40 Inspiring Quotes On Listening

In a world brimming with noise and constant chatter, the power of listening often takes a backseat. Yet, the ability to truly listen is an art that fosters deeper connections, empathy, and understanding. It transcends mere hearing, allowing us to engage with the thoughts and emotions of others, and enriching our own perspectives. In this post, we delve into a curated collection of the top 40 inspiring quotes on listening, each offering a unique insight into the profound impact of attentive listening. Whether you’re seeking to improve your personal relationships or enhance your professional interactions, these quotes serve as a reminder of the transformative power of just being present and giving your full attention. Join us as we explore the wisdom of great thinkers, leaders, and artists who have eloquently captured the essence of this invaluable skill.

1. “It takes a great man to be a good listener.” - Calvin Coolidge

2. “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” - Ernest Hemingway

3. “You're short on ears and long on mouth.” - John Wayne

4. “We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.” - Zeno of Citium, as quoted by Diogenes Laërtius

5. “Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.” - Madeleine L'Engle

6. “And Edward was surprised to discover that he was listening. Before, when Abilene had talked to him, everything had seemed so boring, so pointless. But now, the stories Nellie told struck him as the most important thing in the world and he listened as if his life depended on what she said." (page 69)” - kate dicamillo

7. “The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.” - William Hazlitt

8. “It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.” - Henry David Thoreau

9. “There's more than one way to tell each other things, and there's more than one way to listen, too.” - Katherine Hannigan

10. “The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” - Ralph G. Nichols

11. “Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation. If the former seems far-fetched, consider the latter: even if someone is listening to your story, and really hearing, that person will disappear from existence in the blink of a cosmic eye, so why bother to tell this perhaps illusory and possibly un-listening person something he or she is unlikely to truly understand, just before the two of you blip back out of existence? We like to talk to people who answer us, intelligently if possible, but we do talk without needing response or expecting comprehension. Sometimes, the event is the word, the act of speaking. Once we pull that apart a bit, the action of talking becomes more important than the question of whether the talking is working-because we know, going in, that the talking is not working. That said, one might as well pray.” - Jennifer Michael Hecht

12. “I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk. ” - William Howard Taft

13. “Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.” - David W. Augsburger

14. “We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.” - Diogenes Laertius

15. “Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” - Bernard M. Baruch

16. “The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much.” - Germain G. Glidden

17. “They praised his modesty and did not listen to him, for listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

18. “I care about who you are, who you have been, who you want to be. I open myself to you to listen and learn about you. I cherish you, not just my fantasy of who you are, not just who I need you to be, but who you really are...” - Betty Berzon

19. “When someone tells you something big, it's like you're taking money from them, and there's no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening.” - Banana Yoshimoto

20. “I never miss a good chance to shut up” - James Patterson

21. “If you'd just learn to do as I say from the beginning, I wouldn't have to follow up your errors with reproving smirks and repeated I-told-you-sos.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

22. “The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift amont each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried.” - Annie Dillard

23. “At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: there is nothing there. There is nothing but those things only, those created objects, discrete, growing or holding, or swaying, being rained on or raining, held, flooding or ebbing, standing, or spread. You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: this hum is the silence. Nature does utter a peep - just this one. The birds and insects, the meadows and swamps and rivers and stones and mountains and clouds: they all do it; they all don't do it. There is a vibrancy to the silence, a suppression, as if someone were gagging the world. But you wait, you give your life's length to listening, and nothing happens. The ice rolls up, the ice rolls back, and still that single note obtains. The tension, or lack of it, is intolerable. The silence is not actually suppression: instead, it is all there is.” - Annie Dillard

24. “...you listen first with the ears - then, you wait and listen for what your heart feels - then you consider what they've said - then, you reply ...” - John Geddes

25. “Sometimes its not the strength but gentleness that cracks the hardest shells.” - Richard Paul Evans

26. “What good was speaking when I'd determined none of the world listened to one another, especially not when a woman was speaking.” - Leanna Renee Hieber

27. “We teach what we need to learn. And we teach it until we get it.” - Irene Tomkinson

28. “Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people.” - Bryce Courtenay

29. “Be aware of the high notes, of the blissful faces and their soft messages, and listen for the silent message of a highly decorated gift.” - Dejan Stojanovic

30. “Vandals listen only when others are stronger.If vandals are equal or strongerTheir word is the last word.” - Dejan Stojanovic

31. “Silence made space for other people's words, which was important for those who needed to be listened to.” - Rachel Simon

32. “How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?” - Alexander McCall Smith

33. “The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener— a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.” - Dale Carnegie

34. “May you hear the voice of wisdom.Listening, may you act with trust.” - Charlene Costanzo

35. “I think she's brave. I think that nobody has ever believed what she could be capable of. All her life, nobody was listening.” - Lauren DeStefano

36. “This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away. His nesting places - the activities that are intimately associated with boredom - are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the country as well. With this the gift for listening is lost and the community of listeners disappears. For storytelling is always the art of repeated stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained.” - Walter Benjamin

37. “A good teacher is one, that never stops listening; a good listener is one, that never stops teaching.” - Anthony Liccione

38. “The Tone is the Message.” - Kevin T. McCarney

39. “Cooperation is a higher moral principle than competition.” - Bryant McGill

40. “Listening over and over to the voices through a family of instruments allowed us to recognize and appreciate the dignity and uniqueness of each living thing in the meadow and forest.” - Terry Tempest Williams