Top 250 Marshall B. Rosenberg Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

202. “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

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

204. “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

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

206. “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

207. “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

208. “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

209. “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

210. “My theory is that we get depressed because we’re not getting what we want, and we’re not getting what we want because we have never been taught to get what we want. Instead, we’ve been taught to be good little boys and girls and good mothers and fathers. If we’re going to be one of those good things, better get used to being depressed. Depression is the reward we get for being “good.” But, if you want to feel better, I’d like you to clarify what you would like people to do to make life more wonderful for you.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

212. “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

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

215. “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

216. “My anger tells me firstly that there’s a need of mine that’s not getting met.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

220. “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

221. “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

222. “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

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

226. “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

227. “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

228. “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

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

230. “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

231. “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

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

233. “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

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

235. “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

236. “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

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

239. “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

240. “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

241. “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

242. “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

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

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

244. “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

245. “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

246. “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

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. “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

249. “MBR: In my lifetime I’ve been called a multitude of names, yet I can’t recall seriously learning anything by being told what I am. I’d like to learn from your appreciation and enjoy it, but I would need more information.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

250. “What all the basic religions are saying is this: Don’t do anything that isn’t play.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg