listeners than we really are. ~ Michael Nichols

Some time ago I discovered that I could no longer speak aloud or read aloud from a stage, even for the sake of hearing the effect that my writer's voice produced on listeners. Now, curiously, the more I merely try to live, the more reclusive I become, the vainer I am. At last I am as vain as the one who instantly voices his silence inside me. ~ John Hawkes

If you come at the record feeling really happy and optimistic, it can be incredibly beautiful and uplifting, and if you come at it in a bleak moment, it can feel like a very dark place to share. It's all down to the listener. ~ PJ Harvey

When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine. Why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics. ~ Thomas Jefferson

A musician must lift up the souls of the listeners, and take them towards space. ~ Nikhil Banerjee

It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is; but rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God's action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on earth. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Radio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them. ~ Mercedes McCambridge

I never wanted to be in a band because I love music too much to mess it up. ~ Elijah Wood

Photographers who carry 60 pounds of equipment up a hill to photograph a view are not suffering enough, although their whining causes enough suffering among their listeners. No, if they really expect us to respect their search for enlightenment and artistic expression, in [the] future they will drag the equipment up the hill by their genitals and take the view with a tripod leg stuck through their foot. ~ Bill Jay

Good listeners have a huge advantage. For one, when they engage in conversation, they make people 'feel' heard. They 'feel' that someone really understands their wants, needs and desires. And for good reason; a good listener does care to understand. ~ Simon Sinek

Logically, when Maestro Gott some years ago, after an especially cruel critic had compared him to "a zombie who causes acute depression to innocent radio listeners", decided to stop performing in protest, the situation was considered so grave that the Minister of Culture himself went to console the deeply insulted star. ~ Terje B. Englund

Listeners love when opera dethrones or kills language; the regicide, on these occasions, is the revolutionary, pleasure-seeking, penetrated, tickled ear. Opera theory tells us that words master music, but we, in our secret hearts, know music's superiority; and this destruction of language, this reversal of hierarchy, makes opera a fit object for the enthusiasms of sex-and-gender dissidents. ~ Wayne Koestenbaum

Music that is created with the primary aim of impressing other musicians fails to connect with the vast majority of listeners. ~ Carl Orr

Michael Savage (the pseudonym of Michael Alan Weiner) is another popular radio host whose syndicated radio program is followed by 8 to 10 million listeners. Like Limbaugh, Savage derided the detainees as "subhuman" and "vermin," and suggested that forcible conversion to Christianity is "probably the only thing that can turn them into human beings. ~ David Livingstone Smith

We must speak carefully so that we and our listeners do not get stuck in words or concepts. It is our duty to transcend words and concepts to be able to encounter reality. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Some of the most successful people managers are also the best listeners. ~ Mary Kay Ash

I enjoy the challenge of taking something which was not meant for the piano, distilling its essence and writing or improvising it for/at the piano, but having the listener forget that he or she is listening to a piano. ~ Michael Hersch

I rap for listeners, blunt heads, fly ladies and prisoners ~ Nas

One of the greatest listeners I know is Bob Tishman. That has probably had the greatest impact on my life than any other thing. ~ Jerry Speyer

Doublespeak strikes at the function of language-communication between people and social groups-with serious and far-reaching consequences. Our political system depends upon an informed electorate to make decisions in selecting candidates for office and deciding issues of public policy. As doublespeak becomes the coin of the political realm, as doublespeak drives out a language of public discourse that really communicates, speakers and listeners become convinced that they understand such language. We speak today of politicians who don't lie but "misspeak," of "dysfunction behavior" not murder, of a "predawn vertical insertion" not the invasion of another country, of "violence processing" or the "use of force" not of war. When we use such language believing that we are using the public discourse necessary for the health and well being of our community, then, I believe, the world of 1984 is upon us. ~ William D. Lutz

Even non-commercial media rely on transferring cost to users through licence fees, donations from listeners, viewers, or readers, or grants from companies and foundations that have wrestled their funds from the public in some form of earlier commercial activity. ~ Robert G. Picard

An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again. ~ James Fenton

Sorry, listeners. I need to go make sure she's all right. I take you now to the sound of a human stomach digesting, heavily amplified and electronically distorted. ~ Joseph Fink

Listeners beware, for ye are doomed never to hear good of yourselves. ~ Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

It was not until I began meeting people of other faiths in their most sacred spaces that I learned how bruised some of them were by Christian evangelism. Worshippers at the Hindu Temple returned to the parking lot after one of their major festivals to find Christians by their cars with pamphlets demeaning their holiday. Muslims were used to Christians saying malicious things about the Qur'an. Native Americans were tired of being asked what God they prayed to. The shared consensus is that Christian evangelists are not very good listeners. They assume they are speaking to people with no knowledge of God themselves. They are disrespectful to other people's faith. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

One line of thinking holds that similar principles of networked communication, if applied correctly to the realm of international affairs, could help solve age-old problems of violent conflict. Traditional ethnic and sectarian rivalries may be muted in the Internet age, this theory posits, because "people who try to perpetuate myths about religion, culture, ethnicity or anything else will struggle to keep their narratives afloat amid a sea of newly informed listeners. With more data, everyone gains a better frame of reference. ~ Henry Kissinger

The Hmong have a phrase, hais cuaj txub kaum txub, which means "to speak of all kinds of things." It is often used at the beginning of an oral narrative as a way of reminding the listeners that the world is full of things that may not seem to be connected but actually are; that no event occurs in isolation; that you can miss a lot by sticking to the point; and that the storyteller is likely to be rather long-winded. ~ Anne Fadiman

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go. ~ Max Eastman

Trees are silent guards, they are the listeners and they hold knowledge mankind has long forgotten." - The Wolf and The Druidess ~ Cornelia Amiri

If we compel the composer to write in terms of what the listener is able to hear, we flirt with the danger of freezing the evolution of musical language, whose progressive development comes about through transgressions of a given era's perceptual habits. ~ Jean-Jacques Nattiez

I always love to put hidden messages in my music videos, because I know there are people like me who, when they watch something, are really active, involved participants. I'm not usually a really passive listener or observer. So I do put those messages in there for people who spend a great deal of time [looking for them]. ~ Jared Leto

Almost all good stories are sad because it is the human struggle that engages us readers and listeners the most. To watch characters confront their hardships and uncertainties makes us feel better about our own conflicts and confusions and fears. We have a sense of community, of sympathy, a cleansing sympathy, as Aristotle said, and relief that we are safe in our room only reading the story. A story of sadness, even tragedy, makes us feel, paradoxically, better, as though we are confronting our own conflicts and fears, and have endured. ~ Robert Morgan