Listening is a way of offering others our scarcest, most precious gift: our attention. Once we’ve demonstrated that we care about them and their goals, they’re more willing to listen to us.

"Are your conversations a competition in which “the first person to draw breath is declared the listener"? Not many people are good listeners. Research has found that "75 percent of oral communication is ignored, misunderstood, or quickly forgotten."

There is a huge difference between merely hearing and listening, Bolton notes. The word "listening" is derived from two Anglo Saxon words, hlystan ("hearing") and hlosnian ("waiting in suspense"). The act of listening therefore means more than just something physical, it is a psychological engagement with another person (p. 34).

Listening is a very active awareness of the coming together of at least two lives. Listening, as far as I’m concerned, is certainly a prerequisite of love. One of the most essential ways of saying “I love you” is being a receptive listener.

Listen. Listening is one of those dynamics that sounds like the easiest thing in the world to do, but in reality is one of the hardest.

People love to talk but hate to listen....Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what’s being told us....You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.

To be able to listen — really, wholly passively, self-effacingly listen — without presupposing, classifying, improving, controverting, evaluating,
approving or disapproving, without dueling with what is being said, without rehearsing the rebuttal in advance, without free-associating to portions of what is being said so that succeeding portions are not heard at all — such listening is rare.

How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desires, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires. And is there any other form of listening? Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby? Listening has importance only when on is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens. Can one put aside all these screens through which we listen, and really listen?

Listen not only in our ears but also in our hearts. Listening in this synodal process is to listen to the marginalized, even to the non-Christian community.

Listening purely means allowing possibility to arise in the face of illusion.

Listening is self-empowerment via the empowerment of others.

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. Usually when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion you may accept it, but if it does not, you will reject it or you may not even really hear it.

The word 'listen' contains the same letters as the word 'silent'.

More and more I’ve come to understand that listening is one of the most important things we can do for one another. Whether the other be an adult or a child, our engagement in listening to who that person is can often be our greatest gift. Whether that person is speaking or playing or dancing, building or singing or painting, if we care, we can listen.

The desire to be heard is one of the most basic human demands in today's world. Communication does not take place if listening has not taken place, and there is no good journalism without the ability to listen well. Society is losing the ability to listen well both in everyday interactions and when debating issues of society.