Quotes about listening
page 11

“And I am very ugly. I am the ugliest fairy in the world; and I shall be, till people behave themselves as they ought to do. And then I shall grow as handsome as my sister, who is the loveliest fairy in the world; and her name is Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby. So she begins where I end, and I begin where she ends; and those who will not listen to her must listen to me, as you will see.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Source: Water Babies http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/wtrbs10h.htm (1863), Ch. 5.

People, World, Sister

“Every time I went to a family gathering, I was the boy who made it. I was a Professor at Harvard and everybody stood around in awe and listened to my every word, and all I felt was that horror that I knew inside that I didn't know. Of course, it was all such beautiful, gentle horror, because there was so much reward involved.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

Be Here Now (1971)

Family, Beauty, Boy, Time

“I spoke of the melancholy financial position of Great Britain. Half our foreign investments had been spent in the common cause when we stood alone. There is a great external debt of three thousand million pounds. We should require time to get on our feet again. The President listened closely, attentively and sympathetically. He spoke of the immense debt the Allies owed to Britain for that period when she fought alone. "If you had gone like France," he added, "we might well be fighting the Germans on the American coast at the present time."”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Churchill's account of his conversation with President Truman (18 July 1945), quoted in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 298
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Time, Fight

“Imagine, if you will, the dispiriting experience of listening to an awful cover of one of your favorite songs. That's how I felt sitting through Die Another Day, the 20th official outing for [James Bond]. This is a train wreck of an action film … What's missing from this movie? Any real sense that we're watching 007 rather than a generic spy in a tuxedo.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=745 of Die Another Day (2002). Two star reviews

Imagination, Sense, Training

“Anyone listening to this show that believes homosexuality is a normal lifestyle has been brainwashed. It's very dangerous if we start accepting lower and lower forms of behavior as the normal.”

Sean Hannity (1961) American television host, conservative political commentator

Hannity's first radio show at UC Santa Barbara (25 May 1989), as quoted in FAIR (November/December 2003) http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1158

Behavior

“Going into the House last night, the caution lately given me by a poor but honest Scotchman struck me. He said to me, "Mr. Bright, I'll give you a piece of advice. You are going into bad company; and now that you are in, remember that you stick to what you said when you were out." If one had dropped from the clouds upon the floor of the House and listened to the debate last night, I never should have dreamed that there was the least distress or discontent in the country. It was true that Lord John Russell made a very clever speech and some hard hits at the ministry… Then came Lord Palmerston, and he made a very clever speech, if there was no country; it would have been very well at a debating club; it had some hard cuts at the ministry, interspersed with references to Afghanistan and the Ameers of Scinde, and everything but the condition of England question.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech at an Anti-Corn Law League banquet (29 July 1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 116-117.
1840s

Dreams, Question, Housing, Night

“For a long time I've been telling Stalin that Beria is a crook but Stalin won't listen.”

Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze (1886–1937) Soviet politician

Quoted in "Armed truce: the beginnings of the Cold War 1945-46"‎ - Page 65 - by Hugh Thomas - History - 1986

Time

“Climbing up on Solsbury Hill,
I could see the city light.
Wind was blowing, time stood still.
Eagle flew out of the night.
He was something to observe.
Came in close, I heard a voice.
Standing stretching every nerve,
Had to listen had no choice.
I did not believe the information.
I just had to trust imagination.
My heart going boom boom boom.
"Son," he said, "Grab your things, I've come to take you home."”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Solsbury Hill
Song lyrics, Peter Gabriel (I) (1977)

Home, Imagination, Light, Time

“On your way towards becoming a bad theoretician, take your own immature theory, stop checking it for mistakes, don't listen to colleagues who do spot weaknesses, and start admiring your own infallible intelligence.”

Gerardus 't Hooft (1946) Dutch theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner

How to become a bad theoretical physicist http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theoristbad.html

Way, Intelligence

“God makes sech nights, all white an' still,
Fur'z you can look or listen,
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill,
All silence an' all glisten.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

The Courtin' , st. 1.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

God, Silence, Night

“Well, no question decisions have made things unstable. But the question is can we succeed. And I believe we can. Listen, I'd like to see stability and a unified Iraq. A young democracy will provide the stability we look for. I will tell you that if we just isolate ourselves from the Middle East and hope for the best, we will not address the conditions that had led young suiciders to get on airplanes to come and attack us in the first place.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

60 Minutes interview http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/14/60minutes/main2359119.shtml in response to the question “But wasn't it your administration that created the instability in Iraq?” (January 14, 2007) 2000s, 2007

Hope, Democracy, Question, Decision

“Listen up, me name be Buchanan, me knows enough things bout politics. Get involved, mack daddies. Y'all better realize, that nothing be a better way to get your kicks. West side, aight?”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

As quoted in "Rekognize" http://www.hark.com/clips/lkkxsfbcbd-listen-up-me-name-be-buchanan-me-knows-nuff-tings-bout-politics (25 July 2004), Da Ali G Show. 2000s

