
Top 100 Listening Not Talking Quotes
#1. The formulation of a public relations strategy properly begins with listening, not talking.
Leonard Saffir
#2. Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking.
Bernard M. Baruch
#3. My way to de-stress is either listening to music or talking to my sister, Kourtney. She's going to teach me how to meditate, and that should help a lot.
Kendall Jenner
#4. Prayer begins by talking to God, but it ends by listening to Him. In the face of Absolute Truth, silence is the soul's language.
Fulton J. Sheen
#5. I love working with kids, talking with them and listening to them. I always encourage kids to reach beyond their dreams. Don't try to be like me. Be better than me.
Florence Griffith Joyner
#6. It's becoming clear that the world is listening, so now we're trying to get new groups of people talking.
Ethan Zuckerman
#7. In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power ofbeing greatly useful.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#8. A child seldom needs a good talking to as a good listening to.
Robert Breault
#9. There's a thing - I've noticed it often. When I first say something, it's as if people don't hear me, they can't believe I'm saying it. Then they start to actually pay attention, they stop noticing that a teenage girl is talking and start to believe that it's worth listening to what I'm saying.
Jo Walton
#10. People talking without speaking,/ People listening without hearing ... Sounds of Silence.
Paul Simon
#11. When these incorrigible talkers are compelled to be quiet, is it not evident that they are not silent because they are listening to what is said, but because they are thinking of what they themselves shall say when they can seize the first lucky interval, for which they are so narrowly watching?
Hannah More
#12. I tend to avoid people who always have something to say ... and those who expect me to always have something to say.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#13. Your communication should not be for you. Your communication should be a service vehicle to reach the other person. Talking is for the other person. Listening is for you.
Harbhajan Singh Yogi
#14. What you find I think in the mystical strain of Catholicism is that you're put in relationship with God, and you have many opportunities not only of talking with God in petitionary prayer, but also of listening to God, being attentive to God, as happens in contemplation.
Kevin Hart
#15. Donny listed 10 Reasons Why She is Nuts
Talking to mushrooms (slime)
Listening to mushrooms (slime)
Seeing mushrooms glow in the dark (ridiculous)
Drinking grass
Eating dirt
Won't talk
Unreasonably rigid and manipulative
Doesn't like sports
Has no TV
Frigid
Sharon Weil
#16. Listen should be on 60-70% and talking or speaking on from 40 up to 30%.
Deyth Banger
#17. Nobody was listening when I learned how to play music. But there's something about being on stage, talking to the audience, looking at them and smiling, that's always been difficult for me. I'm a lot more comfortable now, but there are still moments of awkwardness.
Norah Jones
#18. It is hard to stay focused with so much swirling around me. God is distracting. He never stops talking, and I can never stop listening. There is a reason we sleep.
N.D. Wilson
#19. For many of us, the opposite of talking isn't listening. It's waiting. When others speak, we typically divide our attention between what they're saying now and what we're going to say next - and end up doing a mediocre job at both.
Daniel H. Pink
#20. I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing, and cozy chats to group settings.
Susan Cain
#21. I've stopped listening. Why haven't you stopped talking?
Steve Callaghan
#22. Make a concise statement clearly and you should only need to say it once.
Mary Mihalic
#23. One of the greatest experiences I ever had was listening to a conversation with Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter. Just to hear them talking, my mouth was open. They understand each other perfectly, and they make these leaps and jumps because they don't have to explain anything.
Herbie Hancock
#24. Isn't it boring ... how people always want to tell you their own stories instead of listening to yours? I suppose that's why psychiatrists are better than friends; the paid listener doesn't interrupt with his own experiences.
Helen Van Slyke
#25. Listening is more than just being quiet for a moment. It's not just the pause we were talking about earlier. Listening includes paying attention to the whole person, and especially their emotions.
Karen Ehman
#26. I need to be alone. After a full day of talking, smiling, listening, showing, nodding, translating, I want to be alone. I want simply to come home, close the door, and sit in silence, gathering up the bits of myself that have come loose. I want to think, or not think. I want to rest.
Jamie Zeppa
#27. Occasionally people would come to me. I was sitting with a woman one day and she was telling me her story and I was in a state of listening, a state of bliss as I was listening to the drama of her story, and suddenly she stopped talking and said, "Oh, you are doing healing."
Eckhart Tolle
#28. I'm kind of looking for something with a lot less action and more talking and listening.
Brandon Routh
#29. Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking.
Charles Caleb Colton
#30. To truly understand a person, stop talking and start listening.
Amey Hegde
#31. My free time at home is usually spent emailing, listening to music, reading and talking on the phone. I wish I was on the phone less, but I have been fortunate to stay in touch with so many incredible friends.
Steve Nash
#32. We are always doing something, talking, reading, listening to the radio, planning what next. The mind is kept naggingly busy on some easy, unimportant external thing all day.
Brenda Ueland
#33. The world is full of talkers, but it is rare to find anyone who listens. And I assure you that you can pick up more information when you are listening than when you are talking.
E.B. White
#34. A few dozen kids sprawled in the seats in front of him, listening to iPods, talking, or sleeping.
Rick Riordan
#35. Nate had realized a while back that nobody talked with each other at such gatherings. People just took turns talking at each other. He never got the sense anyone was listening.
Peter Clines
#36. As much wrong as I did in life and as many people as I hurt, I can say that God never stopped talking to me. I just stopped listening.
Sam Childers
#37. Selling is not the same thing as talking. Listening is the most important part in any sales job to close the sale.
Timi Nadela
#38. Last week I was listening to a podcast on Hanselminutes, with Robert Martin talking about the SOLID principles ... they all sounded to me like extremely bureaucratic programming that came from the mind of somebody that has not written a lot of code, frankly.
Joel Spolsky
#39. We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're listening, is eternity.
Alan Watts
#40. An actor's a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, ain't listening.
Marlon Brando
#41. Stay to yourself, just listen. Do more listening than talking. The more you speak the higher the chances you sayin the wrong thing.
Curtis Jackson
#42. Maybe being married is talking to oneself with one's other self listening.
Ruth Rendell
#43. I really don't care at all what people call me as long as they're listening to the music and talking about it. They can call me a space-jazz flautist. I don't care at all.
Mayer Hawthorne
#44. Nothing listens as well as a blank page.
Shaun Hick
#45. I used to say that interviewing others was perhaps the way I could stop talking and start listening. It's a kind of enforced silence.
Errol Morris
#46. I'd been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That's what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn't say much, I listened.
Rachel Kushner
#47. The best thing about talking to yourself is at least you know you're listening. With anyone else, you can never really be sure. 08-10-2012
Jan Thomas
#48. I would like a food/lifestyle show. We're not sure what that is yet. I want to be able to share what I do and how I raise my family. I feel like I have a story to tell. I enjoy talking and listening, sharing ideas and sharing advice.
Cat Cora
#49. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?
Jim Berg
#50. Listening is as important as talking. If you're a good listener, people often compliment you for being a good conversationalist ...
Jesse Ventura
#51. Real communication is an attitude, an environment. It is the most interactive of all processes. It requires countless hours of eyeball to eyeball, back and forth. It involves more listening than talking.
Jack Welch
#52. If there's anyone in space, what they'll learn about the human race will be listening to us talking on the car phone.
Roger McGuinn
#53. It's like someone who prays every night saying God's a good listener. Just because you're talking to us doesn't mean we're listening. With me and God, you never really know.
Paul Neilan
#54. The only problem with not talking to oneself was that oneself was the most fascinating conversational partner one could imagine. Nobody had more patience in listening to one than oneself, and while nobody knew one better than oneself, nobody misunderstood one more than oneself.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
#55. Yet these new women would always pay to a man the extravagant compliment which no ordinary woman ever pays to him, that of listening while he is talking.
G.K. Chesterton
#56. If you invited a hedge wizard to a party, he would spend half the evening talking to your potted plant. And he would spend the other half listening.
Terry Pratchett
#57. Lately I've been going to all these high schools talking to the students, answering their questions, listening to what they have to say. It has been an incredible journey to be around them and try to give them what my mother gave me.
Jill Scott
#58. Do remember that communication is an exchange of thoughts. This means listening and speaking are necessary. You can't call something a conversation if you're the only one talking or listening.
Mia Conrad
#59. its bad enough talking to yourself but worse when you realise you aren't listening
Tabitca Cope
#60. Prayer is not first and foremost talking to God, it's first and foremost listening to God.
Leslie Ludy
#61. She carried on talking. And as she did so, I realized there could be no cosmic consequence at all if I stopped listening, and with that realization I switched off the phone.
Matt Haig
#62. The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.
Anna Quindlen
#63. She could talk. If she was a sphinx she could have talked, if she was a stone she could have talked. I wondered when she'd get tired and leave. Even after I stopped listening it was like being battered with tiny pingpong balls.
Charles Bukowski
#64. Real-life discussions involve a great many bores and boors who have never learned that the art of conversation demands listening as well as talking.
Susan Jacoby
#65. There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.
Raymond Chandler
#66. I like that feeling in your brain when you've got seven things that you're holding in one moment-you heard that person cough, you heard that person laugh, you're also saying your line, you're also listening to the person who's talking to you.
Sarah Paulson
#67. Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk, if you have the sense that he isn't listening to you, that he's talking down to you, and that he isn't treating you with respect, listen to that feeling. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting.
Malcolm Gladwell
#68. Peter Breggin, an American psychiatrist, had been criticising SSRIs since the early 1990s. He wrote 'Talking Back to Prozac' (1995) to repudiate psychiatrist Peter Kramer's 'Listening to Prozac' (1993) - a bestseller which claimed that Prozac made patients 'better than well.'
