Beyond Your Bubble Quotes

“Dialogue isn’t about winning. It’s about understanding.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“Listening may not be the most exciting part of conversation, but it’s essential if you want to have a meaningful exchange with another person.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“You may feel like engaging with people across political lines is a zero-sum game in which there’s no way for both people to win. If you believe that one of you must lose, you will either avoid participating in dialogue or you will try to win it, which will prevent successful dialogue. Dialogue isn’t about winning. It’s about understanding.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“Listening in a way that makes people feel heard will help others feel more comfortable sharing information with you, and when you are actively listening, you are more likely to take it in.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“Focus on the relationship, and persuasion may follow.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“It’s a little bit magical how much people appreciate being heard and understood.”
― Tania Israel , Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“The first rule of timing: don’t interrupt just to ask a question.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“Vulnerability is not knowing how the other person will respond, but making space for it anyway. We need to embrace, or at least tolerate, this vulnerability if we want to understand another person more than we want to advocate for our own perspective.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“Ask questions from a place of curiosity rather than judgment. Don’t try to lure someone into saying something inconsistent or incorrect and then leaping on them with a ‘gotcha’ – it won’t help anything, and it’s disrespectful.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“Just because you can have dialogue doesn’t mean you must in every situation. It’s an opportunity, not a mandate.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“There are a few specific skills that will help you to understand people and to help them feel safe and understood, and there’s one skill that will help you to do both of those things: listening.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“People’s tendency to believe that people on their side are motivated by love, and people on the other side are motivated by hate appears to be at the root of some of the world’s most intractable conflicts.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“It’s more important to simply be present than to be brilliant.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“There’s a deep humility in listening because the focus is more on understanding the other person than on saying everything that comes into your mind.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work

“We might not end up agreeing on substantive policy or values, but we could humanize rather than demonize those with whom we disagree, we could exchange ideas respectfully, we could deepen our understanding of ourselves and each other.”
― Tania Israel, Beyond Your Bubble: How to Connect Across the Political Divide, Skills and Strategies for Conversations That Work