Needs Marshall Rosenberg Quotes

#1. Nonviolent Communication is a powerful tool for peace and partnership. It shows us how to listen empathically and also communicate our authentic feelings and needs. Marshall Rosenberg has a genius for developing and teaching practical skills urgently needed for a less violent, more caring world.

Riane Eisler

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#3. NVC suggests behind every action, however ineffective, tragic, violent, or abhorrent to us, is an attempt to meet a need.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#4. We need empathy to give empathy.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#5. 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

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#7. 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

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#9. 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

#10. There are the two main reasons we don't get our needs met. First, we don't know how to express our needs to begin with and second if we do, we forget to put a clear request after it, or we use vague words like appreciate, listen, recognize, know, be real, and stuff like that.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#11. If we don't tell people about our needs, it is much less likely they will be met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#12. I have tried to integrate the spirituality into the training in a way that meets my need not to destroy the beauty of it through abstract philosophizing.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#13. They have most likely said it because they have an unmet need.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#14. When we have our consciousness on needs, images come to us, naturally, of how to meet those needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#16. Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#17. My anger tells me firstly that there's a need of mine that's not getting met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#18. Self-empathy in NVC means checking in with your own feelings and needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#19. I believe that the most joyful and intrinsic motivation human beings have for taking any action is the desire to meet our needs and the needs of others.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#20. All moralistic judgments, whether positive or negative, are tragic expressions of unmet needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#21. When we are depressed, our thinking blocks us from being aware of our needs, and then being able to take action to meet our needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#22. When we listen for feelings and needs - we can see that people who seem like monsters are simply human beings whose language and behavior sometimes keep us from seeing their humanness.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#23. 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

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#25. Behind intimidating messages are simply people appealing to us to meet their needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#27. We want people to change because they see better ways of meeting their needs at less cost, not because of fear that we're going to punish them, or 'guilt' them if they don't. This applies to ourselves as well.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#28. Compliments and praise, for their part, are tragic expressions of fulfilled needs

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#29. Everything we do is in service of our needs. When this one concept is applied to our view of others, we'll see that we have no real enemies, that what others do to us is the best possible thing they know to do to get their needs met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#30. We can't win at somebody else's expense. We can only fully be satisfied when the other person's needs are fulfilled as well as our own.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#31. 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

#32. The spirituality that we need to develop for social change is one that mobilizes us for social change.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#33. When people hear needs, it provokes compassion.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#34. We need empathy to give empathy. When we sense ourselves being defensive or unable to empathize, we need to (a) stop, breathe, give ourselves empathy, (b) scream nonviolently, or (c) take time out.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#35. 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

#36. If people just asked: "Here are the needs of both sides, here are the resources. What can be done to meet these needs?" the conflict would be easy to resolve.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#37. Social change involves helping people see new options for making life wonderful that are less costly to get needs met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#38. A need is life seeking expression within us.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#39. I highly recommend the approach Marshall Rosenberg details in Nonviolent Communication (2nd Edition 2008), which has essentially three parts: When X happens [described factually, not judgmentally], I feel Y [especially the deeper, softer emotions], because I need Z [fundamental needs and wants].

Rick Hanson

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#42. In our culture, most of us have been trained to ignore our own wants and to discount our needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#43. When I recognize I've got anger, then I realize it's because I have a need that's not being met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#45. With every choice you make, be conscious of what need it serves.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#46. When we understand the needs that motivate our own and others behavior, we have no enemies.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#48. Make your goal to attend to your underlying needs and to aim for a resolution so satisfying that everyone involved has their needs met also.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#51. Don't get addicted to your requests. Your objective is needs, not requests. Because then it becomes a demand.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#52. If the other persons behavior is not in harmony with my own needs, the more I empathize with them and their needs, the more likely I am to get me own needs met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#53. NVC is a reminder; to focus our attention where we are most likely to get our needs met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#54. When we hear the other person's feelings and needs, we recognize our common humanity.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#56. Our ability to offer empathy can allow us to stay vulnerable, defuse potential violence, help us hear the word 'no' without taking it as a rejection, revive lifeless conversation, and even hear the feelings and needs expressed through silence.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#57. When I am angry I have a judgment and an unmet need.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#59. Never connect yourself with the other person's pain. Just hear their need. Leave yourself out of the other person's feelings and needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#60. Imagine connecting with the human spirit in each person in any situation at any time. Imagine interacting with others in a way that allows everyone's need to be equally valued. Imagine creating organizations and life-serving systems responsive to our needs and the needs of our environment.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#61. Focusing on the unmet need (not the judgment) is more likely to get the need met.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#62. I try never to hear what another person thinks of me. I enjoy life a lot more when I spend as little time as possible hearing or thinking about what other people think about me. I go to the needs behind the thoughts. Then I'm in a different world.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#63. We are compassionate with ourselves when we are able to embrace all parts of ourselves and recognize the needs and values expressed by each part.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#65. 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

#66. The best way I can get understanding from another person is to give this person the understanding, too. If I want them to hear my needs and feelings, I first need to empathize.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#67. My need is for safety, fun and to have distribution of resources, a sustainable life on the planet. NVC is a strategy that serves me to meet these needs.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#68. Getting in touch with unmet needs is important to the healing process.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

#69. We're not taught to think in terms of needs. We don't make nice dead people when we're in touch with needs. Domination structures cannot maintain themselves when citizens are educated to be alive.

Marshall B. Rosenberg