A Quote by Stephen Covey

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

Stephen Covey

Quote Topics

Intent Listen Most People Reply Understand

Quote Author

Stephen Covey
American - Educator
October 24, 1932 - July 16, 2012

Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.

Stephen Covey

When we listen with the intent to understand others, rather than with the intent to reply, we begin true communication and relationship building. Opportunities to then speak openly and to be understood come much more naturally and easily.

Stephen Covey

Even when I can play Europe's most precious keyboard, to have to listen to people who don't understand, or do not want to understand, and who are incapable of grasping my intent, whatever I play, does surely forfeit my lust for playing at all.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

People don't listen to understand. They listen to reply. The collective monologue is everyone talking and no one listening.

Stephen Covey

The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.

Lillian Hellman

Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior's indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

Carlos Castaneda

The first thing you have to do is understand what success looks like. And to understand what success looks like you have to understand the intent. If you understand that intent is to make sure the sea lines are secure, then suddenly bombing Kosovo makes sense, because you don't want Serbia to reemerge as a major power.

George Friedman

Throughout my life I have always been amazed that people couldn't listen to other people, that they couldn't hear their best intent, that there seemed to be an enormous need to demonize.

Warren Farrell

What is the quality of your intent? Certain people have a way of saying things that shake us at the core. Even when the words do not seem harsh or offensive, the impact is shattering. What we could be experiencing is the intent behind the words. When we intend to do good, we do. When we intend to do harm, it happens. What each of us must come to realize is that our intent always comes through.

Thurgood Marshall

Intent is all-important. Your intent determines what happens to you inwardly, in a karmic sense.

Frederick Lenz

Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.

Ernest Hemingway

You know people. Most of them don’t hear anything. Those who hear - don’t listen. A few who listen - don’t understand. And those who could understand… they don’t care.

Bernard Werber

Gross negligence cannot possibly have intent because it cancels it out. If you're grossly negligent, intent's not a factor, you are or you aren't.

Rush Limbaugh

I, for one, begin with intent. There is no question that, Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America.

Tommy Franks

I, for one, begin with intent. ... There is no question that Saddam Hussein had intent to do harm to the Western alliance and to the United States of America.

Tommy Franks

For all uniting of strength by private men, is, if for evil intent, unjust; if for intent unknown, dangerous to the Publique, and unjustly concealed.