Top 250 Marshall B. Rosenberg Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “If I use empathy to liberate people to be less depressed, to get along better with their family, and at the same time not inspire them to use their energy to rapidly transform systems in the world, then I am part of the problem. I am essentially calming people down, making them happier to live in the systems as they are, and I am using empathy as a narcotic.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

202. “Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.” – THE BUDDHA.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

203. “We know the speaker has received adequate empathy when a. we sense a release of tension, or b. the flow of words comes to a halt.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

204. “When we fear punishment, we focus on consequences, not on our own values.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

205. “Most of us grew up speaking a language that encourages us to label, compare, demand, and pronounce judgments rather than to be aware of what we are feeling and needing. I believe life-alienating communication is rooted in views of human nature that have exerted their influence for several centuries. These views stress humans’ innate evil and deficiency, and a need for education to control our inherently undesirable nature.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

206. “Fix-it jackals can’t wait to fix it, because they don’t know how to enjoy pain. And until you learn how to enjoy pain, you can’t enjoy intimacy.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

207. “When our communication supports compassionate giving and receiving, happiness replaces violence and grieving.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

208. “If the other persons behavior is not in harmony with my own needs, the more I empathize with them and their needs, the more likely I am to get me own needs met.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

209. “We can’t win at somebody else’s expense. We can only fully be satisfied when the other person’s needs are fulfilled as well as our own.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

210. “We want to take action out of the desire to contribute to life rather than out of fear, guilt, shame, or obligation.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

211. “Many people in fact have very negative associations with needs. They associate needs with being needy, dependant, selfish, and again I think that comes from our history of educating people to fit well into domination structures so that they are obedient and submissive to authority.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

212. “In this stage, which I refer to as emotional slavery, we believe ourselves responsible for the feelings of others. We think we must constantly strive to keep everyone happy. If they don’t appear happy, we feel responsible and compelled to do something about it. This can easily lead us to see the very people who are closest to us as burdens.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

213. “It’s never what people do that makes us angry; it’s what we tell ourselves about what they did.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

214. “We give empathy to others for our own benefit.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

215. “By maintaining our attention on what’s going on within others, we offer them a chance to fully explore and express their interior selves. We would stem this flow if we were to shift attention too quickly either to their request or to our own desire to express ourselves.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

216. “Steps to expressing anger: 1. Stop. Breathe. 2. Identify our judgmental thoughts. 3. Connect with our needs. 4. Express our feelings and unmet needs.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

217. “When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

218. “The punitive use of force tends to generate hostility and to reinforce resistance to the very behavior we are seeking.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

219. “However impressed we may be with NVC concepts, it is only through practice and application that our lives are transformed.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

220. “The language of wrongness, should, and have to is perfectly suited for this purpose: the more people are trained to think in terms of moralistic judgments that imply wrongness and badness, the more they are being trained to look outside themselves – to outside authorities – for the definition of what constitutes right, wrong, good, and bad. When we are in contact with our feelings and needs, we humans no longer make good slaves and underlings.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

221. “In our culture, most of us have been trained to ignore our own wants and to discount our needs.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

222. “I was struck by the crucial role of language and our use of words. I have.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

223. “Empathizing with someone’s ‘no’ protects us from taking it personally.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

224. “This objective of getting what we want from other people – or getting them to do what we want them to do – threatens the autonomy of people, their right to choose what they want to do. And whenever people feel that they’re not free to choose what they want to do, they are likely to resist, even if they see the purpose in what we are asking and would ordinarily want to do it.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

225. “All that has been integrated into NVC has been known for centuries about consciousness, language, communication skills, and use of power that enable us to maintain a perspective of empathy for ourselves and others, even under trying conditions.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

226. “As is often the case, these groups were more skilled in analyzing the perceived wrongness of others than in clearly expressing their own needs.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

227. “When it comes to giving advice, never do so unless you’ve first received a request in writing, signed by a lawyer.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

