45 Listening Quotes That Will Make You a Better Listener

1. "When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen." - Ernest Hemingway

2. "We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say." - Zeno of Citium

3. "It takes a great man to be a good listener." - Calvin Coolidge

4. "There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing." - G.K. Chesterton

5. "Big egos have little ears." - Robert Schuller

6. "The word LISTEN contains the same letters as the word SILENT." - Alfred Brendel

7. "If speaking is silver, then listening is gold." - Turkish Proverb

8. "There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen." - Rumi

9. "Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens." - Jimi Hendrix

10. "The first duty of love is to listen." - Paul Tillich

11. "With the gift of listening comes the gift of healing." - Catherine Doherty

12. "Clean out your ears, don't listen for what you already know." - Rumi

13. "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." - Stephen Covey

14. "The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard." - William Hazlitt

15. "Half the time you think your thinking you're actually listening." - Terence McKenna

1. "Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply." - Stephen R. Covey

2. "One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say." - Bryant H. McGill

3. "I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen." - Ernest Hemingway

4. "Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk." - Doug Larson

5. "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

6. "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." - Robert Frost

7. "You learn when you listen. You earn when you listen - not just money, but respect." - Harvey Mackay

8. "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

9. "The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting." - Fran Lebowitz

10. "Grace, respect, reserve, and empathetic listening are qualities sorely missing from the public discourse now." - Meryl Streep

11. "Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time." - George W. Bush

12. "Whoever answers before listening is both foolish and shameful." - Proverbs 18:13

13. "The art of conversation lies in listening." - Malcom Forbes

14. "Listen like every sentence matters; talk like every word counts." - Geoffrey Tumlin

15. "There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak." - Simon Sinek

1. "Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking." - Bernard M. Baruch

2. "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

3. "Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen." - Winston Churchill

4. "The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention" - Richard Moss

5. "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

6. "Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right." - Jane Goodall

7. "If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk." - Robert Baden-Powell

8. "I think the only way for you to grow and evolve is to keep listening, keep moving forward, keep jumping in and trying to experience." - Dianne Reeves

9. "Listening is being able to be changed by the other person." - Alan Alda

10. "One of the greatest skills any leader can master is becoming comfortable with silence." - David Grossman

11. "You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time." - M. Scott Peck

12. "A leader must be a good listener. He must be willing to take counsel. He must show a genuine concern and love for those under his stewardship." - James Faust

13. "The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people." - Woodrow Wilson

14. "Learn to listen. It's amazing the ideas that pop into your head while people are saying them into your ear." - Robert Breault

15. "Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen." - Margaret J. Wheatley