Quotes about listening
page 15

“That's five stars to start with. That's five stars to start with. That's Gil Evans, isn't it? The only thing that disturbed me about this—the whole thing, in its entirety, was tremendously satisfying: performance, orchestration is good, the harmonic usage is beautiful, the contrasting texture of orchestra, the whole thing is just great—but there are certain sections there when the background was so lovely it just seemed like the alto saxophone was out of place. Now this is the type of thing that just makes me smile. I enjoy every minute of it. I don't have to go for a "peak" and then think about something else while I'm listening. Gil Evans' writing, to me, is such a boon that when he came along with the Miles Ahead album, I was thankful, because since about the Stan Kenton Orchestra of 1952, where the writing had been very good, between Mulligan and Rugolo and the whole works, between those periods there had been a void, a retrogression back to the roots, and this took writing back to a standpoint which just wasn't interesting. So when Evans came along, I just flipped.”

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

Reviewing Evans' arrangement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ao4dcHdoR4k of Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca,", from New Bottle, Old Wine; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe

Love, Smile, Beauty, Star

“I almost wish that there would be, like, a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced — forced at gunpoint no less — to listen to every David Barton message, and I think our country would be better for it. I wish it'd happen.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

United in Purpose's " Rediscover God In America http://rediscovergodinamerica.com/" conference, March 2011 Mike Huckabee Wants People To Be Forced to Listen To David Barton At Gunpoint 2011-03-24 0:56 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mwGYr0OWzw 2011-04-02

Thinking, Country

“The first thing that confronts us in studying verbal structures is that they are arranged sequentially, and have to be read or listened to in time.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", The Great Code: The Bible and Literature (1982), Chapter Two, p. 31

Study, Time, Reading

“It actually went like this: we were at school and Ben said he didn’t like Nirvana so much. Then one of our friends said: You should listen to Sliver. So he wanted to request Sliver for himself on the radio. And I wanted to request a song of an Australian group(You Am I), Berlin Chair. We told Chris to write Sliver Chair, but he wrote it as Silver Chair. Then we thought: That’s a good name. That’s how it went.”

Daniel Johns (1979) Australian musician

On the name 'Silverchair', Press interview, April 1996
Interviews

School

“If you listen to a song on the radio you can definitely tell whose music it is. When you listen to my music you can tell it is Basshunter.”

Basshunter (1984) Swedish singer, record producer and DJ

BBC interview (25 July 2008) http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/entertainment/newsid_7522000/7522129.stm

Music

“I am the Government,” she said. “I am a force of omniscience and unparalleled power within the human part of the Archipelago. I am a public-domain distributed artificial intelligence. I have made all human institutions redundant, for I am the personal and intimate friend of each and every one of the trillion humans under my domain. I am the selfless advocate of each of them, from the lowliest to the greatest.
The only problem is…Well, nobody listens to me much anymore.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 12 (p. 126).

Intelligence, Problem, Parting, Personality

“You know, I don't think I've ever listened to someone's commentary. Ever.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

A Talk With David Fincher (1999)

Thinking

“Remember that the style of music that is popular right now might not be popular by the time you have learned to master that music style. So always stay true to yourself and the kind of music you enjoy listening to and working on.”

Jesper Kyd (1972) musician

citation needed

Music, Learning, Time

“Confession should be only in secret before God, who knows everything anyway, and thus it could remain hidden in one‘s innermost being. But at a dinner – and a woman! A dinner-it is not some hidden, remote place, nor is the lighting dim, nor is the mood like that among graves, nor are the listeners silent or invisibly present.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Three Discourses at Friday Communion November 14, 1849 Hong translation 1997 P. 139
1840s, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849)

God, Secret, Mood, Light

“Thenceforth Jeanne's deeper infatuations always seemed to concern gentlemen of a certain age and standing in the financial world. Older men say such interesting things, and Jeanne was always a good listener. Anything you said was news to her.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Madame du Barry

Men, Age, World

“Managers today come up against a few more communication barriers. One is the pressure of time. Listening carefully takes time, and managers have little of that to spare. In today’s business culture especially, with its emphasis on speed, already pressed managers may give short shrift to the slower art of one-on-one communication.”

Fritz Roethlisberger (1898–1974) American business theorist

Carl Rogers, and Fritz Roethlisberger. "Barriers and gateways to communication." Harvard Business Review, 1952.

Art, Communication, Business, Time

“Listening to music that I hate calms me down.”

Joey Comeau (1980) writer

"Where Are You Off To Now?"
Anthology

Hate, Music

“And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings in a distant mart?
Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

" Sonnet. Addressed to the Same http://www.bartleby.com/126/27.html" (Benjamin Robert Haydon) Poems (1817)

Age, World, Distant, Heart

“Calm on the listening ear of night
Come Heaven’s melodious strains,
Where wild Judea stretches far
Her silver-mantled plains.”

Edmund Sears (1810–1876) American minister

Christmas Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Night

“You gotta make your own fun (Audience member cheers). That's right, listen to that mother of two, she knows what I'm talking about.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist

Carl Rogers, and Fritz Roethlisberger. "Barriers and gateways to communication." Harvard Business Review, 1952.

Art, Communication, Business, Time

“The private reader of listener can become an executant of felt meaning when he learns the poem or the musical passage by heart. To learn by heart is to afford the text or music an indwelling clarity and life-force.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 3 (p. 9).

Life, Music, Learning, Heart

“I contributed; Ulam did not. I'm sorry I had to answer it in this abrupt way. Ulam was rightly dissatisfied with an old approach. He came to me with a part of an idea which I already had worked out and difficulty getting people to listen to. He was willing to sign a paper. When it then came to defending that paper and really putting work into it, he refused. He said, "I don't believe in it."”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

On the creation of the hydrogen bomb, in "Infamy and honor at the Atomic Café : Edward Teller has no regrets about his contentious career" by Gary Stix in Scientific American (October 1999), p. 42-43.

People, Way, Idea, Parting

“Law taught me how to argue passionately and rationally. That’s key to being a successful environmental campaigner. If you are too emotional you run the risk of turning off policy makers. And if you can’t present your arguments rationally, no one will listen to you.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

Law, Passion, Success

“Consider your state of mind—your consciousness—before going to sleep. This is extremely important. Make a commitment to spend at least fifteen minutes spiritualizing your consciousness before going to bed. Read something spiritual, listen to spiritual discourse or music, or engage in discussion on a spiritual topic. Push aside the chaos and confusion that were a part of your day, and focus on spiritual reality. In this way, you will prepare yourself for the next six to eight hours of sleep. If you allow yourself to focus spiritually, you will provide less of an opportunity for negative elements to enter your dreams. You can then benefit most from your sleeping state.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 24

Dreams, Music, Way, Reality

“Listen to them. Children of the night, what music they make.”

Garrett Fort (1900–1945) screenwriter

Dracula, in his castle, when he hears wolves howling
Dracula (1931)

Children, Music, Night

“Nobody listens to mathematicians.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 262

“Listen to the technology; find out what it's telling you.”

Carver Mead (1934) American computer scientist

New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/weekinreview/31lohr.html?_r=1

“A scratch is nothing but the back-cueing that you hear in your ear before you push it out to the crowd. All you have to know is mathematically how many times to scratch it and when to let it go — when certain things will enhance the record you're listening to. For instance, if you're playing a record with drums--horns would sound nice to enhance it so you get a record with horns and slip it in at certain times.”

Grandmaster Flash (1958) musician

Quoted in Rap Attack 2 (1991) by David Toop, p. 65

Mathematics, Time

“Last two soldiers on the battlefield
survivors of the war
they aim at one another while their mothers beg the lord
"if you're listening, I'm missing him
so somehow bring him home"
how did it come to this?
so the soldiers lift their rifles and they're aiming at the head
they think of their first love before they take a final breath
and somewhere in the distance they hear something someone said
how did it come to this?”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"The Big Sleep," from "Everything Goes Numb" (2003)

Love, War, Home, Thinking

“At the end of the day, the American people are going to be faced with some very tough judgments, because, at the current course this president is pursuing, I'm afraid that the next president will inherit this situation, with all of its complexity and all of its heartbreak… And let's not kid ourselves. I think this administration is also focused on Iran. And I think we need to send a very strong message that an administration with its track record of failure, of arrogance, of refusal to listen and learn from the disastrous steps that have, unfortunately, been taken should not be rushing off and putting American servicemembers in harm's way and possibly widening the conflict.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Interview with Gwen Ifill on PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (18 January 2007) http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june07/clinton_01-18.html Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

People, Way, Failure, Thinking

“I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 26, pp. 474-475

God, People, Help

“We are stripped of authority and reduced and devaluated and silenced. Silenced here means that the purposes of the First Amendment, premised upon conditions presumed and promoted by protecting free speech, do not pertain to women because they are not our conditions. Consider them: individual self-fulfillment – how does pornography promote our individual self-fulfillment? How does sexual inequality even permit it? Even if she can form words, who listens to a woman with a penis in her mouth?”

Catharine A. MacKinnon (1946) American feminist and legal activist

"Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech" (1984), p. 193
Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (1987)

Women, Silence

“If people have personal conversations about very emotional matters in public, and people reveal parts of their body that were originally kept covered, and pornography is becoming semi-respectable, it makes you think the push for greater freedom and divesting yourself of inhibitions is a real human need. I'm 54, so I'm further back upon the road. We certainly did a fair amount of divesting ourselves of inhibitions, but there seems to have been a quantum leap in the last half a generation. Maybe we're destined to be freer, but it's taking odd forms, like showing your big gut to all the world and discussing the future of your marriage at a bus stop with 30 people listening in.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Playboy interview (2003)

Marriage, People, World, Thinking

“For me, that aspect of my job has been tremendously rewarding. My colleagues are brilliant people with wide-ranging and impressive backgrounds. Sometimes we approach issues from quite different perspectives, or with different priorities or values in mind. Yet we always listen to each other, and our conferences are marked by vibrant debate and discussion. Our commitment to this process, in my view, is the principal mechanism for assuring that we will reach the right decision as often as possible.”

Thomas Rex Lee (1964) Utah Supreme Court justice

A Dialogue with Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas R. Lee https://web.archive.org/web/20150120094848/www.attorneyatlawmagazine.com/salt-lake-city/dialogue-utah-supreme-court-justice-thomas-r-lee/

People, Decision

“When I did "Unwrapped" -- that's one of my favorite albums I've ever done in my life -- I love it when someone listens to the whole album. But I would rather them be able to buy some songs that they like, [rather] than not buy the album at all.... You can't fight technology. You can't fight, you know, the consumer.”

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

thestrippodcast.com (September 9, 2006)
2007, 2008

Love, Life, Fight

“Some one wrote to me upon the publication of my book two years ago: “But you live in England! Poor man: then you are a preacher in the desert!” So I am. But I owe something to my desert. The desert is an excellent place for anybody who can make use of it, as biblical and post-biblical experience proves. Without my desert I should not have written my book. Without coming to England I should have become a modern creature, going in for money and motor-cars. For I was born with a fatal inclination for such lighter and brighter kind of things. I was born under a lucky star, so to say: I was born with a warm heart and a happy disposition; I was born to play a good figure in one of those delightful fêtes champêtres of Watteau, Lancret, and Boucher, with a nice little shepherdess on my arm, listening to the sweet music of Rossini and drinking the inspiring “Capri bianco” or “Verona soave” of that beautiful country Italy. But the sky over here is not blue—nor grows there any wine in England—and no Rossini ever lived here; and towards the native shepherdesses I adopted the ways of the Christian towards his beautiful ideals: I admired them intensely but kept myself afar. So there was nothing to console your thirsty and disenchanted traveller in the British Sahara. In the depths of his despair, there was sent to him, as to the traveller in the desert, an enchanting vision, a beautiful fata Morgana rising on the horizon of the future, a fertile and promising Canaan of a new creed that had arisen in Germany (there too as a revulsion against the desert): the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
So I owe something to the desert. Had I not wandered there so long, I could never have fervently wished to escape nor finally succeeded in coming out of it.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, pp. xii-xiii.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

Money, Happiness, Books, Beauty

“As a 10-year-old girl, I would listen to my grandmother discuss issues, and she made a lasting impression on me.”

Kirsten Gillibrand (1966) United States Senator from New York

Talking about her grandmother, Polly Noonan, leader of the powerful Democratic machine in Albany and confidant of long-time mayor Erastus Corning 2nd, Albany Times-Union, October 16, 2008

Girl

“What struck me at the League was the prestige in which our Government and our Prime Minister are held. What has struck hon. Members who have listened to this Debate is the fact that public opinion in the dictator countries has conceived a profound admiration for our Prime Minister and our country. Our country, therefore, is the country which is in a priceless position for securing the future of peace…It seems to me that we have two choices either to settle our differences with Germany by consultation, or to face the inevitability of a clash between the two systems of democracy and dictatorship. In considering this, I must emphatically give my opinion as one of the younger generation. War settles nothing, and I see no alternative to the policy upon which the Prime Minister has so courageously set himself—the construction of peace, with the aid which I have described. There is no other country which can achieve this, and I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite sincerely to believe that in our efforts to understand, to consult with and, if possible, to get friendship with Germany, we do not abandon by one jot or tittle the democratic beliefs which are the very core of our whole being and system. In conclusion, I must gratify the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield by quoting Shakespeare. The right hon. Gentleman will remember the little poem "Under the Greenwood Tree"—"Here shall he see" "No enemy," "But winter and rough weather."”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

We have the winter before us, and we have a great deal of political rough weather, but in that rough weather, do not let us forget the joint idea of peace which animates us all. Speech on the Munich Agreement http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government (5 October 1938).

