John C. Maxwell Quotes

The ability to understand people is one of the greatest assets anyone can ever have.

I've never been interested in things that sparkle and shine; I'm more interested in people.

My job is about playing people. And I think once you lose touch with people, what do you play?

Indeed, I am repeatedly astonished by the number of really good writers who understand human beings so well on paper but don't know how to deal with them in real life.

For most of your career, what you're trying to do is to step into other people's shoes.

I think one of my strengths is kind of knowing people and getting a good read and a feel for what that person's strengths might be.

Working with different people anyway is like life and meeting different people... as long as you can be empathetic, you can take a bit of them on and see what you can do to help their process. That said, my relationship with Woody Allen was trying to hang on his every word so that I could tell everybody what he said afterwards. But certainly, he was a very good example of somebody who you didn't hear talk above a very low volume for the entire time he was on-set.

In order to lead people, you have to get to know them.

Your people smarts will prove ten times more valuable than all the book smarts you can't get.

To write prescriptions is easy, but to come to an understanding with people is hard.

Success in dealing with people depends on sympathetic grasp of the other person's viewpoint.

One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.

We need to learn to observe and listen to people more to get to know them.

You've got to be an observer. And you've got to take time to listen to people, talk, to watch what they do.

My mother always taught me to think about things from other people's perspectives and think about where they're coming from.

If I don't have any other strength, I'm pretty good at building relationships.

I think I am a pretty good at understanding each character of each person I meet.

Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations.

I understand how to read people, and nurture them and guide them, and let them be free to do what they want to do.

I like being around people who are good conversationalists.

I spend most of my life just listening to people.

I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting, I would rather watch TV. Of course this becomes eventually known to the other person.

You have to have a patience for relationships.

I find people confusing.

When one is not understood one should as a rule lower one's voice, because when one really speaks loudly enough and is not heard, it is because people do not want to hear. One had better begin to mutter to oneself, then they get curious.