Marshall B. Rosenberg Quotes

Social change involves helping people see new options for making life wonderful that are less costly to get needs met.

The best way I can get understanding from another person is to give this person the understanding, too. If I want them to hear my needs and feelings, I first need to empathize.

A respectful understanding of another's experience.

They have most likely said it because they have an unmet need.

When you need empathy, you cannot give empathy.

When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion.

If we don't tell people about our needs, it is much less likely they will be met.

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.

Self-empathy in NVC means checking in with your own feelings and needs.

If you are a czar or a king or a president or someone that wants to control those below them you do not want people to have a consciousness of life, of their needs. Because people do not make good slaves when they're connected to life... That's why in the public schools the primary objective is obedience to authority.

The spirituality that we need to develop for social change is one that mobilizes us for social change.

NVC is language, thoughts, communication skills and means of influence that serve my desire to do three things: 1) to liberate myself from cultural learning that is in conflict with how I want to live my life. 2) to empower myself to connect with myself and others in a way that makes compassionate giving natural. 3) to empower myself to create structures that support compassionate giving.

Never question the beauty of what you are saying because someone reacts with pain, judgment, criticism. It just means they have not heard you.

You'll find people less threatening if you hear what they're needing rather than what they're thinking about you.

Punishment also includes judgmental labeling and the withholding of privileges.

Postpone result/solution thinking until later; it's through connection that solutions materialize - empathy before education.

People do not hear our pain when they believe they are at fault.

The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence. When I first read this statement, the thought, 'What nonsense!' shot through my mind before I realized that I had just made an evaluation.

Remember that whatever anyone does, it is an effort to meet a need.

Have you ever been surfing? Imagine you're on your surfboard now, waiting for the big one to come. Get ready to get carried with that energy. Now, here it comes. That's empathy. No words - just being with that energy. When I connect with what's alive in another person, I have feelings similar to when I'm surfing.

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

If we wish to express anger fully, the first step is to divorce the other person from any responsibility for our anger.

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.

NVC is a reminder; to focus our attention where we are most likely to get our needs met.

What evidence is there that we've adequately empathized with the other person? First, when an individual realizes that everything going on within has received full empathic understanding, they will experience a sense of relief. We can become aware of this phenomenon by noticing a corresponding release of tension in our own body.

When we are angry, killing people is too superficial.

I don't think you can have an authentic connection when one person is diagnosing the other.

This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately, it provokes defensiveness, resistance, and counterattack. It is a language of demands.

A difficult message to hear is an opportunity to enrich someone's life.

As radical as it may seem, it is possible to do things only out of play. I believe that to the degree that we engage moment by moment in the playfulness of enriching life- motivated solely by the desire for its enrichment- to that degree are we being compassionate with ourselves.

At the root of every tantrum and power struggle are unmet needs.

At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled.

Understanding and connection can transcend conflict.

As long as I think I 'should' do it, I'll resist it, even if I want very much to do it.

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

I believe that the most joyful and intrinsic motivation human beings have for taking any action is the desire to meet our needs and the needs of others.

The more we empathize with the other party, the safer we feel.

The key to fostering connection in the face of a 'no' is always hearing 'yes' to something else.

Some people use NVC to respond compassionately to themselves, some to create greater depth in their personal relationships, and still others to build effective relationships at work or in the political arena. Worldwide, NVC is used to mediate disputes and conflicts at all levels.

Before we tackle the gangs and the basic story, we have to make sure that we have liberated ourselves from how we have been educated and make sure we are coming from a spirituality of our own choosing.

Nonviolent Communication is a way of keeping our consciousness tuned in moment by moment to that beauty within ourselves and others, and not saying anything that we think might in any way tarnish people's consciousness of their own beauty.

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

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.

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

Conflicts, even of long standing duration, can be resolved if we can just keep the flow of communication going in which people come out of their heads and stop criticizing and analyzing each other, and instead get in touch with their needs, and hear the needs of others, and realize the interdependence that we all have in relation to each other. 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.

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

If we want to be compassionate we must be conscious of the words we use. We must both speak and listen from the heart.

When we make mistakes, we can use the process of NVC mourning and self-forgiveness to show us where we can grow instead of getting caught up in moralistic self-judgments.