Quotes & Sayings About Good Listener

As a leader of people, you have to be a great listener, a great motivator, be very good at praising and bringing out the best in people. — Richard Branson

Be a good listener, don't judge and don't put boundaries on someone else's grief. — Jodi Picoult

A good listener is a witness, not a judge of your experience. — Michael P Nichols

Conversation, to take another example, is one of the common pleasures of life, but not all conversation is pleasurable. The stutterer finds talking painful, and the listener is equally pained. Persons who are inhibited in expressing feeling are not good conversationalists. Nothing is more boring than to listen to a person talk in a monotone without feeling. We enjoy a conversation when there is a communication of feeling. We have pleasure in expressing our feelings, and we respond pleasurably to another person's expression of feeling. The voice, like the body, is a medium through which feeling flows, and when this flow occurs in an easy and rhythmic manner, it is a pleasure both to the speaker and listener. — Alexander Lowen

She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no values or morals. If I am "good" (and they assume that I am), it's obviously for lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually. — Katherine Dunn

My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener. — Curtis Mayfield

In the end, to do a good accent, you just have to be a good listener. — Abbey Lee Kershaw

A good listener is one who always pays attention, not to gain, but to learn. — Michael Bassey Johnson

I'm passionate about the issues that I care about, and I'm a really good listener. — Alan Lowenthal

Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. — Dale Carnegie

Lead by listening - to be a good leader you have to be a great listener. — Richard Branson

One often reads about the art of conversation-how it's dying or what's needed to make it flourish, or how rare good ones are. But wouldn't you agree that the infinitely more valuable rara avis [rare bird] is a good listener. — Malcolm Forbes

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LISTENER? 1. Not interrupting. 2. Showing that you empathize: not criticizing, arguing, or patronizing. 3. Establishing a physical sense of closeness without invading personal space. 4. Observing body language and letting yours show you are not distracted but attentive. 5. Offering your own self-disclosures, but not too many, or too soon. 6. Understanding the context of the other person's life. 7. Listening from all four levels: body, mind, heart, and soul. — Deepak Chopra

Tommy (Thompson) is a good listener, and he's a pretty good actor, too. — George W. Bush

Ah, the future good!" Leebig's eyes glowed with passion and he seemed to grow less conscious of his listener and correspondingly more talkative. "A simple concept, you think. How many human beings are willing to accept a trifling inconvenience for the sake of a large future good? How long does it take to train a child that what tastes good now means a stomach-ache later, and what tastes bad now will correct the stomach-ache later? Yet you want a robot to be able to understand? — Isaac Asimov

Be a good listener to the elders. There is a good chance that you will learn something in 20 minutes or less that took them 70 or more years to learn. — Fredio Samples

The desire of advising has a very extensive prevalence; and, since advice cannot be given but to those that will hear it, a patient listener is necessary to the accommodation of all those who desire to be confirmed in the opinion of their own wisdom: a patient listener, however, is not always to be had; the present age, whatever age is present, is so vitiated and disordered, that young people are readier to talk than to attend, and good counsel is only thrown away upon those who are full of their own perfections. — Samuel Johnson

You know when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea: have a point. It makes it so much more interesting for the listener! — Steve Martin

Being a good listener is the perfect way to avoid answering questions you'd rather ignore. — V.C. Andrews

My mother made sweet tea for him. He seemed a good conversationalist, but perhaps not a good listener, because at times he appeared to be engaged in a monologue with himself. In the midst of the conversation, my father gave me five Somali shillings, an amount equivalent to one U.S dollar. I was so excited to have paper money that I left immediately to go to a neighborhood store to buy cold soda and candy. My father was still talking and laughing when I returned to the house. I watched him closely, studying his every move. I wondered if had come to visit me or to consume large quantities of tea. — Hassan Abukar

All you have to do is be a good listener. Nobody really wants to keep secrets, not even the dead. People leave clues everywhere, and if you pay attention, you can piece them together. — Deborah Harkness

Anyone can listen to an exciting story; but a good listener is like a determined gold prospector patiently digging through the mud to find a little nugget of the prized metal. — Rafik Schami

You don't necessarily have to go to film school to be a brilliant film maker. If you are a good listener and you study life, and you find that story that is buried within each and every one of us, and you figure out a way to bring that out. And sometimes it doesn't necessarily mean money or winning the lottery. — Tony Todd

A good listener truly wants to know the speaker. — John Powell

I was a very avid reader when I was a child, and I also was a good listener. — Joseph Bruchac

I'm a darned good listener. — Naomi Judd

I'm quite a good listener, and I'm good at looking after people. — Amanda Abbington

Your visit with Interpol went well?" "They asked their questions, I told them my story." "One thing I don't get," I said. "Why haven't they brought me in yet?" Win smiled. "You know why." "They're tailing me." "Correct answer." "You see them?" "Black car on right corner." "Mossad is probably following me too." "You're a very popular man." "It's because I'm a good listener. People like a good listener." "Indeed." "I'm also fun at parties." "And a snazzy dancer. What do you want to do about the tails?" "I'd like to lose them for the day." "No problem. — Harlan Coben

I'm a good listener, you know. My gran used to say that's why you've got two ears and one mouth. I just truly love what I do and treat it with a lot of respect and all these relationships in the music business that people talk about. — Johnny Reid

I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener. — Bernard Le Bovier De Fontenelle

Be a good listener, so your spoken words may be appropriate — Emmanuel Aluko

Cabeswater was such a good listener. — Maggie Stiefvater

I'm a good listener. — Retief Goosen

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don't jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going. — Sarah Dessen

If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. — Dale Carnegie

A story isn't a good one unless it has a good listener — Antonia Michaelis

To do my job well, I have to be a good listener. The listening is so much more important than the talking. — Brad Listi

I think a good director is a good listener. — Denis Villeneuve

I tore open the closet door and began feverishly sorting through the shirts piled on the floor in the vain hope that inside that pile there might be some wondrously perfect shirt down there, a nice and tough but I'm also a surprisingly good listener with a true and abiding passion for cheers and those who lead them. — John Green

The main thing is to be myself. What I mean by that is, to be honest when called upon to express your feelings. The other thing is - maybe this should come first - to be a good listener. To close your mouth and to listen, and to be able to echo back what your partner says to you. — Michael Franti

I love good momentum. It makes everybody happy and in this time that we're living in, especially musically speaking, if you can make a record that has more than 4 or 5 songs deep and it has a good variety of songs. You don't frontload it with those first couple of songs. You continue the record taking the listener on a journey, musically speaking. I think you've really got something there. — Charlie Benante

I don't think you can be a good listener unless you're a good listener. I think it's something that you really have to do, and if you really do it, then you can do it. If you don't do it, then you can't do it. — Dick Gephardt

When you are mute, you become a good listener - it's all one-way. You appreciate the written word. You appreciate the sound. — James Earl Jones

When I create music, the feeling that you get ... I get first. You [the listener] have a delayed experience with the feeling I initially get when I have a creative insight. Not just the voice, but all the creativity - the production, the idea, the concept, the music involved. There is a high. There is an emotional experience that happens when everything comes together ... I made music as consistently as I did, especially back in the day, because it made me feel so good ... When everything is on, it's a wonderful feeling. — Lauryn Hill

Let Love Move You ...
If you can't stop thinking of her, it's because her essence has left an imprint on your heart ... on your soul ...
Don't be afraid of this feeling; be nourished by it ...
Let it stir your entire being ...
Let it help release your greatest self ...
Let it inspire you to be loving ... to be respectful ... to be romantic ... to be intelligent ... to be passionate ... to be a good listener ... to be appreciative ...
Let this wonderful feeling move you to become a passionate love maker ... a ravenous seducer ...
Do not be afraid of this deep love! Let it reveal the best of you ...
Let this feeling encourage you to behave in an honest and sincere manner ...
So that you may be more than a person she would settle for ... so that you may be a person she would yearn for. — Steve Maraboli

Edward was always a good listener, since his own form of self-expression then consisted in making uneartly and to me quite meaningless sounds on his small violin. I remember him, at the age of seven, as a rather solemn, brown-eyed little boy, with beautiful arched eyebrows which lately, to my infinite satisfaction, have begun to reproduce themselves, a pair of delicate question-marks, above the dark eyes of my five-year-old son. Even in childhood we seldom quarrelled, and by the time that we both went away to boarding-school he had already become the dearest companion of thos brief years of unshadowed adolescence permitted to our condemned generation. — Vera Brittain

I happen to disagree with the well-entrenched theory that the art of conversation is merely the art of being a good listener. Such advice invites people to be cynical with one another and full of fake; when a conversation becomes a monologue, poked along with tiny cattle-prod questions, it isn't a conversation any more. — Barbara Walters

I had school debt I had to pay off. Sometimes I would do commercials to get me through. And so I kept bumping along like that and learning different things. I knew I wanted to get out on my own. I was just super-curious, and I was a good listener. And that got me through. — Susan Sarandon