Way

“The human heart is a band playing in a park at a distance; we see the crowds listening, but we catch but fragments of the music now and again, and cannot make out the tune.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Music, Heart

“More positively, taking pleasure in music is the most obvious sign of comprehension, the proof that we understand it, and we may extend that to sympathy with other listeners' enjoyment …”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

Pleasure, Music, Understanding

“Heaven, n. A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Personality

“Our task is not so much discovery as re-discovery. What one needs is not so much thinking as remembering. Sometimes it suffices to sit quietly and listen well, when venerable men have thought before us. Constant forgettings of truths once perceived are the very charm of the human mind; the history of human thought is nothing more than the story of these forgettings and rememberings and forgettings again.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

On the Wisdom of America (1950), p. xiv

Men, Truth, History, Thinking

“Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Source: Turning to one another (2002), p. 92

Life

“I obey the Commandments, the sensible ones. Where they don’t know what they’re talking about I ignore them. I keep thinking about the story of the two old women in church listening to the priest discoursing on the dynamics of the married state. At the end of the sermon one turns to the other and says, “I wish I knew as little about it as he does.””

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“Basil From Her Garden”.
Flying to America: 45 More Stories (2007)

Women, Thinking

“Christ's voice sounds now for each of us in loving invitation; and dead in sin and hardness of heart though we be, we can listen and live. Christ Himself, my brother, sows the seed now. Do you take care that it falls not on, but in, your souls.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 85.

Love, Soul, Heart, Christ

“Turn up the TV. No one listening will suspect,
even your mother won't detect it,
no your father won't know.
they think that I've got no respect
but everything means less than zero.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Less Than Zero
Song lyrics, My Aim Is True (1977)

Thinking

“Do you recall that night in June
Upon the Danube River;
We listened to the ländler-tune,
We watched the moonbeams quiver.”

Charles Hamilton Aide (1826–1906) French writer

The Danube River, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Night

“Your captain is your mother and father. He will tell you when to eat and when to sleep. Listen to him. Make happy. And we will all see the land we are going to.”

Mau Piailug (1932–2010) Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal and a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wa…

An Ocean in Mind (1987)

Happiness, Sleep

“And so, from this day forth, we want all the more to let our thoughts revolve around and hover over Socrates and Christ at all times, openly taking pride that they are more alive for us than all those living today and that we listen to and love them as we do none of the living.”

Constantin Brunner (1862–1937) German philosopher

Source: Our Christ : The Revolt of the Mystical Genius (1921), p. 188

Love, Time, Christ

“For me the voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voice or ‘the still small Voice’ mean one and the same thing. I saw no form. I have never tried, for I have always believed God to be without form. One who realizes God is freed from sin for ever…. But what I did hear was like a Voice from afar and yet quite near. It was as unmistakable as some human voice definitely speaking to me, and irresistible. I was not dreaming at the time I heard the Voice. The hearing of the Voice was preceded by a terrific struggle within me. Suddenly the Voice came upon me. I listened, made certain that it was the Voice, and the struggle ceased. I was calm. The determination was made accordingly, the date and the hour of the fast were fixed…. Could I give any further evidence that it was truly the Voice that I heard and that it was not an echo of my own heated imagination? I have no further evidence to convince the sceptic. He is free to say that it was all self-delusion or hallucination. It may well have been so. I can offer no proof to the contrary. But I can say this — that not the unanimous verdict of the whole world against me could shake me from the belief that what I heard was the true voice of God.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Harijan (1933, July 8); also in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Vol. 61), and in The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi (Prabhu and Rao, eds., 1967, pp. 33-34)
1930s

God, Truth, World, Dreams

“When I started writing seriously, I made the major discovery of my life — that I am right and everybody else is wrong if they disagree with me. What a great thing to learn: Don't listen to anyone else, and always go your own way.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

Life, Way, Learning

“It is a very helpful insight to say we are vehicles for our DNA, we are hosts for DNA parasites which are our genes. Those are insights which help us to understand an aspect of life. But it's emotive to say, that's all there is to it, we might as well give up going to Shakespeare plays and give up listening to music and things, because that's got nothing to do with it. That's an entirely different subject.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

An Interview by Sheena McDonald (1995)

Life, Music, Understanding, Help

“If I had a choice, I would have wanted to be Debussy or Couperin. I listen and it is magic. I just can't understand how they conceived enchantment. I couldn't so I decided to be a mathematician, the next best thing.”

Philippe Kahn (1952) Entrepreneur, camera phone creator

Interview with the Times reporter, 2002.

