Social Listening Quotes & Sayings

I said nothing - I hadn't known Marya, and anyway, "listening quietly" was my general social strategy — John Green

Listening to my fans and seeing love and support through social media from them is what I live for. — Jake T. Austin

As the feminist psychiatrist Judith Herman puts it in her book Trauma and Recovery: "His correspondence makes clear that he was increasingly troubled by the radical social implications of his hypothesis. . . . Faced with this dilemma, Freud stopped listening to his female patients." If they were telling the truth, he would have to challenge the whole edifice of patriarchal authority to support them. — Rebecca Solnit

Take advantage of social listening tools such as Social Mention and TweetDeck to listen to consumer conversations about your brand. — Liam Brady

Opera once was an important social instrument - especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi, people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television. — Luciano Berio

I was really interested to see whether we could make predictions or forecasts by listening in on what people were saying on social media. — Noreena Hertz

Listening to teens talk about social media addiction reveals an interest not in features of their computers, smartphones, or even particular social media sites but in each other. — Danah Boyd

The surest way to keep a problem from being solved is to deny that problem exists. Telling people not to complain is a way of keeping social issues from being addressed. It trivializes the grievances of the vulnerable, making the burdened feel like burdens. Telling people not to complain is an act of power, a way of asserting that one's position is more important than another one's pain. People who say "stop complaining" always have the right to stop listening. But those who complain have often been denied the right to speak. — Sarah Kendzior

Naps are not a sign of physical slovenliness. They are a sign that I am listening to my body. It will reward me with stable emotions, hormones that stay in check, social finesse, continued cleverness, and the ability to write prose that does not make me gag. — Thomm Quackenbush

cademics and intellectuals are culture vultures. In a gathering of today's elite, it is perfectly acceptable to laugh that you barely passed Physics for Poets and Rocks for Jocks and have remained ignorant of science ever since, despite the obvious importance of scientific literacy to informed choices about personal health and public policy. But saying that you have never heard of James Joyce or that you tried listening to Mozart once but prefer Andrew Lloyd Webber is as shocking as blowing your nose on your sleeve or announcing that you employ children in your sweatshop, despite the obvious unimportance of your tastes in leisure-time activity to just about anything. — Steven Pinker

Yeah. She's still just observing though. She's too useless to even carry plates at the moment, so please just think of her as some Russian ornament."
Tom laughed at the owner's blunt response, and asked another question.
"Chief, how do I say something like, 'you're beautiful', in Russian?"
" ... 'Vi ocharovatelny'."
"Err ... Bee, acherabatennen."
However, hearing this, the Caucasian woman looked confused at Tom, and spoke to the owner behind the counter.
" ... What is this man saying? It is unintelligible. I question its relation to the Japanese language."
With a bitter smile, the owner turned his head towards the woman, and spoke to her.
"'Vi ocharovatelny'."
" ... Why do you suddenly speak these social compliments? Please concisely explain your reasoning."
"That's what that young man over there just tried to say to you."
"In which language, exactly?"
Listening to their conversation, — Ryohgo Narita

It's my fond hope that social networks such as Facebook will help users broaden their perspectives by listening to a different set of people than they encounter in their daily life. But I fear services such as Facebook may be turning us into imaginary cosmopolitans. — Ethan Zuckerman

As but one example, the title of this book comes from a 1968 article that appeared in the prestigious Archives of General Psychiatry, in which psychiatrists Walter Bromberg and Frank Simon described schizophrenia as a "protest psychosis" whereby black men developed "hostile and aggressive feelings" and "delusional anti-whiteness" after listening to the words of Malcolm X, joining the Black Muslims, or aligning with groups that preached militant resistance to white society. According to the authors, the men required psychiatric treatment because their symptoms threatened not only their own sanity, but the social order of white America. Bromberg and Simon argued that black men who "espoused African or Islamic" ideologies, adopted "Islamic names" that were changed in such a way so as to deny "the previous Anglicization of their names" in fact demonstrated a "delusional anti-whiteness" that manifest as "paranoid projections of the Negroes to the Caucasian group."10 — Jonathan M. Metzl

Ditto for the stereotype about men monopolizing conversations. Like Sasha, many of my dates - even the more passive ones - did most of the talking. I listened to them talk literally for hours about the most minute, mind-numbing details of their personal lives; men they were still in love with, men they had divorced, roommates and coworkers they hated, childhoods they were loath to remember, yet somehow found the energy to recount ad nauseam. Listening to them was like undergoing a slow frontal lobotomy. I sat there stunned by the social ineptitude of people to whom it never seemed to occur that no one, much less a first date, would have any interest in enduring this ordeal. — Norah Vincent

Whenever there's a new music, there's a new way of listening. And whenever there's a new way of listening, there are new musics that follow from that. And people start listening differently - that can either mean in different places or at different volumes or in different social groups or through different technologies. — Brian Eno

I belong to a generation that came of age listening to news of the collapse of the Communist dicatorships and never felt the slightest affection or nostalgia for those regimes or for the Soviet Union. I was vaccinated for life against the conventional but lazy rhetoric of anticapitalism, some of which simply ignored the historic failure of Communism and much of which turned its back on the intellectual means necessary to push beyond it. I have no interest in denouncing inequality or capitalism per se - especially since social inequalities are not in themselves a problem as long as they are justified, that is, "founded only upon common utility," as article 1 of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen proclaims. — Thomas Piketty

All the while that Jean was listening to him, he was vaguely conscious that what gives literature its reality is the result of work accomplished by the human spirit, no matter what the material facts that may have stimulated it (a walk, a night of love, a social drama), of a sort of discovery in the world of the spirit, of the emotions, made by the human intelligence, so that the value of a book is never in the material presented by the writer, but in the nature of the operation he performs upon it. — Marcel Proust

After listening to everyone rumble with both their pain and their privilege, the white woman who wrote the "you don't know me" note said, "I get it, but I can't spend my life focusing on the negative things - especially what the black and Hispanic students are talking about. It's too hard. Too painful." And before anyone could say a word, she had covered her face with her hands and started to cry. In an instant, we were all in that marshy, dark delta with her. She wiped her face and said, "Oh my God. I get it: I can choose to be bothered when it suits me. I don't have to live this every day." I chose to use my social work — Brene Brown

The first phase of social media was listening to the conversation. The second phase was joining the conversation. The third phase will be hosting the conversation on your site. — Jason Calacanis

Punk rock seemed to make sense. I was listening to The Clash and I really loved their social messages and they have a great history of fighting racism. — Justin Sane

Under the leadership of religious professionals, modern worship has become passive - listening to a message and singing some songs. Seldom is there a call to service or an invitation to trust Christ. Baptisms take place inside the church where it is safe and comfortable rather than in public where there is opportunity to give witness to the saving grace of Christ. The great needs of society are left to para-church groups, government agencies, and other social service organizations. All the while the church is losing its muscle tone, its biceps are becoming loose and flabby and its belly is becoming round and soft. Not a pretty picture for one who once was toned and buff - a lean, mean fighting machine. — Craig Olson

Consider that the simplest social interactions between two people requires performing an astonishing array of tasks: interpreting what the other person is saying; reading body language and facial expressions; smoothly taking turns talking and listening; responding to what the other person said; assessing whether you're being understood; determining whether you're well received, and, if not, figuring out how to improve or remove yourself from the situation. Think of what it takes to juggle all this at once! And that's just a one-to-one conversation. Now imagine the multitasking required in a group setting like a dinner party.
(p237) — Susan Cain

Listening is one of the most important things a brand can do online. If your brand is just broadcasting its own agenda, it isn't truly engaging in a conversation. — Jeremy Goldman

I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind - a secular humanist - I accept the accusation. [Interview, Parade magazine, 24 November 1991] — James A. Michener

[Listening to a song] one could experience a freedom from one's physical body, and from one's social body - the mask you wore to go about in public among those who thought they knew you, an unchosen mask of nervousness and tradition, the mask that, when owrn too long, makes the face behind it shrivel up and rot away. For some, a spinning record opened up the possibility that one might say anything, in any voice, with any face, the singer's mask now a sign of mystery. — Greil Marcus

While Bitty's tone was pleasantly concerned, it held that unmistakable Southern belle cattiness that wouldn't escape the attention of anyone familiar with polite social warfare. Three women within hearing stepped back a pace, but made no pretense that they weren't listening to every word. After all, this is the kind of show that makes the tiresome rules of etiquette bearable. — Virginia Brown

Just like the body responds with sore muscles when we add mileage, the initial discomfort felt when we listen to the Voice Inside reflects growth. The good news: anxiety initially triggered by listening to our inner dialogue is short-term vs. the unnamed, interminable dread that piggybacks suppression. Even better, we can manage it with self-talk, deep breathing (inherent to running), the Tribe and social support. — Gina Greenlee

Importantly, companies are using social media to do things that go way beyond just chatting up existing customers on Facebook. Sales departments use social to nurture leads and close sales. HR posts job openings and vets applicants. Community and support squads mine networks, blogs and forums with deep listening tools. — Ryan Holmes

For me the march was a labor - a labor of love - but I was busy handing out flyers for the National Association of Black Social Workers, so I really wasn't standing in the crowd listening and observing. I was busy. — Andre Braugher

Those who speak always and those who never speak are equally unfit for friendship. A food proportion of the talent of listening and speaking is the base of social virtues. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

I realized, listening to the silences that fell sometimes in my interview groups, that there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. It is permissable, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition. You can talk a lot about sex (or its lack) but not about the feelings that are keeping women from sleeping with their husbands. You can talk about society's lack of "appreciation" of mother's and the need for more social validation
but not about policy that might actually make life better. You cannot really challenge the American culture of rugged individualism. — Judith Warner

The shared meal is no small thing. It is a foundation of family life,
the place where our children learn the art of conversation and acquire
the habits of civilization: sharing, listening, taking turns, navigating
differences, arguing without offending. What have been called the
"cultural contradictions of capitalism" - its tendency to undermine
the stabilizing social forms it depends on - are on vivid display today
at the modern American dinner table, along with all the brightly colored packages that the food industry has managed to plant there. — Michael Pollan

Intrusive, thoughtless people! said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing the length of his fingers. — Franz Kafka

Social is about engaging, it's about a conversation, it's about listening and then responding, it's an ongoing conversation with our fan base. — Stephanie McMahon

I learned more about the poor Mrunas' social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: they had so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family. — Harper Lee

Social media listening tools make it easy to track brand references and mentions, and these functions can still be handled ably by a small, dedicated team. — Ryan Holmes

The electronic revolution is like the social event of the season. Everybody has received an invitation. Those who choose not to attend will be left out in the cold listening to everyone else talk about what a marvelous time they had. — Kilburn Hall

While others are broadcasting be listening — Bernard Kelvin Clive

I swear you don't know how to have any fun at all," I teased.
"This is not exactly my idea of it," he said wryly.
I gestured toward the ballroom. "But you're royal. It's your kind of party. You should be relaxed, letting everyone suck up to you."
He laughed and my chest tightened. God, I loved that sound.
"Kendra, not everything about being royal is enjoyable."
"So what would you consider fun?" I asked, curious.
Tristan was obviously well-liked and respected. But I'd never seen him when he wasn't in either instructor, gardinel, or prince mode. I got the feeling he wasn't very social and spent a lot of time alone.
His eyes turned thoughtful. "Relaxing in a quiet room with a nice glass of scotch, listening to Bach."
I rolled my eyes. "Are you serious, grandpa?"
He hid a smile. — Emma Raveling