21 Quotes by Kate Murphy

To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person's point of view and that you might have something to learn from it. It also means that you embrace the possibility that there might be multiple truths and understanding them all might lead to a larger truth.

By listening, you acknowledge and embrace the world that is going on outside your head, which helps you sort out what's going on inside your head.

When you leave a conversation, ask yourself, What did I just learn about that person? What was most concerning to that person today? How did that person feel about what we were talking about?

[E]verybody is interesting if you ask the right questions. If someone is dull or uninteresting, it's on you.

To listen does not mean, or even imply, that you agree with someone. It simply means you accept the legitimacy of the other person’s point of view and that you might have something to learn from it.

Good listeners have negative capability. They are able to cope with contradictory ideas and gray areas. Good listeners know there is usually more to the story than first appears and are not so eager for tidy reasoning and immediate answers, which is perhaps the opposite to being narrow-minded... In the psychological literature, negative capability is known as cognitive complexity, which research shows is positively related to self-compassion and negatively related to dogmatism.

By listening, you acknowledge and embrace the world that is going on outside your head, which helps you sort out what’s going on inside your head.

Thinking you already know how a conversation will go down kills curiosity and subverts listening, as does anxiety about the interaction.

More encompassing than touch, our entire self vibrates with the sounds that are the expressed thoughts and feelings of another.