Understanding

“I listened to the San Juan games on the radio and my idol was Monte Irvin, because he not only was a good hitter but had a very good arm. Even my friends called me Monte Irvin as a nickname. I never thought I’d be good enough to play pro ball. I always felt you had to be like Superman to play professionally. But in 1952, at age 17, I signed a contract with Santurce. My bonus? It was $500 and one glove. They also paid me $30 a week. Two years later – when I was 19 – there were eight or nine big league teams after me and I signed with the Dodgers for a $10,000 bonus. This was a big day in my life.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in “Clouter Clemente: Popular Buc; Rifle-Armed Flyhawk Aims At Second Bat Crown”
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1964</big>

Life, Age, Game

“Listen, here is the law! I am the law! These boys go to work!”

Frank Hague (1876–1956) Mayor of Jersey City

Speech on city government to the Emory Methodist Episcopal Church in Jersey City (10 November 1937), quoted in New York Times. (11 November 1937), p. 1, responding to the director of the Board of Education's special service bureau, upon being told that the law required two young delinquents to go to school rather than work, as they would have preferred.

Law, Boy

“I would be a liar if I said we were not pretty nervous on the day of the match. I was in my kit, hanging about in the corridor, when I saw the England inside-right [Ernie] Taylor, who wasn't very tall. I popped back into the dressing room and said to the others: 'Listen, we're going to be all right, they've got someone even smaller than me.”

Ferenc Puskás (1927–2006) Hungarian-Spanish association football player

Ferenc Puskas before Hungary demolished England 6-3 at Wembley in 1953. BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/funny_old_game/6151022.stm

“The stars are silent.
Voyager among dark harbors, I listen, but the midnight wind carries only the sound of trees and water lapping against the gunwale and the solitary cry of the night swallow.
There is no dawn. No searing sun rises in east or west. The rocks over Calumal do not silver, and the great round world slides through the void.”

Jack McDevitt book The Hercules Text

Source: The Hercules Text (1986), Chapter 10 Monitor (p. 162)

World, Star, Tree, Water

“About once a month I run across a person who radiates an inner light. These people can be in any walk of life. They seem deeply good. They listen well. They make you feel funny and valued. You often catch them looking after other people and as they do so their laugh is musical and their manner is infused with gratitude. They are not thinking about what wonderful work they are doing. They are not thinking about themselves at all.”

David Brooks (1961) American journalist, commentator and editor

[David, Brooks, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/david-brooks-the-moral-bucket-list.html?smid=tw-nytdavidbrooks&seid=auto&_r=0, The Moral Bucket List, New York Times, April 11, 2015]
2010s

Life, People, Music, Feeling

“I said to the bankers, "Listen, fellows, if I have a problem, then you have a problem. We have to find a way out or it's going to be a difficult time for both of us."”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Fortune (13 August 1990), as quoted in The World According to Trump (2005) by Ken Lawrence, p. 44
Cf. J. Paul Getty: "If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
1990s

Way, Problem, Time

“So I am just sitting and waiting, listening, and if something exciting comes, I just jump in.”

George Gamow (1904–1968) Russian-American physicist and science writer

About the origin of his interest in biology in an "Interview with George Gamow", by Charles Weiner at Professor Gamow's home in Boulder, Colorado (25 April 1968)

Waiting

“Whether a person is spiritual or not, we all seek to get away from the stress, anger, and anxiety of everyday life. Some people drink, do drugs, or do worse to escape, and they hurt themselves in the process. Some people listen to music, mine included, and feel better.”

Yanni (1954) Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer

Yanni in Words. Miramax Books. Co-author David Rensin

Life, People, Music, Feeling

“Paul asks how I would have handled a love letter from a student. I don't know — by talking, maybe, by listening. I don't know.
How sad that we don't hear each other — any of us.
Major issues are submerged by minor ones; catastrophes by absurdities.”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part VIII, ch. 39 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Love, Sadness

“Ever since I was a little girl, I felt that I wanted to be of service here on the earth: I felt that was my job somehow. And whatever I was going to do, I was going to find a way to do that. And so, as I got a larger audience -- a broader audience worldwide, and more and more people were listening to me -- it became important for me to share that thought. And the song "Get on Your Feet" -- which I didn't write, it was written actually by my guitar player, bass player and keyboardist... They knew how I felt. [They knew] what my thoughts were... So although it was written before my accident, it was thrown back at me so many times... But that really is my motto. I look always forward. I look ahead. And that's why I chose to record that song, because I really loved the message. Then "Coming Out of the Dark," which came on the heals of that accident and my rehab, and the incredible love that I felt from everyone worldwide that helped me through that difficult moment when I broke my back in 1990, is a big thank you to my fans -- and an expression of how ultimately we are here for each other to help one another. And the strength of prayer... That's why I say I know the love that saved me, you're sharing with me. We do have the power to save one another... And I wanted to thank everyone for being there for me.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

iTunes interview (released June 2, 2007)
2007

Love, People, Way, Girl

“Sarah Palin is absolutely the real deal. You know, I only got to spend a short amount of time with her but, you know, it was been asked if I felt any presence when I was with John McCain or Barack Obama. You know, with Sarah Palin, I don't want to say I felt a presence but she definitely had energy and she definitely went to work for American people, and it disgusts me on how often they try to bash her just for her sincerity. It's just, you know, she really wants to work for America and I mean, I wish people would listen to her and let them, and let her work for us. You know, she wants to serve us. She's not looking for power.”

Joe the Plumber (1973) American conservative activist and commentator

"Glenn talks to Joe the Plumber" at GlennBeck.com (10 December 2008) http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/19055/.

People, Time, Sincerity

“And Bernie Sanders, who doesn’t believe in God, how in the world are we gonna let Bernie, I mean, really! Listen, Bernie gotta get saved, He gotta meet Jesus, I don’t know. He gotta, he gotta have a comin’ to Jesus meeting.”

Mark Burns (televangelist) (1979) Christian pastor and founder of the NOW Television Network

On Bernie Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win a major party nominating contest https://forward.com/news/breaking-news/344148/pro-trump-pastor-backtracks-on-claim-that-bernie-sanders-gotta-meet-jesus/

God, World

“The bird
That glads the night had cheer'd the listening groves with sweet complainings.”

William Somervile (1675–1742) English poet

The Chace (1735)

Bird, Night

“He knew in his heart that there was a relief in not being listened to, sometimes. Power meant responsibility. Advice unacted upon almost always might have been right, and in the working out of whatever plan was followed, there was anyway always blood; better it was on their hands. The good soldier did as he was told, and if he had any sense at all volunteered for nothing, especially promotion.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter XII (p. 65).

Sense, Heart

“We treat the children like children. It is the powerful with their war that treats them like they are adults. We talk to them. We teach them that the word, together with love and dignity, is what makes us human beings. We don't teach them how to fight. Well, yes, but only how to fight with their words. They learn. They know that the reason we are in all this is so that they won't have to do the same. And they talk and they also listen. Contrary to what you say, we teach the children that words don't kill but that yes it is possible to kill words and, along with them, the act of being human.”

Subcomandante Marcos (1957) Mexican activist

"I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet" http://www.csuchico.edu/zapatist/HTML/Archive/Communiques/etaJAN.html January, 2003

Love, War, Children, Learning

“But, O ye Gods! and thou, whom gods obey,
Great Jove! with pity listen as I pray!
Respect the monarch's and the father's prayer!
If Pallas' safety be your heavenly care;
If to infold him in these arms again
I live, for life I sue with all its pain.
But if some dreadful fortune be design'd,
Now, now, while hope still soothes my cheated mind;
Ere yet the future shall its fates unfold;
While thus my son, my last, sole joy, I hold;
O! break life's chain at once, and let me go,
By darkness shrouded, from the death of woe!”

Charles Symmons (1749–1826) Welsh poet

Book VIII, lines 728–739
The Æneis (1817)

Life, Death, God, Pain

“Old Man Warner snorted. "Pack of crazy fools, he said. "Listening to the young folks, nothing's good enough for them. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to go back to living in caves, nobody work any more, live that way for a while. Used to be a saying about 'Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon.' First thing you know, we'd all be eating stewed chickweed and acorns. There's always been a lottery," he added petulantly.”

Shirley Jackson book The Lottery

The Lottery (1948)

Fools, Way

“The temperature was six below zero and it kept me dying on the spot because the blood coagulated and clotted in ugly smears of cloth and skin and the pain hadn't started yet, so when the little fat guy who saw my eyes open and still bright pulled me away from the carnage he was almost in the shock I was going into. Nobody would listen to him. He was a drunk. I was nearly dead.
Sometimes the body responds to a stimulus that can't be explained. He got me upright. I walked woodenly, dyingly. I was sat in an old car. The fat man rolled down the windows. The blood stayed frozen. My hands were numb and I couldn't feel my feet. Idly, I wondered what frostbite was like. Breathing was a thing that was happening, but at a pace that said it could slow, then stop at any time. A dull, squeezing sensation of pain was beginning to gnaw on my insides and I knew that eventually, and very soon, it would grow into a terrible, devastating animal with an awful hunger and I would be eaten alive by it.
I wanted to scream but nothing would come out.”

Mickey Spillane book Black Alley

Black Alley (1996)

Hunger, Pain, Cars, Guy

“Listen stranger, passerby,
And those I never knew.
There's not one day that you are living
Has been promised to you.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

God Fearing Man.
Song lyrics, Fight for Your Mind (1995)

“To amuse is not to teach. The object of teaching is to erect a framework of knowledge in a child's mind and gradually to bring the child as near as may be to the average level of intelligence. Later in life the facts taught by experience and new discoveries will add themselves to this framework. It is wrong to attempt to upset this natural order and to appeal to a child's mind by diverting it with the spectacle of modern life. Teaching by means of pictures, radio, and the cinema is in itself ineffective; these methods must not be used unless they involve (and this is possible) some effort or special enthusiasm. That which is learned without difficulty is soon forgotten, and for the same reason, oral instruction which does not require the pupil's personal participation is almost always rather useless. Eloquence slides in and out of young minds. To listen is not to work.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Naturally this does not apply to the teaching of modern languages.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Working

Life, Intelligence, Nature, Knowledge

“I often think to myself that it's not I but someone else who is P. M. and is the recipient of those continuous marks of respect and affection from the general public who called in Downing Street or at the station to take off their hats and cheer. And then I go back to the House of Commons and listen to the unending stream of abuse of the P. M., his faithlessness, his weakness, his wickedness, his innate sympathy with Fascism and his obstinate hatred of the working classes.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Hilda Chamberlain (28 May 1939), quoted in Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler. British Politics and British Policy. 1933-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 293.
Prime Minister

Thinking, Housing

“We will need to become savvy about how to build relationships, how to nurture growing, evolving things. All of us will need better skills in listening, communicating, and facilitating groups, because these are the talents that build strong relationships.”

Margaret J. Wheatley (1941) American writer

Source: Leadership and the New Science (1992), p. 38

Communication, Strong

“We're at a time when we are being presented with undeniable changes in the global climate and fundamental issues that affect every single one of us, and it's the time we're listening to the most hokey shite on the radio and watching vacuous bullshit celebrities being vacuous bullshit celebrities and desperately trying to forget about everything. Which is fine, you know, but personally speaking, I can't do that.”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

source http://web.archive.org/web/20031208173545/http://www.icyeyes.com.br/interp.htm

Change, Time, Personality, Forgetting

“For art, the intervention of capital always signals a further degree of mediation. To say that art is commodified is to say that a mediation, or standing-in-between, has occurred, & that this betweenness amounts to a split, & that this split amounts to "alienation". Improv music played by friends at home is less "alienated" than music played "live" at the Met, or music played through media (whether PBS or MTV or Walkman). In fact, an argument could be made that music distributed free or at cost on cassette via mail, is less alienated than live music played at some huge We Are The World spectacle or Las Vegas niteclub, even though the latter is live music played to a live audience (or at least so it appears), while the former is recorded music consumed by distant & even anonymous listeners.”

Hakim Bey (1945) American political writer, poet and essayist

Immediatism (AK Press: 1994)

World, Art, Music, Home

“Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.”

Samuel Johnson book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia

Source: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759), Chapter 1

Youth, Age, Hope, History

“He rushed before them to the glittering space,
And, with a strength that was but strong desire,
Cried, "I am Jubal, I!…. I made the lyre!"
The tones amid a lake of silence fell
Broken and strained, as if a feeble bell
Had tuneless pealed the triumph of a land
To listening crowds in expectation spanned.
Sudden came showers of laughter on that lake;
They spread along the train from front to wake
In one great storm of merriment, while he
Shrank doubting whether he could Jubal be…”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)

Laughter, Strong, Silence, Training

“It’s always been the same, same old story.
From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go — away”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

Father and Son
Song lyrics, Tea for the Tillerman (1970)

Way

“Between the Shaman of the Tungus, the European prelate who rules church and state, the Voguls, and the Puritans, on the one hand, and the man who listens to his own command of duty, on the other, the difference is not that the former make themselves slaves, while the latter is free, but that the former have their lord outside themselves, while the latter carries his lord in himself, yet at the same time is his own slave.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate (1799)

Time

“All those angry, uneducated Trump supporters seemed to understand what his policies were. They figured it out by listening to him. It was only fair. No one listened to Trump, except the voters; and no one listened to the voters, except Trump.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

2016, In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! (2016)

Understanding, Support

“[Flying into Baltimore after 9/11] I didn't want to see some pacifist, vegan, whole-wheat, free-range, organic, progressive, gray-ponytail, communist, liberal, draft-dodging, NPR-listening wimp! What are they going to do if somebody tries to hijack the plane? Throw a Birkenstock at him? Offer him some pot?…I was hoping for about twenty-five NRA-loving, gun-nut, serial-killing, psychopathic, Ollie North, Norman Schwarzkopf, right-wing, Agent Orange, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, CIA, FBI, automatic-weapon, smart-bomb, laser-sighting bastards!”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Ten Little Indians (2003)

Love, Hope, Flying

“Listen to the flute it tells you a story' A story of nostalgia and separation.”

Mahmud Tarzi (1865–1933) Afghan writer

Mahmud Tarzi, poem written in Turkey. Article by Dr. Bashir Sakhwaraz, Role of Afghan Writiers in Afghan Inependence

Nostalgia

“On a personal level, I chose not to look at the eclipse but rather sat outside during it and listened and appreciated nature, instead of participating in it like a pop festival. My decision was based partly on belief but also I have to contemplate the mass production of glasses and how they will only be used once, polluting our earth with plastics and harmful metals.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Speaking about the solar eclipse on August 21, 2017.

Nature, Decision, Personality

“All the Fathers with one heart execrated, and with one mouth protested against, contaminating the word of God with the subtleties of sophists, and involving it in the brawls of dialecticians. Do they keep within these limits when the sole occupation of their lives is to entwine and entangle the simplicity of Scripture with endless disputes, and worse than sophistical jargon? So much so, that were the Fathers to rise from their graves, and listen to the brawling art which bears the name of speculative theology, there is nothing they would suppose it less to be than a discussion of a religious nature.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Prefatory Address, p. 22
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

God, Art, Nature, Heart

“What did you do today?
—Went to the grocery store and Xeroxed a box of English muffins, two pounds of ground veal and an apple. In flagrant violation of the Copyright Act.
—You had your nap, I remember that—
—I had my nap.
—Lunch, I remember that, there was lunch, slept with Susie after lunch, then your nap, woke up, right?, went Xeroxing, right?, read a book not a whole book but part of a book—
—Talked to Happy on the telephone saw the seven o’clock news did not wash dishes want to clean up some of this mess?
—If one does nothing but listen to the new music, everything else drifts, frays. Did Odysseus feel this way when he and Diomedes decided to steal Athene’s statue from the Trojans, so that they would become dejected and lose the war? I don’t think so, but who is to know what effect the new music of that remote time had on its hearers?
—Or how it compares to the new music of this time?
—One can only conjecture.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The New Music”, opening
Great Days (1979)

War, Happiness, Books, Music

“Set up shelter and cleaned up… to let them know I’m still alive. Got text saying I’m a suspect. Saw patrol. Not spotted. They stuck to the trails. Listened to radio. News media calling me a ‘survivalist.’ Ha! Catchy phrase I guess. Shelter-in-place (ordered) by spooked cops.”

Eric Frein (1983) American fugitive

Diary entry (17 September 2014), as quoted in "‘Literally hunting humans’: Eric Frein, sniper who killed Pa. trooper, sentenced to death" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/27/murder-in-his-heart-eric-frein-sniper-killer-of-pa-trooper-sentenced-to-death/?utm_term=.1fa45b04fbf7 (27 April 2017), by Fred Barbash, The Washington Post Diary (September 2014)

“We've watched the Homo Sapiens interest group since the first appearance of the Blight. Where is this "Earth" the humans claim to be from? "Half way around the galaxy," they say, and deep in the Slow Zone. Even their proximate origin, Nyjora, is conveniently in the Slowness. We see an alternative theory: Sometime, maybe further back than the last consistent archives, there was a battle between Powers. The blueprint for this "human race" was written, complete with communication interfaces. Long after the original contestants and their stories had vanished, this race happened to get in position where it could Transcend. And that Transcending was tailor-made, too, re-establishing the Power that had set the trap to begin with.We're not sure of the details, but a scenario such as this is inevitable. What we must do is also clear. Straumli Realm is at the heart of the Blight, obviously beyond all attack. But there are other human colonies. We ask the Net to help in identifying all of them. We ourselves are not a large civilization, but we would be happy to coordinate the information gathering, and the military action that is required to prevent the Blight's spread in the Middle Beyond. For nearly seventeen weeks, we've been calling for action. Had you listened in the beginning, a concerted strike might have been sufficient to destroy the Straumli Realm. Isn't the Fall of Relay enough to wake you up? Friends, if we act together we still have a chance.Death to vermin.”

Vernor Vinge A Fire Upon the Deep (1st edition)

Source: A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), p. 245.

Happiness, Way, Communication, Appearance

“Literary people of the opposite sex do not really love each other. All they really desire is to read their manuscript aloud to a receptive listener.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: A Thousand & One Epigrams: Selected from the Writings of Elbert Hubbard (1911), p. 11.

Love, People, Sex, Reading

“English: New York swines. Listen, I was a dissident, suppressed by the KGB, unlike very many present fighters for democracy. I never, in principle, in the program — it didn't occur to me that I should leave this country. It is my country. Mine!”

Mikhail Leontyev (1958) Russian television pundit

Сволочи нью-йоркские. Слушай, я был диссидентом, профилактированным КГБ, в отличие от очень многих нынешних борцов за демократию. Я никогда, у меня в принципе, в программе, в голове не сидело, что я могу из этой страны уехать. Это моя страна. Моя! Михаил Леонтьев: "Пид…в не люблю! Это зря ты. Наверное, зря" (Стенограмма прямого эфира), Federal Post, 2005-01-24, 2007-03-25 http://www.federalpost.ru/www/print_18140.html,

Democracy, Swine, Country

“A rush of wind comes furiously now, down from the mountaintop. "The ancient Greeks," I say, "who were the inventors of classical reason, knew better than to use it exclusively to foretell the future. They listened to the wind and predicted the future from that. That sounds insane now. But why should the inventors of reason sound insane?"”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 14