John Cornwell
#69. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
Brenda Ueland
#70. To do my job well, I have to be a good listener. The listening is so much more important than the talking.
Brad Listi
#71. She had never had a friend like this, in her private room, combing her hair, listening to her, talking about silly nonsense and the uselessness of one's parents; how the future was perfect, because they hadn't lived it yet.
Jessie Burton
#72. The main thing that I loved about living alone was the silence. Sometimes simply talking to people was like listening to white noise. Often I could tune the sound out and be all right, but other times it was like hearing nails on a chalkboard - almost painful.
Adrianne Brooks
#73. It is extremely Sad to think that while nature is talking,humankind is not listening.
J.D. Masterson
#74. In a sense, I'm always hearing music of some sort, whether it's people talking or surface noise or whatever, because there is no privacy. So when I'm by myself, I just kind of like to be and reflect, and I can't do that when I'm listening to music. Because it's someone else's reflections, not mine.
Sarah McLachlan
#75. I mean, you can't have sex until you're married if you're Mormon. The first time I had sex, my parents found out. They were listening in on the phone while I was talking about sex to my girlfriend. They freaked out, man. They both cornered me in my bedroom.
Bert McCracken
#76. Talking to spirits is how you free them. Listening to them is how you help them crossover.
Zak Bagans
#77. Listening is not merely not talking ... it means taking a vigorous human interest in what is being told to us.
Andrew Miller
#78. We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.
Susan Cain
#79. I failed everything in school. I left when I was 13 because I had no comprehension of what the hell they were talking about up there at the blackboard. I must have that ADD thing. But, listening to people I thought, that's wonderful to be able to tell a story.
Malachy McCourt
#80. The common thread from all those stories was that talking helped, and listening, and time. One day I would find my own place. I couldn't run there, though, because it didn't exist yet; I had to build it myself, out of forgiveness, truth, and terrifying gestures of friendship.
I. W. Gregorio
#81. An actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening!
Marlon Brando
#82. The art of conversation consist as much in listening politely, as in talking agreeably.
Hayley Atwell
#83. It was very hard to get any records, so the only source for us to really hear what was happening was listening to the Voice of America. We would be taping all the broadcast and then sharing the tapes and talking about it.
Jan Hammer
#84. What will your children remember? Moments spent listening, talking, playing and sharing together may be the most important times of all.
Gloria Gaither
#85. I don't know that I have a single comedy philosophy. But talking about things that matter to you is a good place to start. Listening is a big part of it, too.
Ted Alexandro
#86. Instead of talking in the hope that people will listen, try listening in the hope that people will talk.
Mardy Grothe
#87. Most of us recognize how important it is to listen respectfully when our loved ones are talking; but we often forget that it is equally important to talk respectfully when they are listening.
Mardy Grothe
#88. The corner doesn't mind listening to the stupid things I say;
Sometimes it's the only one keeping me from running away.
And the corner never tells me things I'd rather never know;
We became the best of friends long, long, long ago.
Margo T. Rose
#89. I chop a lot of onions because I love cooking, and the times where I've never cried chopping onions is when I'm not thinking about it, when I'm talking to someone or I'm listening to music.
Emily Blunt
#90. The confessor can nullify the exquisitely seasonable moment of confession by talking instead of listening. When he sees pedagogy and advice as more important than simple listening, he diverts the stream of confession.
Thomas C. Oden
#91. A bore finds it easy to start talking, and even easier to get others to stop listening.
Evan Esar
#92. He's fine," Kamala said. "It's not like that. You're not listening." "I am listening! You just told me he's delusional, and I'm asking - " "I DID NOT SAY HE IS DELUSIONAL. I SAID HE WAS TALKING TO HIS MOTHER." "Who is dead," Amina said gently. "Obvious." "And that's not delusional?
Mira Jacob
#93. While my friends were busy listening to the Talking Heads, Police, and B-52s, I was busy teaching myself to program on the Atari.
Steven Sinofsky
#94. Dude," Austin said as we exited the freeway, "in fifty years, all of the old folks' homes are going to be filled with seniors listening to Justin Bieber on the oldies station and talking about how movies used to be in two-D.
Robyn Schneider
#95. There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep.
Meg Greenfield
#96. I hated talking, and I hated listening to everyone else stumble on their words and try to phrase things in the vaguest possible way so they wouldn't sound dumb.
John Green
#97. The thing that I love about television there are no more than two or three people watching you at a time. If there are more than two or three people in a room they're talking to each other, they're not listening to you.
Betty White
#98. A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized prayer is listening.
Soren Kierkegaard
#99. Well, that was embarrassing. There was nothing wrong with talking to the voices in my head
unless everyone else was listening in.
Kate Carlisle
#100. The measure of a conversation is how much mutual recognition there is in it; how much shared there is in it. If you're talking about what's in your own head, or without thought to what people looking and listening will feel, you might as well be in a room talking to yourself.
Dylan Moran
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