Nonviolent Communication Quotes

“Ihave thought for a long time now that if, some day, the increasing efficiency for the technique of destruction finally causes our species to disappear from the earth, it will not be cruelty that will be responsible for our extinction and still less, of course, the indignation that cruelty awakens and the reprisals and vengeance that it brings upon itself … but the docility, the lack of responsibility of the modern man, his base subservient acceptance of every common decree. The horrors that we have seen, the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable men are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile men. —George Bernanos”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“When I behaved in the way which I now regret, what need of mine was I trying to meet?” I”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“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, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“We deny responsibility for our actions when we attribute their cause to factors outside ourselves:”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“When people are upset, they often need empathy before they can hear what is being said to them.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“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, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“Like money, approval from others is a form of extrinsic reward. Our culture has educated us to hunger for reward. We attended schools that used extrinsic means to motivate us to study; we grew up in homes where we were rewarded for being good little boys and girls, and were punished when our caretakers judged us to be otherwise. Thus, as adults, we easily trick ourselves into believing that life consists of doing things for reward; we are addicted to getting a smile, a pat on the back, and people’s verbal judgments that we are a “good person,” “good parent,” “good citizen,” “good worker,” “good friend,” and so forth. We do things to get people to like us and avoid things that may lead people to dislike or punish us.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“Don’t do anything that isn’t play!”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“For centuries, the image of the loving woman has been associated with sacrifice and the denial of one’s own needs to take care of others. Because women are socialized to view the caretaking of others as their highest duty, they often learn to ignore their own needs.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“Semanticist Wendell Johnson pointed out that we create many problems for ourselves by using static language to express or capture a reality that is ever changing: “Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to symbolize with this language is a world of process, change, differences, dimensions, functions, relationships, growths, interactions, developing, learning, coping, complexity. And the mismatch of our ever-changing world and our relatively static language forms is part of our problem.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“While we may not consider the way we talk to be “violent,” words often lead to hurt and pain, whether for others or ourselves. In”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“my partner wants more affection than I’m giving her, she is “needy and dependent.” But if I want more affection than she is giving me, then she is “aloof and insensitive.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“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, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“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, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“Earlier we saw that the behavior of others may be a stimulus for our feelings, but not the cause.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“feelings result from how we choose to receive what others say and do, as well as from our particular needs and expectations in that moment.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“NVC heightens our awareness that what others say and do may be the stimulus, but never the cause, of our feelings. We see that our feelings result from how we choose to receive what others say and do, as well as from our particular needs and expectations in that moment. With this third component, we are led to accept responsibility for what we do to generate our own feelings.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“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, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“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, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“We all pay dearly when people respond to our values and needs not out of a desire to give from the heart, but out of fear, guilt, or shame. Sooner or later, we will experience the consequences of diminished goodwill on the part of those who comply with our values out of a sense of either external or internal coercion. They, too, pay emotionally, for they are likely to feel resentment and decreased self-esteem when they respond to us out of fear, guilt, or shame. Furthermore, each time others associate us in their minds with any of those feelings, the likelihood of their responding compassionately to our needs and values in the future decreases.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“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, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“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, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves. As author and mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested, “‘What will they think of me?’ must be put aside for bliss.” We begin to feel this bliss when messages previously experienced as critical or blaming begin to be seen for the gifts they are: opportunities to give to people who are in pain.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“if readers have a sincere desire to make life miserable for themselves, they might learn to compare themselves to other people. For those unfamiliar with this practice, he provides a few exercises. The first one displays full-length pictures of a man and a woman who embody ideal physical beauty by contemporary media standards. Readers are instructed to take their own body measurements, compare them to those superimposed on the pictures of the attractive specimens, and dwell on the differences.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. For as you judge others, so you will yourselves be judged… —Holy Bible, Matthew 7:1”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“allows our natural compassion to flourish. It guides us to reframe the way we express ourselves and listen to others by focusing our consciousness on four areas: what we are observing, feeling, and needing, and what we are requesting to enrich our lives. NVC fosters deep listening, respect, and empathy and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“The more we practice in this way, the more we realize a simple truth: behind all those messages we’ve allowed ourselves to be intimidated by are just individuals with unmet needs appealing to us to contribute to their well-being.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“Words Are Windows
(or They’re Walls) I feel so sentenced by your words, I feel so judged and sent away, Before I go I’ve got to know, Is that what you mean to say? Before I rise to my defense, Before I speak in hurt or fear, Before I build that wall of words, Tell me, did I really hear? Words are windows, or they’re walls, They sentence us, or set us free. When I speak and when I hear, Let the love light shine through me. There are things I need to say, Things that mean so much to me, If my words don’t make me clear, Will you help me to be free? If I seemed to put you down, If you felt I didn’t care, Try to listen through my words, To the feelings that we share. —Ruth Bebermeyer”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships

“[My mother] related a childhood anecdote about one of her sisters who had an appendix operation and afterwards had been given a beautiful purse by another sister. My mother was fourteen at the time. Oh, how she yearned to have an exquisitely beaded purse like her sister's, but she dared not open her mouth. So guess what? She feigned a pain in her side and went the whole way with her story. Her family took her to several doctors. They were unable to produce a diagnosis and so opted for exploratory surgery. It had been a bold gamble on my mother's part, but it worked--she was given an identical little purse! When she received the coveted purse, my mother was elated despite being in physical agony from the surgery. Two nurses came in and one stuck a thermometer in her mouth. My mother said, 'Ummm, ummm,' to show the purse to the second nurse, who answered, 'Oh, for me? Why, thank you!' and took the purse! My mother was at a loss, and never figured out how to say, 'I didn't mean to give it to you. Please return it to me.' Her story poignantly reveals how painful it can be when people don't openly acknowledge their needs.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

“The ability to offer empathy to people in stressful situations can defuse potential violence.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Life-Changing Tools for Healthy Relationships