Marshall B. Rosenberg Quotes

#1. We are dangerous when we are not conscious of our responsibility for how we behave, think, and feel.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#2. When we judge others we contribute to violence.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#3. Never give advice to your children unless you have it in writing and notarized.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#4. What bores the listener bores the speaker too.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#5. Most of us live in a Jackal world where we take turns using the other person as a waste basket for our words.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#6. Never hear what a jackal-speaking person thinks, especially what they think about you.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#7. When you are in a jackal environment, never give them the power to submit or rebel. We want to teach this to children very early: Never lose track that you are always free to choose. Don't allow institutions to determine what you do.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#8. We want to take action out of the desire to contribute to life rather than out of fear, guilt, shame, or obligation.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#9. All human actions are an attempt to meet needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#10. Anger, depression, guilt, and shame are the product of the thinking that is at the base of violence on our planet.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#11. Our goal is to create a quality of empathic connection that allows everyone's needs to be met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#12. Never hear what somebody thinks about you, you'll live longer. Hear that they're in pain. Don't hear their analysis.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#13. When we make mistakes, we can use the process of NVC mourning and self-forgiveness to show us where we can grow instead of getting caught up in moralistic self-judgments.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#14. When we listen for their feelings and needs, we no longer see people as monsters.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#15. NVC helps us connect with each other and ourselves in a way that allows our natural compassion to flourish.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#16. Use anger as a wake-up call to unmet needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#17. Life-Enriching Education: an education that prepares children to learn throughout their lives, relate well to others, and themselves, be creative, flexible, and venturesome, and have empathy not only for their immediate kin but for all of humankind.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#18. If we want to make meetings productive, we need to keep track of those whose requests are on the table.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#19. The most dangerous of all behaviors may consist of doing things 'because we're supposed to.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#20. Anger can be a wonderful wake up call to help you understand what you need and what you value.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#21. With empathy we don't direct, we follow. Don't just do something, be there.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#22. Once you can clearly describe what you are reacting to, free of your interpretation or evaluation of it, other people are less likely to be defensive when they hear it.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#23. NVC requires us to be continually conscious of the beauty within ourselves and other people.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#24. Before we tackle the gangs and the basic story, we have to make sure that we have liberated ourselves from how we have been educated and make sure we are coming from a spirituality of our own choosing.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#25. Praise and reward create a system of extrinsic motivations for behavior. Children (and adults) end up taking action in order to receive the praise or rewards.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#26. NVC gives us tools and understanding to create a more peaceful state of mind.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#27. This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately, it provokes defensiveness, resistance, and counterattack. It is a language of demands.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#28. In these long-standing conflicts, I find that most cases it gets resolved in about twenty minutes after each side can tell me the needs of the other.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#29. Interpretations, criticisms, diagnoses, and judgments of others are actually alienated expressions of our unmet needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#30. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#31. An important aspect of self-compassion is to be able to empathically hold both parts of ourselves-the self that regrets a past action and the self that took the action in the first place.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#32. The number one rule of our training is empathy before education.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#33. A difficult message to hear is an opportunity to enrich someone's life.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#34. At the root of every tantrum and power struggle are unmet needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#35. Tragically, one of the rarest commodities in our culture is empathy. People are hungry for empathy, They don't know how to ask for it.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#36. Some people use NVC to respond compassionately to themselves, some to create greater depth in their personal relationships, and still others to build effective relationships at work or in the political arena. Worldwide, NVC is used to mediate disputes and conflicts at all levels.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#37. Four D's of Disconnection: 1. Diagnosis (judgment, analysis, criticism, comparison); 2. Denial of Responsibility; 3. Demand; 4. 'Deserve' oriented language.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#38. The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#39. You'll find people less threatening if you hear what they're needing rather than what they're thinking about you.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#40. Labeling and diagnosis is a catastrophic way to communicate. Telling other people what's wrong with them greatly reduces, almost to zero, the probability that we're going to get what we're after.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#41. We know the speaker has received adequate empathy when a. we sense a release of tension, or b. the flow of words comes to a halt.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#42. Needs are the expression of life through us.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#43. People have been trained to criticize, insult, and otherwise communicate in ways that create distance among people.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#44. The first step in healing is to put the focus on what's alive now, not what happened in the past.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#45. When we are angry, killing people is too superficial.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#46. Enemy images are the main reason conflicts don't get resolved.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#47. While we may not consider the way we talk to be 'violent,' our words often lead to hurt and pain, whether for others or for ourselves.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#48. Empathize with silence by listening for the feelings and needs behind it.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#49. Classifying and judging people promotes violence.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#50. All violence is the result of people tricking themselves into believing that their pain derives from other people and that consequently those people deserve to be punished.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#51. NVC enhances inner communication by helping us translate negative internal messages into feelings and needs. Our ability to distinguish our own feelings and needs and to empathize with them can free us from depression.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#52. NO is always a YES to something else.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#53. We need to receive empathy to give empathy.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#54. Power-Over leads to punishment and violence. Power-With leads to compassion and understanding, and to learning motivated by reverence for life rather than fear, guilt, shame, or anger.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#55. Every moment each human being is doing the best we know at that moment to meet our needs. We never do anything that is not in the service of a need, there is no conflict on our planet at the level of needs. We all have the same needs. The problem is in strategies for meeting the needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#56. It may be most difficult to empathize with those we are closest to.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#57. When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#58. Needs are never conflicting. When we say that, we are only saying that at the moment we aren't seeing how both needs can be met. That leaves an opening. When you think in the way I'm suggesting, you'll often find a way to get most needs met simultaneously.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#59. It's really a spiritual practice that I am trying to show as a way of life.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#60. How I choose to look at any situation will greatly affect whether I have the power to change it or make matters worse.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#61. Blaming and punishing others are superficial expressions of anger.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#62. Unless we as social change agents come from a certain kind of spirituality, we're likely to create more harm than good.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#63. Violence in any form is a tragic expression of our unmet needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#64. The most important use of NVC may be in developing self-compassion.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#65. It's harder to empathize with those who appear to possess more power, status, or resources.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#66. It establishes the speaker as someone who sits in judgment.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#67. People do not hear our pain when they believe they are at fault.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#68. Clinical training in psychoanalysis has a deficit. It teaches how to sit and think about what a person is saying and how to interpret it intellectually, but not how to be fully present to this person.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#69. Don't hate the circumstance, you may miss the blessing

