Great Listener Quotes & Sayings

Be a sponge. Spend as much time as possible with people who truly know their craft and be a great listener. That is how you learn. — Jerry Colangelo

Beside every great writer is a great listener. — Nanette L. Avery

Rapport-Building Stories People who have gone through tough situations will feel better after talking about it. If you share your tough stories, it may remind the listener of a similar scenario, and he may want to share his stories as well. It is a great way to get people to open up and encourage them to share their own stories. Also, if you can relate to a person's story and share your own story, that is powerful for creating a connection and building rapport. An advantage of telling rapport-building stories is that it does make people feel better, and it also forges new friendships. Often, we can be reluctant to share stories because we don't want to be too vulnerable, but once we do, we can enrich the lives of those who hear our stories. It is difficult not to be appreciative of a person after learning their story. — Matt Morris

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

One of the most under-rated gifts we can give to others, is our undivided attention. Next time you spend time with a loved one, really listen to them and watch light up when they realize you are being completely attentive to them. There is so much to be learned and experienced when we can become great listeners! — Jaeda DeWalt

The video forum for me has been a source of great consternation because once you start projecting a look to a song, it robs the listener of their ability to adopt that song and make the lyric their own. — Sheryl Crow

Vasudeva listened with great attention. Listening carefully, he let
everything enter his mind, birthplace and childhood, all that learning,
all that searching, all joy, all distress. This was among the
ferryman's virtues one of the greatest: like only a few, he knew how
to listen. Without him having spoken a word, the speaker sensed how
Vasudeva let his words enter his mind, quiet, open, waiting, how he
did not lose a single one, awaited not a single one with impatience,
did not add his praise or rebuke, was just listening. Siddhartha felt,
what a happy fortune it is, to confess to such a listener, to burry in
his heart his own life, his own search, his own suffering. — Hermann Hesse

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

To be a great leader, you must be a great listener — Richard Branson

Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener. — Nanci Griffith

I would just like a woman someday, somewhere, at some point in my life to say to me, 'You're a great listener.' Haven't heard it yet, and that's a superior compliment to get from a woman. But I'm going to work on it. — Ashton Kutcher

Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation. — Marya Mannes

radio is what moves through the microphone and speakers into the ears of the discerning listener. Radio is what it transmits to the listener at any moment in time. Who sits behind the microphone makes the microphone worth the ears of great and noble listeners. The impact of radio lies less in the name of the radio and much in what it transmits each passing second — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Five Great Habits for Better Relationships: acceptance (smile each time), appreciation (say thank you to everyone), admiration (compliment people on their appearance or clothing, etc.), approval (praise immediately, specifically and repeatedly), and attention (be a good listener). — Brian Tracy

Great art presupposes the alert mind of the educated listener — Arnold Schoenberg

I often hear the question asked, "What about me?" ...
What about you?
What do you need/want/desire/long for?
What is missing?
How long have you felt this way?
Does anyone know this?
Often just being really heard brings a great sense of peace-
to both the listener and speaker.
If you're willing.
Of course .
If you're not-you're probably thinking-
"What about me?" ... — Dave Rudbarg

In this world of gossip, a good listener is rarer than a great orator. — Christopher Pike

Traveling is all about talking to new people. That's the ball game. That's the whole point, travel to an exotic place, meet the people, immerse in their culture, and find out why they're so fucked up. If you're not going to spill your guts to complete strangers, why take the trip? You might as well just stay home abusing sex toys until that mishap that brings paramedics and you become the talk of the neighborhood. But communication is easy for me because I'm a listener. I love to hear people gab about themselves. Every single person is special. Everyone has great stories. Like you. I'll bet you have a million. How old are you? Sixty? — Tim Dorsey

The dictionary describes a selfish person as one who is 'concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking pleasure or well-being without regard for others.' May we add, a selfish person is often one who refers to 'I,' 'me,' and 'mine' rather than to 'we,' 'ours,' 'yours,' or 'theirs.' This person is anxious to be in the limelight, to be on center stage in life's little dramas. He or she may be a poor listener, or a conversation monopolizer. Selfishness is the great unknown sin. No selfish person ever thought himself to be selfish. — H. Burke Peterson

I don't speak a lot when I get home, during the season. It's great. I just get to sit and listen. My wife gets to tell me whatever she wants to tell me, and I don't talk. I'm too exhausted to talk, so I'm a very good listener. — Thomas Sadoski

