– John Erskine
It seems rather incongruous that in a society of supersophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.
– Erma Bombeck
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
– John Stuart Mill
Our patience will achieve more than our force.
– Edmund Burke
Never impose your language on people you wish to reach.
– Abbie Hoffman
She did not talk to people as if they were strange hard shells she had to crack open to get inside. She talked as if she were already in the shell. In their very shell.
– Marita Bonner
Years ago, I tried to top everybody, but I don’t anymore, I realized it was killing conversation. When you’re always trying for a topper you aren’t really listening. It ruins communication.
– Groucho Marx
Once a human being has arrived on this earth, communication is the largest single factor determining what kinds of relationships he makes with others and what happens to him in the world about him.
– Virginia Satir
Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from a corn field.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
There was an old owl lived in an oak,
The more he heard, the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard,
O, if men were all like that wise bird!
– Punch magazine
One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears—by listening to them.
– Dean Rusk
We want people to feel with us more than to act for us.
– George Eliot
He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame to him.
– Proverbs 18:13
Unto a broken heart
No other one may go
Without the high prerogative
Itself hath suffered too.
– Emily Dickinson
Nobody who has not been in the interior of a family can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be.
– Jane Austen
Nature hath bestowed upon us two ears, and two eyes, yet but one tongue; which is an Embleme unto us that though we heare and see much, yet ought wee to speak but little.
– Mary Tattlewell
The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
– Robertson Davies
He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail.
– Abraham Maslow
I praise loudly, I blame softly.
– Catherine II of Russia
My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.
– Peter Drucker
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
– Bertrand Russell
It takes a great man to be a good listener.
– Calvin Coolidge
I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
– Ernest Hemingway
People only see what they are prepared to see.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I understand a fury in your words,
But not the words.
– William Shakespeare
HABIT 6
* * *
SYNERGIZE
Synergy is the third alternative—not my way, not your way, but a third way that is better than either of us would come up with individually. It’s the fruit of respecting, valuing, and even celebrating one another’s differences. It’s about solving problems, seizing opportunities, and working out differences—not through compromise (1+1= 1½), nor even by cooperation (1+1=2), but by creative cooperation (1+1=3 or more).
— Stephen R. Covey
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
– Mark Twain
Let each man exercise the art he knows.
– Aristophanes
Two heads are better than one.
– John Heywood
An idea can turn into dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.
– William Bernbach
Differences challenge assumptions.
– Anne Wilson Schaef
Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as well as with the learned.
– Ptahhotep
It is natural anywhere that people like their own kind, but it is not necessarily natural that their fondness for their own kind should lead them to the subjection of whole groups of other people not like them.
– Pearl S. Buck
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
– Will Rogers
Nature has not endowed us all with the same powers. There are things that some of us cannot do.
– Aesop
I love different folks.
– Eleanor H. Porter
If two men on the same job agree all the time, then one is useless. If they disagree all the time, then both are useless.
– Darryl F. Zanuck
You will certainly not be able to take the lead in all things yourself, for to one man a god has given deeds of war, and to another the dance, to another the lyre and song, and in another wide-sounding Zeus puts a good mind.
– Homer
Harmony exists in difference no less than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts.
– Margaret Fuller
The plan of one man may be faulty, that of two will be better.
– Chuang tse
Every great man is always being helped by everybody; for his gift is to get good out of all things and persons.
– John Ruskin
There are parts of a ship which taken by themselves would sink. The engine would sink. The propeller would sink. But when the parts of a ship are built together, they float. So with the events of my life. Some have been tragic. Some have been happy. But when they are built together, they form a craft that floats and is going someplace.
– Ralph W. Sockman
When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure.
– Deborah Tannen
Here lies a man who knew how to enlist in his service better men than himself.
– tombstone of Andrew Carnegie
I have never met a man who was not my superior in some particular.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.
– Albert Szent-Györgyi
People seldom improve very much when they have no other pattern to go by but themselves.
– Oliver Goldsmith
There is one thing I am sure of, and that is the uniqueness of the individual.
– Albert Einstein
Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.
– Heraclitus
In strategic planning of warfare Chang Liang is better than I; in logistics administration for the battlefield Shao He is better than I; and in deployment of a million troops to win the battles Han Sin is better than I. All these three people are elite. I can look for their strength and put it to work. That is why I could be the Founder of a new Dynasty.
– Liu Bang
Organizations are made up of all different kinds of people; their backgrounds vary; their convictions may be as wide apart as the poles; their ambitions and motivations are individual; their drives, ideas, and thinking processes follow separate patterns. The manager has to accept these differences and use them to guide the group toward the attainment of common goals. He cannot crush them and mold them into a uniform pattern, but he can temper them, influence them, and convert the organization into a dynamic, hard-hitting unit that attains its objectives.
– Lawrence Appley
Bring ideas in and entertain them royally, for one of them may be the king.
– Mark Van Doren
Seek not every quality in one individual.
– Confucius
It takes two flints to make a fire.
– Louisa May Alcott
The ability of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
Disunity, that’s the trouble. It’s my absolute opinion that in our complex industrial society, no business enterprise can succeed without sharing the burden of the problems of other enterprises.
– Ayn Rand
If you approach each new person you meet in a spirit of adventure, you will find yourself endlessly fascinated by the new channels of thought and experience and personality that you encounter.
– Eleanor Roosevelt
The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing—to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.
– John Keats
Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.
– Alexander Graham Bell
The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no differences between men.
– Blaise Pascal
If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.