Quotes about Listening

How should you keep track of what customers want? Don't. Listen, but then forget what people said. Seriously. There's no need for a spreadsheet, database, or filing system. The requests that really matter are the ones you'll hear over and over. After a while, you won't be able to forget them. Your customers will be your memory. They'll keep reminding you. They'll show you which things you truly need to worry about.

A lot of companies have a similar front-of-house/back-of-house split. The people who make the product work in the "kitchen" while support handles the customers. Unfortunately, that means the product's chefs never get to directly hear what customers are saying. Too bad. Listening to customers is the best way to get in tune with a product's strengths and weaknesses.

You barely realize what just happened. It is called faith. You just turned in Jesus' direction and you are listening. You want what he offers.

In our attempts to help, we can overinterpret suffering.

We don't aim to draw out problems so that we can be helpers. We are simply interested in knowing another person, which is a basic feature of everyday love.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

The only way you change is you have to at least be communicating.

We do not first acquire the faith that we bring to Scripture. Scripture encourages faith. "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).

They will understand a familiar speech, who hear a sermon as if it were nonsense, and they have far greater help for the application of it to themselves. And withal you will hear their objections, and know where it is that Satan hath most advantage over them, and what it is that stands up against the truth; and so may be able to shew them their errors, confute their objections, and more effectually convince them.

Sacramental listening reminds us that current suffering isn't the end of the story. God loves us deeply, and the vision for the future is vaster and more magnificent than we could ever imagine. In these moments of profound human presence, we are awakened to the divine presence and see that the kingdom of God is coming and yet is already here.

It is hard to hear God, but it is even harder not to hear God. The pain one brings upon oneself by living outside of evident reality is a greater and longer-lasting pain than the brief pain of facing it head on.

There is a deeper voice of God, which you must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life.