We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one. — Brenda Ueland

Why d'ye talk to yourself?" "It assures me of a good listener, — Diana Gabaldon

While the difference between a bad sermon and a good sermon is mainly the responsibility of the preacher, the difference between good preaching and great preaching lies mainly in the work of the Holy Spirit ... We should do the work it takes to make our communication good and leave it up to God how and how often he makes it great for the listener. — Timothy Keller

I'm not a good listener some times. I'm too much of a control freak. I'm learning to be better. I was so caught up in just getting the job done that I would miss out on the human aspect of this. There was a connection missing. — Howard Stern

However, to be a coach I think you have to have a lot of patience. You have to understand what they have going on in their lives and it's a very rewarding career but you also need to know that your not going to get paid a ton of money and you have to be patient with people and a good listener. — Robin Farina

But most of all in the last couple of years I have been listening. As a journalist, I learned to listen. It is amazing how much people will tell you if you listen in the right way. Rob, my PA, says that I can listen like a vacuum cleaner. Always beware of somebody who is a really good listener. — Terry Pratchett

I think the best part about my dad being gay is that I'm much more open-minded. I feel more at peace and I'm a good listener. I learned so much from (my dad's partner) John. How would I have turned out if this weren't my life? — Judith E. Snow

Good listeners are perceived as good conversationalists. — Susan RoAne

I think ... you know, collaboration, in general - no matter movies, television or Broadway - is offering of what you can bring to the table and also fighting what you think the important battles are. Not everything is going to make it in there. Not everything is going to work. You have to collaborate. And you have to be a good listener. — Kristin Chenoweth

A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means. — Katherine Paterson

A lot of times good, pristine recordings prevent the listener from getting emotionally involved in the music. — Moby

Just because you've written a song doesn't mean that you have pulled through. There are definitely songs where I embodied someone else's pain and that was purely to serve the listener because I knew they needed to hear something. But most of the good stuff comes from my life. — Mat Kearney

A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat. — Katherine Whitehorn

Boston's "That is good" is Berlin's "Das ist gut." It's an excellent way to start and leaves the listener thinking, 'Hey, Ich kann do dis.' :D — David Sedaris

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling. — Clint Eastwood

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

The role of listeners has never been fully appreciated. However, it is well known that most people don't listen. They use the time when someone else is speaking to think of what they're going to say next. True Listeners have always been revered among oral cultures, and prized for their rarity value; bards and poets are ten a cow, but a good Listener is hard to find, or at least hard to find twice. — Terry Pratchett

The average person suffers from three delusions: 1) That he is a good driver 2) That he has a good sense of humor and 3) That he is a good listener. — Steven Sample

So if you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested. Ask questions that other persons will enjoy answering. Encourage them to talk about themselves and their accomplishments. Remember — Dale Carnegie

People of influence understand the incredible value of becoming a good listener. — John C. Maxwell

The best thing I could say is you do have to be a really good listener. If I go to a family reunion, and there's 400 people there, everybody comes up and tells me their stories, right? And I think that when you're a good listener, and you can imagine how someone's talking, dialogue is your key friend, is it not? — Susan Straight

A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen. — Edward De Bono

Being a good listener is more than just being quiet. It's reflecting back on what you're hearing. It's processing the information to formulate a question, a comment or a speech. — Shelley Moore Capito

I'm a good listener. I think it's the one characteristic that's most important. I've always been that way. Not that I take all the advice, but you've got to listen to it and have the courage to make your own decision. And just go for it. — Tom Cruise

If you want to be a good conversationalist, be a good listener. To be interesting, be interested. — Dale Carnegie

Try to be as good a listener as you are a speaker. Don't just put the emphasis on saying things. Listen. — Jennifer Lynch

To be a good writer, become a good listener. — Cynthia Briggs

A tapping foot isn't the best a listener can get from a song: A good song makes a listener dance. A great song makes him think. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

To be a writer you should read, write and talk to people, hear their knowledge, hear their problems. Be a good listener. The rest will come. — Jean Craighead George

A company is simply a group of people. And as a leader of people, you have to be a great listener, you have to be a great motivator, you have to be very good at praising and looking for the best in people. People are no different from flowers. If you water flowers, they flourish. If you praise people, they flourish. That's a critical attribute of a leader. — Richard Branson

A good teacher is one, that never stops listening; a good listener is one, that never stops teaching. — Anthony Liccione

It might not be pleasant for the listener, it might disempower and unsettle the witness to a breakdown, but crying was good. Crying was an acceptable outlet, even if it made you feel raw and empty inside, it was still better than that buildup of resentment that grew from not letting your emotions out. — Dorothy Koomson

I'm not trying to be self-righteous about that, but I am literally the best friend a person could ask for and I am a good listener and anybody who doesn't want to be my friend should take a long, hard look at him/herself and whisper, What is wrong with me? Why was I born without the capacity to love? — Katie Heaney

It takes a great man to be a good listener. — Calvin Coolidge

Let people speak. Let people disagree. Communicate. Listen. Have high-respect, if not for your opponent, then for your own comportment and conduct as a good listener. — Bryant H. McGill

Listening is as important as talking. If you're a good listener, people often compliment you for being a good conversationalist ... — Jesse Ventura

A good journalist, as you know, is a great listener. And so's a good writer. And I got to listen to people for almost 20 years. That serves me well, I hope, when I try to understand how a character might be feeling, or how they might react. — Louise Penny

Writings by philosophers and psychologists on the differences between intelligence and wisdom might also encourage you to become a better listener. Intelligent people say lots of smart things and produce the right answers to questions more often than less intelligent people, but they are not necessarily good listeners. In contrast, wise people are better listeners and are better at formulating questions than people who aren't so wise.6 So, if you and your firm want to get smarter, the wise thing to do is to shut up, listen, and learn to ask smart questions - not to keep showing off how much you know and how fast you can think. — Robert I. Sutton

Twitter needs to continue being a good listener and recognize that the service has been redefined by lots of people, tweet by tweet, but also come up with its own priorities. — Dick Costolo

As she is the senior person in the room, I wait for her to call on me. And, while I am waiting, I should show I am a good listener by keeping both my voice and my body quiet. In China, we often feel Westerners speak up so much in meetings that they do this to show off, or they are poor listeners. Also, I have noticed that Chinese people leave a few more seconds of silence before jumping in than in the West. You Westerners practically speak on top of each other in a meeting. — Erin Meyer

Prayers often begin as memories. When we remember those whom we have loved, and miss them, naturally we hope for their safety and their happiness, wherever they might be. That hope turns into a wish, and whenever a wish is voiced, even silently, even without words, it becomes a supplication. Perhaps we don't know to whom we're speaking; perhaps we ask before we truly know who's listening, or before we even believe that listener exists. But I judge it a very fine beginning, to make a practice of remembering those people we have loved. When we remember others fondly, we wish them health and happiness and all good things. — Eleanor Catton

The single most important key to success is to be a good listener. — Kelly Wearstler

I liked me and I had been well drilled in good manners by Aunt Penny, who had often told me the best manners meant being thoughtful, a good listener and watching what everyone else was doing and deciding if it was worth trying. — Merabeth James

I no longer worry about being a brilliant conversationalist. I simply try to be a good listener. I notice that people who do that are usually welcome wherever they go — Frank Bettger

A good listener: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent - more important than any words. — Susan Sontag

Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighboring yeomen, the listener said, Ah, Clym Yeobright: what is he doing now?' When the instinctive question about a person is, What is he doing? it is felt that he will not be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some region of singularity , good or bad. The devout home is that he is doing well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it ... So the subject recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the better for him, if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative — Thomas Hardy

Good listeners believe they can learn something from everyone. — Charles R. Swindoll

As a writer, I find it very satisfying when a lyric suddenly ties together more neatly than you expected it to. But for the listener, hearing a good lyric is not generally as exciting as hearing a great beat or a great riff or a great melody or even a distinctive singing voice for the first time. — Adam Schlesinger

No," I said automatically, "don't do anything about Dad. You can't fix my relationship with him."
"I can block or run interference."
"Thanks, Jack, but I don't need blocking, and I really don't need any more interference."
He looked annoyed. "Well, why did you waste all that time complaining to me if you didn't want me to do something about it?"
"I don't want you to fix my problems. I just wanted you to listen."
"Hang it all, Haven, talk to a girlfriend if all you want is a pair of ears. Guys hate it when you give us a problem and then don't let us do something about it. It makes us feel bad. And then the only way to make ourselves feel better is to rip a phone book in two or blow something up. So let's get this straight - I'm not a good listener. I'm a guy."
"Yes you are." I stood and smiled. "Want to buy me a drink at an after work bar?"
"Now you're talking," my brother said, and we left the office. — Lisa Kleypas

I'm not good for a lot of things but I'm a good listener and I know what it means to feel. — Laure Lacornette

It gives the listener a good workout, to listen to the music, the same as it does us to play it. — Jim Sullivan

I can be a good listener. I can ask the right questions a lot of the time. — Lisa Randall