Future

“I was sitting on the seashore, half listening to a friend arguing violently about something which merely bored me. Unconsciously to myself, I looked at a film, of sand I had picked up on my hand, when I suddenly saw the exquisite beauty of every little grain of it; instead of being dull, I saw that each particle was made up on a perfect geometrical pattern, with sharp angles, from each of which a brilliant shaft of light was reflected, while each tiny crystal shone like a rainbow.... The rays crossed and recrossed, making exquisite patterns of such beauty that they left me breathless. … Then, suddenly, my consciousness was lighted up from within and I saw in a vivid way how the whole universe was made up of particles of material which, no matter how dull and lifeless they might seem, were nevertheless filled with this intense and vital beauty. For a second or two the whole world appeared as a blaze of glory. When it died down, it left me with something I have never forgotten and which constantly reminds me of the beauty locked up in every minute speck of material around us.”

Aldous Huxley book Heaven and Hell

Source: Heaven and Hell (essay) (1954), p. 77-78

World, Beauty, Way, Light

“Comrade wolf knows who to eat. He eats without listening to anybody and it seems he is not ever going to listen.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

On the U.S., whose military budget is 25 times bigger than Russia's; annual presidential address to the Federal Senate, 10 May 2006
2006- 2010

Wolf

“I made this big statement saying, "I've left The Libertines." A couple of people said, "You can't do that! You're such a great band! What are you gonna do about Brixton?" And some people said, "Well, I'd rather be here than Brixton." There's no reason you can't do both. If I was 16 or 17 and Morrissey opened his front door to me and let me go and listen to him and chat to him it would be a joy. Why not? It's possible. I don't really have that much else going on in my life.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

On removing the barriers between performers and audiences, NME (New Musical Express), March 13, 2004.
People

Life, People, Joy

“Lead your child by the hand to the great scenes of nature; teach him on the mountain and in the valley. There he will listen better to your teaching; the liberty will give him greater force to surmount difficulties. But in these hours of liberty it should be nature that teaches rather than you. Do not allow yourself to prevail for the pleasure of success in your teaching; or to desire in the least to proceed when nature diverts him; do not take away in the least the pleasure which she offers him. Let him completely realize that it is nature that teaches, and that you, with your art, do nothing more than walk quietly at her side. When he hears a bird warble or an insect hum on a leaf, then cease your talk; the bird and the insect are teaching; your business is then to be silent.”

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827) Swiss pedagogue and educational reformer

Diary entry (1774-02-15)

Pleasure, Art, Mountain, Business

“I got very frustrated when I was reading so-called classic books or films, or listening to underground music which is trying to tell you something. it´s all nonsense, and it´s disillusioning. So it would be a paradox for me to then decide I´m going to communicate something.”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

Sounds, August 24, 1985

Books, Music, Communication, Reading

“It is easy to consider advice when it is brought forth with care, and consideration, and gentleness. Sometimes people are offended or feel manipulated if you are so blustering, you see. And it's an opportunity to be kind — you know — usually if you're giving advice, it's because you care about people and you love them. So you ought to act that way.
…
If you find yourself to be a — sort of an abrasive type of person, perhaps you might try to be gentle, because the truth is that gentleness and kindness are a lot more powerful than we are led to believe. And if you are like this, and people are telling you it doesn't work, don't listen to them — do what you know is right.”

Ysabella Brave (1979) American singer

"Being Gentle(& the haunted ice tray)" (28 October 2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT5fXvbVNFc

Love, People, Truth, Way

“What makes you think anybody with power will listen to a bunch of scientists? They never have before.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 16 “An Entangled Bank” section I (p. 513)

Thinking

“My left hand is my thinking hand. The right is only a motor hand. This holds the hammer. The left hand, the thinking hand, must be relaxed, sensitive. The rhythms of thought pass through the fingers and grip of this hand into the stone. It is also a listening hand. It listens for basic weaknesses or flaws in the stone; for the possibility or imminence of fractures.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

"Barbara Hepworth: A Pictorial Autobiography, Bath, 1971, (extended edition published 1978 and subsequently reprinted in 1985 and 1993) p. 79
1961 - 1975

Thinking

“Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do this or that. That's nonsense. Make up your mind, you'll never use crutches or a stick, then have a go at everything. Go to school, join in all the games you can. Go anywhere you want to. But never, never let them persuade you that things are too difficult or impossible.”

Douglas Bader (1910–1982) British World War II flying ace

School, Game

“I listen back to some of Porcupine now and… well, not blush exactly, we were great and all that… but we could have been just anyone, you know?”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Q magazine (1992)

“They made the predictable fuss about taking a cat into a room and an autobellhop is not responsive to bribes—hardly an improvement. But the assistant manager had more flexibility in his synapses; He listened to reason as long as it was crisp and rustled.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Source: The Door Into Summer (1957), Chapter 12

Cats

“The hearer of myth, regardless of his level of culture, when he is listening to a myth, forgets, as it were, his particular situation and is projected into another world, into another universe which is no longer his poor little universe of every day…. The myths are true because they are sacred, because they tell him about sacred beings and events. Consequently, in reciting or listening to a myth, one resumes contact with the sacred and with reality, and in so doing one transcends the profane condition, the "historical situation." In other words one goes beyond the temporal condition and the dull self-sufficiency which is the lot of every human being simply because every human being is "ignorant" — in the sense that he is identifying himself, and Reality, with his own particular situation. And ignorance is, first of all, this false identification of Reality with what each one of us appears to be or to possess.”

Mircea Eliade (1907–1986) Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer and philosopher

Source: Images and Symbols (1952), p. 59

World, Reality, Sense, Universe

“Over the last few decades these radical religious broadcasters, who have essentially taken control of the airwaves, have built a parallel information and entertainment service that is piped into tens of millions of American homes as a way of essentially indoctrinating listeners and viewers with this very frightening ideology.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

The Christian Right and the Rising Power of the Evangelical Political Movement http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/05/1429230

Way, Home

“The theory is the result of listening to the problem. When the theory acquires a life of its own because some people like it more than the real world, all kinds of uninspiring, uninteresting things happen, so the key is both to listen to the problem and to study the theory. But always remember that just as much theory is bunk as there are buggy solutions. There is nothing more wrong with "theory" than "solutions" – both their quality and their applicability are orthogonal to their existence.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: "Choose the Right Language" in "Tutorial" by Norvig and Pitman http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/99d41ab4a42978b1 (Usenet article). Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Life, People, World, Problem

“I know what they think they seek. But I know it to be a lie. Listen to me, Arren. You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose…. That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself—safety forever? That is what they seek to do on Wathort and Lorbanery and elsewhere. That is the message that those who know how to hear have heard: By denying life you may deny death and live forever!—And this message I do not hear, Arren, for I will not hear it. I will not take the counsel of despair.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 8, "The Children of the Open Sea" (Ged)

Life, Death, Lie, Thinking

“No wonder a few people in Cross Plains don’t like him. They don’t understand him. His preoccupation with history and with writing instead of the price of corn and cotton is something they could not understand Could I? I liked to talk about books... History... Writing. Well, this was an opportunity to listen to a very interesting storyteller!”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

~ Novalyne Price Ellis, One Who Walked Alone, p. 64, ISBN 093798678X
About

People, Books, History, Understanding

“The Western governments will be encouraged and persuaded to deal with the real representatives and listen to the real voice of the Kurdish people.”

Jalal Talabani (1933–2017) Iraqi politician

On the first-ever free elections for the Kurds of northern Iraq — reported in Jim Muir (May 15, 1992) "Iraqi Kurds Hope Vote Legitimizes Leadership - Cut off by a harsh blockade, Kurds engage in spirited first-ever election campaign that sets out two different visions of future", Christian Science Monitor, p. 6.

People

“Listen, then. I say justice is nothing other than what is advantageous for the stronger.”

Thrasymachus (-459–-399 BC) Ancient Greek sophist

Plato, Republic, 338c

Justice

“Thoughts of such magnificent vigor began to think their own thoughts-and their thoughts thought thoughts. As if in divine astonishment and surprise, All That Is began to listen, and began to respond to these generations of thoughts and dreams, for the thoughts and dreams related to each other also.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 883, Page 128
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (1986)

Dreams, Thinking

“Why are they [people] more likely to listen to people who tell them they can't make changes than they are to people who tell them they can?”

Donella Meadows (1941–2001) American environmental scientist, teacher, and writer

Page 169.
Thinking in systems: A Primer (2008)

People, Change

“I am listening for the voices
Which I heard in days of old.”

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808–1877) English feminist, social reformer, and author

The lonely Harp.

“Scotty and I became good friends. We had an immediate musical rapport that was sensational. We did a lot of listening and talking. Besides technique, he had governing, control. I think he was the first bass player who was fleet-footed in the musical sense.
[…]
What a trauma! It struck me right down—that someone I was developing such a relationship with would suddenly not be there.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

On bassist Scott LaFaro and his premature demise, as quoted in Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro https://books.google.com/books?id=KnTSqVu9Zr4C&pg=PA67&dq=%22Clare+relates%22+intitle:Jade&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMI-9Dphf_kxgIVCGk-Ch3DaQiT#v=onepage&q=%22Clare%20relates%22%20intitle%3AJade&f=false (2009) by Helene LaFaro-Fernandez, pp. 67-68

Music, Thinking, Sense

“The graves all are silent. The caskets are vacant. Stalin has no more wisdom for us. Nietzsche is preserved in books, having forgotten to lift his casket lid and tell us he was right. Muhammad gives us the slip. So does Buddha. It is Christ alone who defeats the grave. Nothing is left in the tomb but echoes and cobwebs. And so we do well to listen to Him with the ears of dying men.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Wisdom, Men, Books, Christ