228. “This world is what we have made of it. If it is ruthless today it is because we have made it ruthless by our attitudes. If we change ourselves we can change the world, and changing ourselves begins with changing our language and methods of communication. I highly recommend reading this book and applying the Nonviolent Communication process it teaches. It is a significant first step toward changing our communication and creating a compassionate world. –Arun Gandhi.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

229. “The Mask Always a mask Held in the slim hand whitely Always she had a mask before her face – Truly the wrist Holding it lightly Fitted the task: Sometimes however Was there a shiver, Fingertip quiver, Ever so slightly – Holding the mask? For years and years and years I wondered But dared not ask And then – I blundered, Looked behind the mask, To find Nothing – She had no face. She had become Merely a hand Holding a mask With grace. – Author unknown.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

230. “I earnestly believe, however, that an important form of self-compassion is to make choices motivated purely by our desire to contribute to life rather than out of fear, guilt, shame, duty, or obligation.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

231. “The Austrian-born Israeli philosopher Martin Buber describes this quality of presence that life demands of us: “In spite of all similarities, every living situation has, like a newborn child, a new face, that has never been before and will never come again. It demands of you a reaction that cannot be prepared beforehand. It demands nothing of what is past. It demands presence, responsibility; it demands you.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

232. “Our attention is focused on classifying, analyzing, and determining levels of wrongness rather than on what we and others need and are not getting.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

233. “What some of us call lazy some call tired or easy-going, what some of us call stupid some just call a different knowing, so I’ve come to the conclusion, it will save us all confusion if we don’t mix up what we can see with what is our opinion. Because you may, I want to say also; I know that’s only my opinion. – Ruth Bebermeyer.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

234. “With empathy, I’m fully with them, and not full of them – that’s sympathy.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

235. “The intention behind the protective use of force is to prevent injury, never to punish or to cause individuals to suffer, repent or change.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

236. “Everyone clings to their history with a vengeance, because it anchors their identity. So when Marshall advocated peaceful talk, he was advocating a new identity at the same time. He fully realized this fact. As he states about Nonviolent Communication and the role of the mediator in this new third edition, “We’re trying to live a different value system while we are asking for things to change.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

237. “Judgments of others contribute to self-fulfilling prophecies.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

238. “In 75 percent of the television programs shown during hours when American children are most likely to be watching, the hero either kills people or beats them up. This violence typically constitutes the “climax” of the show. Viewers, having been taught that bad guys deserve to be punished, take pleasure in watching this violence.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

239. “Clinical training in psychoanalysis has a deficit. It teaches how to sit and think about what a person is saying and how to interpret it intellectually, but not how to be fully present to this person.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

240. “Perhaps you are surprised that I regard praise and compliments to be life-alienating. Notice, however, that appreciation expressed in this form reveals little of what’s going on in the speaker; it establishes the speaker as someone who sits in judgment. I define judgments – both positive and negative – as life-alienating communication.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

241. “In these long-standing conflicts, I find that most cases it gets resolved in about twenty minutes after each side can tell me the needs of the other.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

242. “Make your goal to attend to your underlying needs and to aim for a resolution so satisfying that everyone involved has their needs met also.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

243. “When people hear needs, it provokes compassion.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

244. “Empathize with silence by listening for the feelings and needs behind it.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

245. “When I behaved in the way which I now regret, what need of mine was I trying to meet?” I.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

246. “Anger is a result of life-alienating thinking that is disconnected from needs. It indicates that we have moved up to our head to analyze and judge somebody rather than focus on what we are needing and not getting.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

247. “I wouldn’t expect someone who’s been injured to hear my side until they felt that I had fully understood the depth of their pain.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

248. “Once you can clearly describe what you are reacting to, free of your interpretation or evaluation of it, other people are less likely to be defensive when they hear it.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

249. “However, what lingered in my mind was that one person’s dissatisfaction. We tend to notice what’s wrong rather than what’s right.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

250. “If people just asked: “Here are the needs of both sides, here are the resources. What can be done to meet these needs?” the conflict would be easy to resolve.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg