This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It seems strange to think that my violin was once a tree, but I do not know what else could have caught the music that lies within it, waiting for the touch. It must be centuries old, and through all those years it was the listening and the learning, weaving in with its growth the forest melodies to sing to generations yet unborn. Wind and wave and song of bird, crash of thunder, drip of rain, and mating-call-all these are in the fibre of my violin. And the thousand notes of sea and storm, the music of the waterfall and stream-what wonder that it is so nearly the human voice! There must have been a love story in that forest, for it sings love, love, and only love, though I do not remember of hearing it until I knew you. Perhaps you have taught it a new melody-stranger things have happened-and it has learned your lesson best.
Growth | Lesson | Listening | Love | Music | Story | Waiting | Wonder | Think |
Nikki Giovanni, fully Yolanda Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni
I'm glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility.
Language | Listening | Understand |
In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs… In magic - and in life - there is only the present moment, the now. You can't measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. 'Time' doesn't pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we're always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn't act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don't want and how to get what we have always dreamed of… In some cases, abandon the path of what, because we simply do not believe it. This is easy, all we have to do to prove that the road is not for us. But the events that begin to get and inspiration that comes to us through our journey… I'm not doing anything, and yet I'm also doing the most important thing a man can do: I'm listening to what I needed to hear from myself.
Consequences | Difficulty | Events | Important | Inspiration | Life | Life | Listening | Magic | Man | Present | Thinking | Time | Think |
People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly… People learn twenty-five percent from their teacher, twenty-five percent from listening to themselves, twenty-five percent from their friends, and twenty-five percent from time… People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves… People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being. Maybe that's why they give up on it so early, too… People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.
Fear | Good | Important | Listening | Need | People | Reason | Thinking | Afraid | Learn |
The energy of hatred won't get you anywhere; but the energy of forgiveness, which reveals itself through love, will transform your life in a positive way… The warrior of light knows the importance of intuition. In the midst of battle, he does not have time to think of the enemy's blows, and so he uses his instinct and obeys his angel. In times of peace, he deciphers the signs that God sends him. People say, He's mad. Or, He lives in a fantasy world. Or even, How can he possibly believe in such illogical things? But the warrior knows that intuition is God's alphabet and he continues listening to the wind and talking to the stars.
Energy | God | Instinct | Intuition | Life | Life | Light | Listening | People | Talking | Time | Will | God | Think |
We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought… Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then — as I am listening now.
Pete Seeger, born Peter Seeger
I have been singing folksongs of America and other lands to people everywhere. I am proud that I never refused to sing to any group of people because I might disagree with some of the ideas of some of the people listening to me. I have sung for rich and poor, for Americans of every possible political and religious opinion and persuasion, of every race, color, and creed. The House committee wished to pillory me because it didn’t like some few of the many thousands of places I have sung for.
Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the music, but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself so you can slow our minds hearing to your ears natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning.
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Which is the right path for man to choose for himself? Whatever is harmonious for the one who does it, and harmonious for mankind. Be as careful with a minor mitzvah as with a major one, for you do not know the rewards of the mitzvot. Consider the cost of a mitzvah against its rewards, and the rewards of a transgression against its cost. Contemplate three things, and you will not come to the hands of transgression: Know what is above from you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a book.
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Proper listening is the foundation of proper living.
Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL
Of all human activities, man's listening to God is the supreme act of his reasoning and will.
After many years of working with and listening to American adolescents, I don't believe they are ready for sex or its potential consequences--parenthood, abortion, sexually transmitted diseases--and I think we need to do everything in our power to discourage sexual activity and encourage abstinence. Young people can learn to value the intimacy of friendships with the opposite sex as well as their own, can enjoy being in groups as well as couples. Those kinds of relationships need adult support, including the time it takes to organize gatherings for kids, instead of turning them loose in malls, video arcades, or the streets. Homes, schools, churches, and communities should provide havens for kids who want an alternative. These same entities have to pitch in when it comes to educating kids about sex.
Listening | Need | People | Power | Time | Learn | Think | Value |
Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.
Attentiveness | Better | Empathy | Listening | Learn |
R. G. Collingwood, fully Robert George Collingwood
Speech is after all only a system of gestures, having the peculiarity that each gesture produces a characteristic sound, so that it can be perceived through the ear as well as through the eye. Listening to a speaker instead of looking at him tends to make us think of speech as essentially a system of sounds; but it is not; essentially it is a system of gestures made with the lungs and larynx, and the cavities of the mouth and nose. We get still farther away from the fundamental facts about speech when we think of it as something that can be written and read, forgetting that what writing, in our clumsy notations, can represent is only a small part of the spoken sound, where pitch and stress, tempo and rhythm, are almost entirely ignored. But even a writer or reader, unless the words are to fall flat or meaningless, must speak them soundlessly to himself. The written or printed book is only a series of hints, as elliptical as the neumes of Byzantine music, from which the reader thus works out for himself the speech-gestures which alone have the gift of expression.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
I am so afraid of people's words. They describe so distinctly everything: And this they call dog and that they call house, here the start and there the end. I worry about their mockery with words, they know everything, what will be, what was; no mountain is still miraculous; and their house and yard lead right up to God. I want to warn and object: Let the things be! I enjoy listening to the sound they are making. But you always touch: and they hush and stand still. That's how you kill.
Listening | Mockery | Right | Sound | Will | Worry | Afraid |
When we haven't the time to listen to each other's stories we seek out experts to tell us how to live. The less time we spend together at the kitchen table, the more how-to books appear in the stores and on our bookshelves. But reading such books is a very different thing than listening to someone' s lived experience. Because we have stopped listening to each other we may even have forgotten how to listen, stopped learning how to recognize meaning and fill ourselves from the ordinary events of our lives. We have become solitary; readers and watchers rather than sharers and participants.
Books | Events | Learning | Listening | Meaning | Reading | Time |
Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing. It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden. In this culture the soul and the heart too often go homeless. Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people, they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone, the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.
Attention | Culture | Heart | Listening | Opportunity | People | Silence | Soul | Truth | Wisdom | Words |
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
Get a feedback loop and listen to it. Your feedback loop can be this dorky spreadsheet thing I did, or it can just be one great man who tells you what you need to hear. The hard part is the listening to it.
Rebecca West, pen name of Mrs. Cicily Maxwell Andrews, born Fairfield, aka Dame Rebecca West
There was a definite process by which one made people into friends, and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.
Effective listening is more than simply avoiding the bad habit of interrupting others while they are speaking or finishing their sentences. It's being content to listen to the entire thought of someone rather than waiting impatiently for your chance to respond.