Here's some free advice; like the folkies of yore, you need to be not just a writer of songs, you need to be a lover of songs, a listener of songs and a collector of songs. If you hear a song in a club that knocks you out or you hear an old recording of a great song you never knew existed, it does not diminish you to record it; it actually exalts you because you have brought a great song from obscurity to the ear of the public. — Michael Kosser

I'm definitely not your stereotypical actor: the loud, cackling type who strolls into a room and grabs everyone's attention with a great story. I've always been much more of a listener. — Emun Elliott

For our ancestors music was something that you sat down to listen to, or which you made for yourself. It was a ceremonial event, in which you participated, either as a passive listener or as an active performer. Either way you were giving and receiving life, sharing in something of great social significance.
With the advent of the gramophone, the radio and now the iPod, music is no longer something that you must make for yourself, nor is it something that you sit down to listen to. It follows you about wherever you go, and you switch it on as a background. It is not so much listened to as overheard. — Roger Scruton

He wasn't much of a listener, not a great payer of attention to things outside his head. — Wendell Berry

It takes a great man to make a great listener — Arthur Helps

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

And every day there is music. One dark voice will start a phrase, half-sung, and like a question. And after a moment another voice will join in, soon the whole gang will be singing. The voices are dark in the golden glare, the music intricately blended, both somber and joyful. The music will swell until at last it seems that the sound does not come from the twelve men on the gang, but from the earth itself, or the wide sky. It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright. Then slowly the music will sink down until at last there remains one lonely voice, then a great hoarse breath, the sun, the sound of the picks in the silence.
And what kind of gang is this that can make such music? Just twelve mortal men, seven of them black and five of them white boys from this country. Just twelve mortal men who are together. — Carson McCullers

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

The silence that, without any deferential air, listens with polite attention, is more flattering than compliments, and more frequently broken for the purpose of encouraging others to speak, than to display the listener's own powers. This is the really eloquent silence. It requires great genius - more perhaps than speaking - and few are gifted with the talent. — Arthur Martine

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

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

Sometimes time can play tricks. One moment it idles by, an hour can seem a lifetime, such as when sitting by the river at dusk watching the bats snatching insects above the limpid waters; the breaching fish causing ringed ripples and a satisfying plop. Other times, time flashes by in an immodest fashion. So it is with the start of war. First time quivers with the last strum of a wonderful peace, the note holding in the air, mysterious and haunting, filling the listener with awe. Then, with a rising crescendo the terror starts with uncouth haste; with a boom the listener is shaken from their reverie and delivered into the servitude, of an ear-shattering cacophony. — M.A. Lossl

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

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

When I hear people clapping at the wrong times, I think that's great. We have got a listener that's not used to going to - we have got a new listener. — Joshua Bell

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

I've been musically inclined since I picked up an instrument in the fourth grade. I just really appreciate music. I love to listen to it; I love to sing. I wouldn't consider myself, like, a natural singer. I just developed it over time, honestly, just listening. I'm a great listener to music. — Kyrie Irving

Festus, you're such a great listener. — Maria Kanellis

I always love to put hidden messages in my music videos, because I know there are people like me who, when they watch something, are really active, involved participants. I'm not usually a really passive listener or observer. So I do put those messages in there for people who spend a great deal of time [looking for them]. — Jared Leto

Many listeners have the experience of sharing the feelings that seem to be expressed by a piece of music[.] [T]he listener mirrors the feelings expressed by the music.
[...] The problem is that if listeners mirror the negative emotions they hear in music, then we seem to be landed with a paradox; [...] the "paradox of tragedy[.]" [P]eople apparently take great delight in watching and hearing about people in hideously unhappy situations and undergoing terrible suffering. [...] The musical version of the paradox is this: If people actually feel sad when they listen to sad music, why do they go on doing it? All they have to do is leave the room or flip the switch, and the music would vanish, along with the pain it causes. Yet people continue to listen, apparently complacently, to the most anguished and wrenching strains. [...] There must be some value to experiencing the sadness in sad music, or otherwise people would not do it; but what value can it have? — Jenefer Robinson

I'm not focused on radio or whether I'm going to get all the audiences ... all I wanted were great songs that were universal to any listener - Black, White, Green, Yellow; any kind a age difference. — Ledisi