Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.

Few people...have had much training in listening. The training of most oververbalized professional intellectuals is in the opposite direction. Living in a competitive culture, most of us are most of the time chiefly concerned with getting our own views across, and we tend to find other people's speeches a tedious interruption of the flow of our own ideas.

Listening well and answering well is one of the greatest perfections that can be obtained in conversation.

To listen closely and reply well is the highest perfection we are able to attain in the art of conversation.

Gary Cooper - the greatest listener in the world! And he used to answer in kind, which is wonderful because you don't see that anymore. People don't listen. They really don't.

Listening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.

The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying.

Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows.

I have always had extraordinarily good relations with very conservative colleagues. And that's not because I agree with any of them or fudge on my positions, but people feel I listen to them and give them the benefit of the doubt. I assume the best of people. And that, I think, is an attitude that is maybe rare in politics.

I think I say things nicely and my whole goal is to be understood and that includes by people who don't understand me.

Some of the most successful people managers are also the best listeners.

Sometimes listening itself may not be enough-some people must be prodded if you are to find out what they're thinking.

It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.

Empathic listening takes time, but it doesn't take anywhere near as much time as it takes to back up and correct misunderstandings when you're already miles down the road; to redo; to live with unexpressed and unsolved problems; to deal with the results of not giving people psychological air.

I think girls are surprised when you actually really listen and then you call it back at the end of the night.

Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.

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.

If you can listen well, people will say you're a good conversationalist.

Many people may listen, but few people actually hear.

Is listening important? I can't think of a single walk of life where it wouldn't be.

To be alive is to listen quietly while other people talk. That's how you learn something.

Take rather than give the tone to the company you are in. If you have parts you will show them more or less upon every subject; and if you have not, you had better talk sillily upon a subject of other people's than of your own choosing.

You cannot talk to people successfully if they think you are not interested in what they have to say or you have no respect for them.

Proper listening is the foundation of proper living.

I think listening to people is helpful.