Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

Dr. Karl Augustus Menninger, American psychiatrist and founder of the Menninger Foundation and Menninger Clinic

Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don‘t have to do anything else. We don‘t have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.

Margaret J. Wheatley, American writer and management consultant

An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one‘s own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker‘s world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually an extension and enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will fell less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is begun again.

M. Scott Peck, American psychiatrist, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

Sir Winston Churchill, British Conservative politician, statesman, Prime Minister, a writer, and artist

To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.

Mark Nepo, American poet and philosopher, The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live an Authentic Life

To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is a small wonder that people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself
and for knowing that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes frightened.

Robert William Murphy, American author, Galgary street talk, Power of listening

If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate, we hardly listen at all to what is being said.... One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of silence, in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quite; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, Indian writer and speaker on philosophical and spiritual subjects

Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals.

Christopher Isham, theoretical physicist at, London. His main research interests are quantum gravity

She talked a while and I would listen and then I would talk. Our conversation simply went along without strain. We seemed to discover secrets together.

Charles Bukowski, American poet, novelist and short story writer, Short stories collection - Confession of a Coward