Friendship, War, Peace, Quotes

“In this day and age, I consider Genesis, out of all the other books of the Bible, to be the most attacked, scoffed at, and ridiculed—from within parts of the church and outside. You see, because of the indoctrination in the belief evolution and millions of years through the education system and media, many people believe that Genesis 1-11 cannot be taken as literal history. As a result, such evolutionary teaching is a stumbling block to many non-Christians even listening to the gospel from the Word of God—and many people in the church are put on a slippery slide of unbelief in the Scriptures as the infallible Word of God.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"The Erosion of God's Word: It's Catastrophic!" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/06/17/the-erosion-of-gods-word-its-catastrophic/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 17, 2014) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

God, People, Books, Age

“It is not easy for a free community to organise for war. We are not accustomed to listen to experts or prophets. Our strength lies in an ability to improvise. Yet an open mind to untried ideas is also necessary. No-one can say when the end will come. In the war services it is recognised that the best security for an early conclusion is a plan for long endurance.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: How to Pay for the War (1940), Ch. 1 : The Character of the Problem

War, Communication, Idea

“Look upon men and pity them. Look at yourself amid all men and pity yourself. In the obscure dusk of life we touch and fumble at each other, we ask questions, we listen, we shout for help.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Life, Men, Question, Help

“Tritt listened placidly, clearly understanding nothing, but content to be listening; while Odeen, transmitting nothing, was as clearly content to be lecturing.”

Isaac Asimov book The Gods Themselves

Section 2 “...the gods themselves...”, Chapter 1b, p. 82
The Gods Themselves (1972)

Understanding

“People are fed up with politicians who don't listen to them. Fed up with a corrupt system that benefits the elites instead of working men and women.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

2010s, Speech at the Republican National Convention (July 20, 2016)

Women, Men, People

“Dicko: Yeah, I agree. Exactly what this competition is about. Um, growing, moving out of your comfort zone. That was absolutely terrific. Mark, in the last audition said that you dressed too old, a little cruise ship. I think you've listen to what he's said and come back and you look fantastic tonight. Every inch the rock star. And, um, I think I've heard that really good fireworks come out of Canberra so you're going to go off like a rocket.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 12

Star, Thinking

“The basic purpose of music is to be therapeutic, to raise the life energy of the listener. This simple yet profound truth seems to have been forgotten in this era which acclaims technical virtuosity and sophisticated musicology. The function of music since its beginning has been the spiritual uplifting of the listener so that his life energy is enhanced by the experience.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: The Life Energy in Music, Vol. 1 (1981), p. 7

Life, Truth, Music

“I urge everybody to stay inside the Labour Party and fight to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. There must now be a serious question over whether Frank can hope to beat Steven Norris on May 4 when Londoners will widely perceive the Labour nomination to have been stolen. The lesson of Wales is that our voters will not be taken for granted. A Labour campaign that was dead in the water from day one will limp on to polling day and never allow us to get on to the real issues that matter to Londoners, such as transport, unemployment and crime. In the interests of uniting the Labour party, I hope Frank Dobson will consider his position over the next few days. He must decide whether he is willing to accept this tainted result or stand down in the interests of Labour and London. Over the last six months Londoners have had to listen to politicians. Now it is time for politicians to listen to Londoners, and I shall be saying nothing further until I have had a chance to listen to Londoners.”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

Statement following the London Labour Party ballot for a Mayoral candidate, in which Livingstone was defeated by Frank Dobson due to the electoral system chosen by the party, as quoted in "Winner is challenged to refuse `tainted' victory" in The Guardian (21 February 2000), p. 2.

Hope, Question, Water, Chance

“Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 469

“The unconscious is selective, when it learns what to listen for.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly (1977), Chapter 12 (p. 200)

Learning

“The only places in the gospels where the paternal voice of God appears independently of Jesus is precisely to indicate that it is to Jesus that we must listen, and that in him God is glorified.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), "Jesus' fraternal relocation of God", p. 81.

God, Appearance

“I object to background music no matter how good it is. Composers want people to listen to their music, they don't want them doing something else while their music is on. I'd like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights.”

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) American composer, composition teacher, writer, and conductor

Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812.

People, Music, Guy, Idea

“Hey listen, I'm here to warn people, you keep telling me to shut up! This isn't a game! Okay? Our government, the US, is building FEMA camps. We have an NDAA where they disappear people now. You have this "arrest for public safety", life in prison. It's basically off with their heads, disappear 'em, take 'em away. Infowars dot com. Liberty is rising. Liberty is rising! Freedom will not stop! You will not stop freedom! You will not stop the Republic! Humanity is awakening! Infowars dot com! No, you guys are crazy, thinking that the public's too stupid! You're crazy, thinking the public doesn't know! You're crazy, thinking the public isn't waking up!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

BBC's Sunday Politics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch9gQ9JOe3Y, 9 June 2013. 2013

Life, People, Stupidity, Guy

“I no longer believe that most traditional historians are emotionally equipped, even with training, to use their feelings as psychohistorical research tools, although there is a whole new generation of psychohistorians just now beginning to write who are able to do so. To expect the average historian to do psychohistory is like trying to teach a blind man to be an astronomer […]. Whenever I speak to a scholar of the emotional development necessary to make a good psychohistorian and get a blank look of total incomprehension, I try to find a way to leave the subject of psychohistory altogether. My listener usually is in another world of discourse where emotional reactions are not considered crucial to the results.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: Foundations of Psychohistory (1982), Ch. 2, ibid.

World, Way, Feeling, Training

“Listen, I'm no social scientist and haven't done a survey. I don't pretend to know what John Q citizen thinks about this. But I've lived in prison for a long time now and I've met a lot of men who were motivated to commit violence just like me. And without exception, every one of them… was deeply involved in pornography. Without question, without exception. Deeply influenced and consumed by an addiction to pornography.”

Ted Bundy (1946–1989) American serial killer

1989 interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LYL1PTrtXo with James Dobson

Men, Motivation, Question, Thinking

“I was traveling in Greece as a teenager, and for those who haven't been to Greece, it's absolutely covered in olive groves — stunted, gnarly little bonsai-type trees. And I was driving on a moped and a huge black stallion had pulled away from its stake and was just going nuts in this tiny, tiny, hobbit-like forest. It was just such a powerful image, this enormous beast let loose and going wild in a fairy-tale wood of tiny trees… The song itself is really about going through the process of making the first album. It was a very strange experience and a very steep learning curve. For the previous 10 or 15 years, I'd been completely my own boss — when you play a gig, you just play your new song, the new song is always your favorite. And here I was having to make an album of stuff that's never gonna go away. I was being asked to make these huge decisions, so really the song is just about learning to listen to your guts again. There's actually very few times in our lives now when we have to do that.”

KT Tunstall (1975) Scottish singer-songwriter and guitarist

On influences in writing her song "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree", in a Barnes & Noble Interview with David Sprague (February 2006).

Travel, Decision, Tree, Learning

“Anyone who wants to paint should read Bacon. He defined the artists as homo additus naturae... Bacon had the right idea, but listen Monsieur Vollard, speaking of nature, the English philosopher, [Bacon] didn't for-see our open-air school, nor that other calamity which has followed close upon its heels: open-air indoors.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote in a conversation with Vollard in museum The Luxembourg, Paris 1897 - standing before the 'Olympia' of Manet; as quoted in Cézanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 36
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1880s - 1890s

School, Idea, Nature, Reading

“In the act of simply being with another culture there comes the realization of a need for balance, the understanding that there are times when it is better to listen than to ask, better the feel than to think, more appropriate to stay with a silence than to seek answers in speech.”

F. David Peat (1938–2017) British physicist

The Blackfoot Physics (2006)

Feeling, Understanding, Thinking, Silence

“Keep on praying because the Father does listen. He loves our company, he wants us to endure in prayerfulness and he is eager to do whatever is best for us.”

Bill Hybels (1951) American writer

Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)

Love

“Like red meat thrown before the Atkins crowd in the Republican Party, the initiative would teach problem solving, negotiating, and listening skills, which might then trickle up to the Bush Administration.”

Kate Clinton (1947) American comedian

Give Me an L http://progressive.org/?q=node/870 The Progressive, Unplugged

Problem

“Aaron is dead. Wanderers in this crazy world, we have lost a mentor, a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down, we have lost one of our own. Nurtures, careers, listeners, feeders, parents all, we have lost a child. Let us all weep.”

Tim Berners-Lee (1955) British computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web

Eulogizing Aaron Swartz in W3C Mailing list (12 Jan 2013) http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2013Jan/0017.html

World, Parent, Dead

“I lie
in the lean hours awake listening
to the swell born somewhere in
the Atlantic
rising and falling, rising and
falling
wave on wave on the long shore
by the village that is without
light
and companionless. And the
thought comes
of that other being who is
awake, too,
letting our prayers break on him,
not like this for a few hours,
but for days, years, for eternity.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"The Other" in The Echoes Return Slow (1988)

Lie, Light

“There is little life where no one will listen. These are fathers, sons and families who are needlessly lost.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 241.

Life, Family

“Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll nail you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

Responding to Gore Vidal's baiting language during debate over the 1968 Democratic National Committee riots on ABC News - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYymnxoQnf8&t=50s

“You see, the thing is, I’ve been in jams like this. The feeling is totally there among the musicians (and whoever else happens to be sitting around, whether they’ve paid for it or not, probably, and preferably, not). You are close to silence, Silence with a capital S. You are in tune with silence, the deepest sound of them all. Every sound, therefore, that you make, make with intention, sensitivity, and awareness, has a meaning, an ineffability, a significance. You are listening, Listening with a capital L. You hear what everyone else is doing; you do whatever is necessary, which is usually as little as possible. It has nothing to do with self-expression: it has to do with a group mind.”

Robert Fripp (1946) English guitarist, composer and record producer

Robert Fripp: From King Crimson to Guitar Craft (Eric Tamm)

Feeling, Silence

“I have the greatest respect for the survivors of the Holocaust. We can't even imagine what these people went through. And yet even they have differing positions … I respect that there are survivors who can't, and certainly don't want to, listen to this music. But I don't accept that the fact that an orchestra playing Wagner in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem would do any harm to someone sitting in an apartment in Haifa.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

SPIEGEL Interview with Daniel Barenboim

People, Music, Imagination

“I'll not listen to reason…Reason always means what someone else has got to say.”

Elizabeth Gaskell book Cranford

Source: Cranford (1851–3), Ch. 14

“The worst thing to happen to the Jews since Mein Kampf…I can't look at it. It's so horrible. The Israelis that helped make this film were crooks. They never gave us the negative back, they never gave us statements — not that the film was worth anything…The lesson for Big Gus for young people is: Don't listen to anybody. We got lots of advice on that film from older, more experienced people. But the film stunk; it's a disgrace. What you saw was made from a half-inch video that somebody from Israel brought to us…The movie opened in Tel Aviv, but it opened the week of the Seven-Day War. So bombs were raining down outside, but we had a bomb inside the movie theater.”

Lloyd Kaufman (1945) American film director

Village Voice http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-01-15/film/troma-lloyd-kaufman-interview/ January 15, 2014 2014

War, People, Help

“Only women think there is a reason to thank people if they listen to them.”

Chetan Bhagat book One Night @ the Call Center

Source: One Night @ the Call Center (2005), P. 158

Women, People, Thinking

“I am Boutros Boutros-Ghali; put down your guns and listen to Bob Marley.”

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1922–2016) 6th Secretary-General of the United Nations

As quoted in "War" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5P9J1wCgNM (28 February 2003), Da Ali G Show http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0508528/?ref_=ttep_ep2 2000s

“Everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century.”

Connie Willis book Doomsday Book

Source: Doomsday Book (1992), Chapter 20 (p. 326)

People, Patience

“don't talk, I will listen
don't talk, you keep your distance
I'd rather hear some truth tonight
than entertain your lies”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, In My Tribe (1987), Don't Talk

Truth

“A buzzard took the monkey for a ride in the air
The monkey thought that everything was on the square
The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back
But the monkey grabbed his neck and said — "Now listen, Jack…"
"Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Straighten up and fly right
Cool down, papa, don't you blow your top."”

Nat King Cole (1919–1965) American singer and jazz pianist

"Straighten Up And Fly Right" (1937) written with Irving Mills.

Flying

“It was really interesting watching what happened to Nick from my different perspective, being mousy in the corner and trying to help him through it all. Every time we went out, everyone wanted to talk to him, but no one listened to a word he had to say, and everyone assumed that because he didn't speak posh, he was thick. He's not. He's a very, very intelligent person. All that tabloid stuff about him, about us, it was as if it was someone else.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Take a Girl Like You Article http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/filmarticle-899239-details/Take+a+girl+like+you/article.do. thisislondon.co.uk. May 10, 2007. Guillory speaks about former boyfriend w:Nick Moran.

Intelligence, Time, Help, Personality

“Either I am going mad, or this country has lost its marbles, especially when it comes to our legal system. Listen to this. A child murderer had been awarded compensation because the food in jail did not cater for his Islamic beliefs — it was not halal. Halal food bans pork, and all other animals must be slaughtered in a certain way. I didn't know you had to kill cabbages. The baby killer is a Muslim. For four months, in the Maryborough Correctional Centre, he was fed a vegetarian diet. He complained to QCAT (the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal), and he got $3000. When I tell you what this callous bastard did, I think you'll agree he's lucky to even get bread and water. In some countries, he wouldn't still be alive to even get a meal. Raymond Akhtar Ali ran an halal butcher's shop. He was married, but started having an affair with a 22-year-old employee, Amanda Blackwell. The Supreme Court was told she become his "sex slave"; he got her pregnant. When the baby was born in secret, this devout Muslim killed the child, and the butcher, butchered the baby. The dismemebered body was buried throughout his house. In 2000, Ali was sentenced to life imprisonment. And this killer, due for parole next year, had the audacity to complain about the jail food. So he was fed vegetables. So what? This is a sick joke.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 15 August 2013.

Life, Secret, Food, Sex

“"my friend and i were watching mtv the other day when nelly came on and my friend was like "omg nelly rules". hes such an idiot, he only listens to trendy music. at least i like original stuff like beyonce.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

lol @ fox for laugh out loud sundays! http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=af_fox The Best Page in the Universe, April Fools

Music

“Tuol Sleng was a Vietnamese exhibition; a journalist wrote that. People talk about Tuol Sleng, Tuol Sleng, Toul Sleng, but when we look at the pictures, the pictures are the same. When I first heard about Tuol Sleng, it was on VOA [Voice of America]. I listened twice.”

Pol Pot (1925–1998) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea

Nate Thayer interview (1997)

People

“who do you believe?
who will you listen to
who will it be?
it's high time that you decide
in your own mind”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Ophelia (1998), Life Is Sweet

Time

“I’m going to give you a thorough examination. This may cause some discomfort, but don’t complain. I won’t be listening.”

Scott Lynch book The Republic of Thieves

Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 1 “Things Get Worse” section 8 (p. 47)

“[…] the Eternal turned his attention to the three shades who stood humbly and yet hopefully before him. The quick, with so short a time to live, when they talk of themselves, talk too much; but the dead, with eternity before them, are so verbose that only angels could listen to them with civility.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"The judgement seat", p. 314
Short Stories, Collected short stories 1

Angels, Time, Dead

“Listen to me, skull!
Under your thin brittle boneplates
what black memories haunt you?
What do you want? What do you dream of? …
Is it your soul you think of,
flickering through frightful nights? …
Skull, I must have been raving mad
to smash you with my bare fist.
Scarlet blood thickens on my fingers,
plagues me to spew these rhymes, and still
my teeth want to tear you to pieces!
Like a raven I'll swallow even the sucked-out bones
to get a fresh taste of the past,
a drop from the torrent of months and years.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"Skull", in A Thousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry, ed. Nguyễn Ngọc Bích (Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), ISBN 978-0394494722, p. 166 Original in Vietnamese https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/che-lan-vien-to-a-skull/vietnamese/, and an English translation by Hai-Dang Phan https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/che-lan-vien-to-a-skull/, available at Asymptote.

Dreams, Soul, Thinking, Tear

“McDonald's is a place to rock / It is a restaurant where they buy food to eat / It is a good place to listen to the music / People flock here to get down to the rock music.”

Wesley Willis (1963–2003) American singer-songwriter

Rock 'N Roll McDonald's
Lyrics, Solo

People, Food, Music

“I haven't found it difficult because I find this very enjoyable. It's really challenging. And I'm really proud of the record because it's a really good record. There's nothing harder than to write a pop record with meaning. I think it's much easier to be alternative. It's much easier to be different and take a different path outside of a commercial context. To try and write a pop song that is not cliché, to try and write a pop song that has meaning and fits in under three minutes and five seconds and has a hook that people want to listen to is the most difficult thing in the world to do. So in lieu of that you have to write what you know and what you like, what you're feeling. That's all I can basically do. I don't begrudge the other people that don't write their songs. And I don't judge them. I'd like to see more people writing their own songs, because that's just personally what I like. Just for me, as an artist, so many people only care about being popular right now. Whatever happened to trying to write a song that means something? When I was growing up, artists meant something. They had opinions, they looked different than the person working at the store on your street. They opened your eyes and taught you something about life. And I would like to aspire to be that kind of artist.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

When asked about writing her own music
Attributed

Life, People, World, Feeling

“We have other things to get over besides the occupation and discrimination. We are fighters and don't give in. If you don't open the door for me, I will come in through the window, and if it is closed, down the chimney. We were too polite, but we learned Israeli chutzpah. It's easy to humiliate an Arab who kowtows, but when that person says 'Listen, pal, tone it down, don't talk to me like that,' you arrive at a dialogue.”

Lucy Aharish (1981) Arab-Israeli journalist

Source: [Halutz, Doron, A generation of Israeli Arabs nurtured on Jewish chutzpah, http://www.haaretz.com/a-generation-of-israeli-arabs-nurtured-on-jewish-chutzpah-1.279267, 5 April 2011, Haaretz, 3 July 2009, That strategy seems to be working. Aharish is a reporter on Good Evening, a program about the entertainment industry hosted by the veteran Guy Pines; the anchor of the children's news program on Channel 1 (state television); and twice a week she also anchors the morning show of the Tel Aviv-based Radio 99, alongside Emanuel Rosen and Maya Bengal.]

Learning, Personality

“The impurity of the mind is greed, and the impurity of the tongue is falsehood. The impurity of the eyes is to gaze upon the beauty of another man's wife, and his wealth. The impurity of the ears is to listen to the slander of others. O Nanak, the mortal's soul goes, bound and gagged to the city of Death. All impurity comes from doubt and attachment to duality. Birth and death are subject to the Command of the Lord's Will; through His Will we come and go.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Asa di Var

Death, Beauty, Soul, Birth

“I've listened to Jazz since I was born and always knew I'd be a Jazz singer!”

Jane Monheit (1977) American singer

USA Today (9/24/2004)

“Man has—next to the drives of reproduction and dining—two passions: making noise and not listening.”

Kurt Tucholský (1890–1935) German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer

Passion

“So listen to them, heed them: Who never touch the earth, can never be in heaven.”

Adam Mickiewicz book Dziady

Bo słuchajcie i zważcie na siebie: Kto nie dotknął ziemi ni razu, ten nigdy nie może być w niebie. Part two. Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm

“The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. I, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

Sleep, Appearance

“She prays to God most every night
And though she swears he doesn't listen there's a little hope in her he might.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Grey Street
Busted Stuff (2002)

God, Hope, Night

“If we observe our own minds, we shall notice how easily diverted our thoughts are, how often they behave like undisciplined disputants constantly interrupting each other and refusing to listen to the other side’s arguments.”

Nyanaponika Thera (1901–1994) German Buddhist monk

Source: The Vision of Dhamma (1994), p. 75

“The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1950s, The Mechanical Bride (1951), p. 21

People, Music, Sense, Effort

“The dinner was indifferent and the conversation irritating. "It's like the table of contents of a dull book," thought Julien. "All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly displayed in it. Listen to it for three minutes, and you ask yourself which is more striking, the emphasis of the speaker or his shocking ignorance."”

Stendhal book The Red and the Black

Le dîner fut médiocre et la conversation impatientante C'est la table d'un mauvais livre, pensait Julien. Tous les plus grands sujets des pensées des hommes y sont fièrement abordés. Ecoute-t-on trois minutes, on se demande ce qui l'emporte de l'emphase du parleur ou de son abominable ignorance.
Vol. II, ch. XXVII
Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) (1830)

Books, Indifference

“"The subject," I say, suddenly unable to hold myself back any more, "is the SDS leadership's alienation from its followers. Not just here! Not just you!" Suddenly, horribly, I begin to sob. You could have heard a pin drop as people waited for me to continue. "I didn't want to be an SDS leader! And I don't think I've been a good one. But there's some things I'm proud of –." Finally I manage to turn and look at Jean. "Why are you all so intolerant? Why are you all so vindictive? Why is it getting so that you only listen to people if they can quote from Father Karl or… or Father Leon?… Why are we giving up on trying to develop an analysis of our own? And for ourselves not just for others? Why? Why?"”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Page 185. Satin had become president of SDS at SUNY Binghamton during the summer 1966 trimester. "Jean" is one of the far-left SDS leaders Satin had deposed. She is also the "girl" referred to n the previous quote.
Confessions of a Young Exile (1976)

People, Quotes, Thinking, Waiting