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#70. Miracles can happen when we can keep our consciousness away from analyzing and classifying one another.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#71. Not getting our needs fulfilled is painful - but it's a sweet pain, not suffering, which is what comes from life-alienated thinking and interpretation.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#72. By maintaining our attention on what's going on within others, we offer them a chance to fully explore and express their interior selves. We would stem this flow if we were to shift attention too quickly either to their request or to our own desire to express ourselves.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#73. My ultimate goal is to spend as many of my moments in life as I can in that world that the poet Rumi talks about, 'a place beyond rightness and wrongness.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#74. Often, instead of offering empathy, we have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#75. We can never make anyone do anything against their will without enormous consequences.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#76. In NVC, no matter what words others may use to express themselves, we simply listen for their observations, feelings, needs, and requests.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#77. Never do anything that isn't play.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#78. Also, think about your intentionality - are you getting lost in the method? or coming from the intentionality, the purpose? You don't want to do the mechanics without the consciousness.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#79. Empathy allows us to re-perceive our world in a new way and move forward.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#80. As long as I think I 'should' do it, I'll resist it, even if I want very much to do it.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#81. Empathy lies in our ability to be present without opinion.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#82. Punishment also includes judgmental labeling and the withholding of privileges.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#83. Regardless of our many differences, we all have the same needs. What differs is the strategy for fulfilling these needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#84. Empathy gives you the ability to enjoy another person's pain.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#85. in a more loving manner, and those two things you said provide the direction I was looking for.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#86. The key to fostering connection in the face of a 'no' is always hearing 'yes' to something else.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#87. Understanding the other persons' needs does not mean you have to give up on your own needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#88. Empathy before education.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#89. Children need far more than basic skills in reading, writing, and math, as important as those might be. Children also need to learn how to think for themselves, how to find meaning in what they learn, and how to work and live together.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#90. Learning is too precious to be motivated by coercive tactics.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#91. Always hear the 'Yes' in the 'No'.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#92. The number one reason that we don't get our needs met, we don't express them. We express judgments. If we do express needs, the number two reasons we don't our needs met, we don't make clear requests.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#93. Anger tells us we've disconnected from life. The purpose in anger is to use it to come back to life.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#94. When you need empathy, you cannot give empathy.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#95. Ask before offering advice or reassurance.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#96. Time and again, people transcend the paralyzing effects of psychological pain when they have sufficient contact with someone who can hear them empathically.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#97. Anger is a signal that you're distracted by judgmental or punitive thinking, and that some precious need of yours is being ignored.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#98. We do not look for compromise; rather, we seek to resolve the conflict to everyone's complete satisfaction.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#99. People heal from their pain when they have an authentic connection with another human being.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#100. In a Giraffe institution, the head nurse job would be to serve the nurses, not to control them. Teachers are there to serve the students, not control them.

Marshall B. Rosenberg