Listeners Quotes
More Listeners Quotes
The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more.
Alberto Manguel— The Author As Reader, p. 259
Over the last few decades these radical religious broadcasters, who have essentially taken control of the airwaves, have built a parallel information and entertainment service that is piped into tens of millions of American homes as a way of essentially indoctrinating listeners and viewers with this very frightening ideology.
chris hedges— The Christian Right and the Rising Power of the Evangelical Political Movement
Man dwells apart, though not alone,He walks among his peers unread;The best of thoughts which he hath knownFor lack of listeners are not said.
jean ingelow— "Afterthought".
"So those of you listeners who don't want to hear what the weather will be like in six months time... look away now."
eddie mair— Before a long-term weather forecast given on Radio 4's PM
People aren't very good listeners, by nature … Part of being a good communicator is recognizing and understanding that and trying to make the complex simple. I try to capture a concept, an idea or a moment in a few words. If they remember it, job done.
mike tomlin— As quoted in "Inside Tomlin's style: Humility, words matter for Steelers coach" by Jarrett Bell, in USA Today (31 January 2009)
WARNING: This album contains country & western music and may cause offence to narrow minded listeners.
elvis costello— Warning label on Almost Blue (1981)
What puzzles me most is your criticism that he showed 'no sense of engagement'. I haven't met the expression before, and feel bound to comment on its totalitarian tang. Engagement not with the truth as the speaker apprehends it, but with the alleged opinion of the majority of listeners.
e. m. forster— Letter 400, to John Morris, 12 January 1953
They have had numerous extraterrestrial signals. They were apparently searching in a spectrum or in an area . . . where they hit the mother lode. The signals were so numerous that they began to have their systems externally jammed by some sort of human agency that did not want them to continue receiving those signals... [I received this information from a source in SETI.] This person, if I were to say who he is, almost every one your listeners would probably know the name. (July 30, 2006)
steven m. greer— Greer on a Coast to Coast AM radio show that was hosted by Art Bell
You sang far better than you knew; the songs That for your listeners’ hungry hearts sufficed Still live, but more than this to you belongs: You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.
james weldon johnson— O Black and Unknown Bards, st. 6
The Don's difficult role never seemed to tax Juozapaitis excellent dramatic voice. Throughout the opera listeners were charmed by his great expressive range as he moved with ease from comic exchanges with Leporello to tender love sings.
vytautas juozapaitis— Martha Fawbush, "Bravo Concerts opens with excellent performance of Mozart classic". Asheville Citizen Times (October, 2003)
The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers.
leo strauss— “What is liberal education,” p.
Speeches easy to young speakers are generally very difficult to old listeners.
Anthony Trollope— Ch. 56 (The Duke's Children (1879))
I included songs which were aimed at making listeners think a little more deeply about faith in general. People of The Boxes for example, is not just a fable with implied reference to Jews and Christians , but it also points out that we who call ourselves " Muslims " are also living in a box sometimes. I wanted:;to help myself and the listeners realise our own faults too to stop being so judgmental of others and to get ourselves out of the dogmatic boxes we have trapped ourselves in.
dawud wharnsby— On his album The Prophet’s Hands
Don't try to tear down other people's religion about their ears, Build up your own perfect structure of truth, and invite your listeners to enter in and enjoy it's glories.
Brigham Young— The Life Story of Brigham Young, p. 149-150
Man dwells apart, though not alone, He walks among his peers unread; The best of thoughts which he hath known For lack of listeners are not said.
jean ingelow— Jean Ingelow, Afternoon at a Parsonage, Afterthought.
If you are in the spirit of prayer, do not be long, because other people will not be able to keep pace with you in such unusual spirituality, and if you are not in the spirit of prayer, do not be long, because you will be sure to weary the listeners.
— John Macdonald, p. 472. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
My work should be judged as it enters the ears and heads of listeners, not as it is described to the eyes of readers.
arnold schoenberg— As quoted in an interview with José Rodriguez (c. 1936) in Schoenberg? (1971) by Merle Armitage, p. 143
Considering how readily musicologists criticize one another witness the merciless footnotes (and reviews) of so many books and articles the innocent bystander must find it strange that they remain unwilling to venture judgments about the quality of the music around which they work... But it is hard to see what can be the purpose of musicology if not to advise people on what to hear and how to hear it. Separating out the good, the bad and the indifferent, and helping listeners enjoy the best, is surely the least we can offer society in return for our keep.
— Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, in "The good, the bad and the boring" in Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music (1997) ISBN 0198165404
Another equally true saying of Schumann is that, compared with Beethoven, Schubert is as a woman to a man. For it must be confessed that one's attitudes towards him is almost always that of sympathy, attraction, and love, rarely that of embarrassment or fear. Here and there only, as in the Rosamund B minor Entr'acte, or the Finale of the 10th symphony, does he compel his listeners with an irrestistible power; and yet how different is this compulsion from the strong, fierce, merciless coercion, with which Beethoven forces you along, and bows and bends you to his will."
— Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn (London:Macmillan, 1951), 238.
Considering how readily musicologists criticize one another – witness the merciless footnotes (and reviews) of so many books and articles – the innocent bystander must find it strange that they remain unwilling to venture judgments about the quality of the music around which they work…But it is hard to see what can be the purpose of musicology if not to advise people on what to hear and how to hear it. Separating out the good, the bad and the indifferent, and helping listeners enjoy the best, is surely the least we can offer society in return for our keep.
— Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (1997), "The good, the bad and the boring", Companion to Medieval & Renaissance Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198165404.
