Top 250 Marshall B. Rosenberg Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “We are this divine energy. It’s not something we have to attain. We just have to realize it, to be present to it.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

52. “We need to receive empathy to give empathy.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

53. “Our goal is to create a quality of empathic connection that allows everyone’s needs to be met.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

54. “Keep in mind that other people’s actions can never ‘make’ you feel any certain way. Feelings are your warning indicators.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

55. “Empathy allows us to re-perceive our world in a new way and move forward.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

56. “Empathy gives you the ability to enjoy another person’s pain.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

57. “Avoid ‘shoulding’ on others and yourself!”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

58. “My ultimate goal is to spend as many of my moments in life as I can in that world that the poet Rumi talks about, ’a place beyond rightness and wrongness.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

59. “The most dangerous of all behaviors may consist of doing things ’because we’re supposed to.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

60. “It’s harder to empathize with those who appear to possess more power, status, or resources.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

61. “When you are in a jackal environment, never give them the power to submit or rebel. We want to teach this to children very early: Never lose track that you are always free to choose. Don’t allow institutions to determine what you do.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

62. “We’re not taught to think in terms of needs. We don’t make nice dead people when we’re in touch with needs. Domination structures cannot maintain themselves when citizens are educated to be alive.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

63. “NVC self-forgiveness: connecting with the need we were trying to meet when we took the action that we now regret.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

64. “Unless we as social change agents come from a certain kind of spirituality, we’re likely to create more harm than good.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

65. “Don’t get addicted to your requests. Your objective is needs, not requests. Because then it becomes a demand.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

66. “I try never to hear what another person thinks of me. I enjoy life a lot more when I spend as little time as possible hearing or thinking about what other people think about me. I go to the needs behind the thoughts. Then I’m in a different world.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

67. “Anger tells us we’ve disconnected from life. The purpose in anger is to use it to come back to life.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

68. “You’ll find people less threatening if you hear what they’re needing rather than what they’re thinking about you.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

69. “Our ability to offer empathy can allow us to stay vulnerable, defuse potential violence, help us hear the word ‘no’ without taking it as a rejection, revive lifeless conversation, and even hear the feelings and needs expressed through silence.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

70. “Conventional compliments often take the form of judgments however positive, and are sometimes offered to manipulate the behavior of others. NVC encourages the expression of appreciation solely for celebration.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

71. “I never have to worry about another person’s response, only how I react to what they say.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

72. “Empathize, rather than put your “but” in the face of an angry person.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

73. “I think that there is a problem with rewards and consequences because in the long run, they rarely work in the ways we hope. In fact, they are likely to backfire.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

74. “When I am angry I have a judgment and an unmet need.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

75. “Fear of corporal punishment obscures children’s awareness of the compassion underlying the parent’s demands.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

76. “Don’t hate the circumstance, you may miss the blessing.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

77. “Life-Enriching Education: an education that prepares children to learn throughout their lives, relate well to others, and themselves, be creative, flexible, and venturesome, and have empathy not only for their immediate kin but for all of humankind.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

78. “To practice NVC, it’s critical for me to be able to slow down, take my time, to come from an energy I choose, the one I believe that we were meant to come from, not the one I was programmed into.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

79. “Always listen to what people need rather than what they are thinking about us.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

80. “Expressing our vulnerability can help resolve conflicts.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

81. “Blaming and punishing others are superficial expressions of anger.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

82. “Never connect yourself with the other person’s pain. Just hear their need. Leave yourself out of the other person’s feelings and needs.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

83. “NVC is interested in learning that is motivated by reverence for life, by a desire to learn skills, to contribute better to our own well-being and the well-being of others.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

84. “A respectful understanding of another’s experience.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

85. “Once you have access to key people in an organization, if you go into a meeting with enemy images of those people – then you are not going to connect.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

86. “I don’t think you can have an authentic connection when one person is diagnosing the other.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

87. “It may be most difficult to empathize with those we are closest to.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

88. “Children need far more than basic skills in reading, writing, and math, as important as those might be. Children also need to learn how to think for themselves, how to find meaning in what they learn, and how to work and live together.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

89. “A need is life seeking expression within us.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

90. “How I choose to look at any situation will greatly affect whether I have the power to change it or make matters worse.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

91. “Punishment also includes judgmental labeling and the withholding of privileges.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

92. “We are responsible for what we hear other people say and for how we act.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

93. “People have been trained to criticize, insult, and otherwise communicate in ways that create distance among people.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

94. “NVC helps us connect with each other and ourselves in a way that allows our natural compassion to flourish.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

95. “Two things distinguish nonviolent actions from violent actions. First, you don’t see an enemy and second, your intention is not to make the other side suffer.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

96. “NO is always a YES to something else.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

97. “Interpretations, criticisms, diagnoses, and judgments of others are actually alienated expressions of our unmet needs.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

98. “Translate all self-judgments into self-empathy.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

99. “When we are depressed, our thinking blocks us from being aware of our needs, and then being able to take action to meet our needs.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

100. “Power-Over leads to punishment and violence. Power-With leads to compassion and understanding, and to learning motivated by reverence for life rather than fear, guilt, shame, or anger.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg