See a gallery of 12 quotes on listening.

  • Blessed are the ears which hear God's whisper and listen not to the murmurs of the world.
    — Thomas a Kempis quoted in The Sun & Moon Over Assisi by Gerard Thomas Straub
  • Hospitable people are also good listeners, which explains why listening has long been considered one of the most important habits to cultivate if we wish to get closer to God. In my own life I've found that when I am able to listen carefully enough to anyone, listen to them with my full heart, then the walls of separation come crumbling down. Martin Buber believed that such "active listening" is not only the secret to fulfilling relationships between people, but a vital passageway to faith.
    — Phillip L. Berman in The Journey Home
  • God speaks to us every day only we don't know how to listen.
    — Mahatma Gandhi quoted in In the Middle of This Road We Call Life by James W. Jones
  • The greatest wisdom is listening
    to the guidance of the heart.
    — Kabir Helminski in The Knowing Heart
  • The central mantra of the Jewish people is "Hear, O Israel." Listen. The command implies that still one can hear, that the revelation is still happening.
    — Michael Lerner in Jewish Renewal
  • A wealth of teaching is available. Our work is not so much to find a teacher as to improvise our own receptivity and sharpen our ability to hear the teachings all around us.
    — David A. Cooper in Silence, Simplicity & Solitude
  • Likewise today, native people are encouraged to inhale the sweet smells of the earth, see things in perspective, listen to both sides of every story, and to speak only half as much as they listen.
    — Evan T. Pritchard in No Word for Time
  • For listening is the act of entering the skin of the other and wearing it for a time as if it were our own. Listening is the gateway to understanding.
    — David Spangler in Parent as Mystic, Mystic as Parent
  • All things and all men, so to speak, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen, they want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being.... But we can give it to them only through the love that listens.
    — Paul Tillich quoted in Your Mythic Journey by Sam Keen
  • Great listening is in its way no less difficult than great writing. It is simply less cultivated, less noted, less hailed by the world. The Jewish tradition is a tradition of those who could listen with their minds and souls.
    — David J. Wolpe in In Speech and In Silence
  • I need you to listen to me.
    No one has listened to me.
    No one understands my suffering,
    including the ones who say they love me.
    The pain inside me
    is suffocating me.
    It is the TNT
    that makes up the bomb.
    — Thich Nhat Hanh in Call Me by My True Names

More Quotes about Listening