Useful Mediation Quotes

It doesn't matter how deep the water is, all you can do is swim.

Nothing moves forward in a story except through conflict.

While you may prefer a simple step-by-step guide guaranteed to help you navigate life's difficulties, we have found the rescipe approach to dispute resolution hopelessly inadequate.

We don't have to do all of it alone. We were never meant to.

In conflict resolution, the deeper you look, the more there is to discover.

Conflict is the sound made by the cracks in a system, the manifestation of contradictory forces coexisting in a single space.

So long as only one ideal is the true goal, it will always seem to men that no means can be too difficult, no price too high, to do whatever is required to realize the ultimate goal. Such certainty is one of the great justifications of fanaticism, compulsion, persecution …. If there is only one solution to the puzzle, then the only problems are first how to find it, then how to realize it, and finally how to convert others to the solution by persuasion or by force. But if this is not so …, then the path is open to empiricism, pluralism, tolerance, compromise. Tolerance is historically the product of the realization of the irreconcilability of equally dogmatic faiths, and the practical improbability of complete victory of one over the other. Those who wished to survive realized that they had to tolerate error. They gradually came to see the merits of diversity, and so became skeptical about definitive solutions in human affairs.

Listen to both sides and you will be enlightened; listen to only one side and you will be left in the dark.

Take time to listen to what is said without words, to obey the law too subtle to be written, to worship the unnameable and to embrace the unformed.

LET US RECAPITULATE A BIT: The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society–and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.

Well, here's another way of looking at it.

Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty. It wasn't always a choice; we were born curious.

When we listen to people, our language softens. Listening may be the cardinal act of giving... It is the source of peace.

Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to start with themselves.

People don't resist change. They resist being changed.

In order to listen, here are some suggestions: Try to learn tranquility, to live in the present a part of the time every day. Sometimes say to yourself: "Now. What is happening now? This friend is talking. I am quiet. There is endless time. I hear it, every word." Then suddenly you begin to hear not only what people are saying, but also what they are trying to say, and you sense the whole truth about them. And you sense existence, not piecemeal, not this object and that, but as a translucent whole.

Then watch your self-assertiveness. And give it up. Remember, it is not enough just to will to listen to people. One must really listen. Only then does the magic begin.

We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.

In conflict resolution, the way out is through.

I'm not concerned with your liking or disliking me… All I ask is that you respect me as a human being.

Treat people well, regardless of their differences.

The more you can find your authentic conflict voice, the easier it will be to recognize and elicit the authentic voices of others.

By embracing the inescapable, I lost my fear of it. I’ll tell you a secret about fear: its an absolutist. With fear, its all or nothing. Either, like any bullying tyrant, it rules your life with a stupid blinding omnipotence, or else you overthrow it, and its power vanishes like a puff of smoke. And another secret: the revolution against fear, the engendering of that tawdry despots fall, has more or less nothing to do with ‘courage’. It is driven by something much more straightforward: the simple need to get on with your life.

So it is with you. Unless you speak intelligible words with your tongue, how will anyone know what you are saying? You will just be speaking into the air.

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force … When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. … It makes people happy and free when they are listened to.

Listening is not something that we do all the time. It's work. It's a commitment.

It's easy to listen if we like what the other person is saying. However, we don't listen well when we're under fire because we are hard wired for defensiveness... When we listen defensively, we automatically listen for what we don't agree with. We listen for the exaggerations, errors and distortions that will inevitably be there... Let's face it. Almost all of us are more invested in improving our talking skills than in improving our listening skills. Our desire to be understood is far stronger than our desire to understand the other person.

I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don’t listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all – which is so important, too – to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Think how the friends that really listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius as though it did us good, like ultraviolet rays.

This is the reason: When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life. You know how if a person laughs at your jokes you become funnier and funnier, and if he does not, every tiny little joke in you weakens up and dies. Well, that is the principle of it. It makes people happy and free when they are listened to. And if you are a listener, it is the secret of having a good time in society (because everybody around you becomes lively and interesting), of comforting people, of doing them good.

It is a bitter truth that victories won in anger lead to long-term defeat.

A person cannot teach another person directly; a person can only facilitate another's learning.

And if you fear dissension between the two, send an arbitrator from his people and an arbitrator from her people. If they both desire reconciliation, Allah will cause it between them. Indeed, Allah is ever Knowing and Acquainted [with all things].

And if two factions among the believers should fight, then make settlement between the two. But if one of them oppresses the other, then fight against the one that oppresses until it returns to the ordinance of Allah . And if it returns, then make settlement between them in justice and act justly. Indeed, Allah loves those who act justly.

The absence of conflict is not harmony, it's apathy. If you're in a group where people never disagree, the only way that could really happen is if people don't care enough to speak their minds.

Our ‘opponents' are our co-creators, for they have something to give which we have not. The basis of all cooperative activity is integrated diversity... What people often mean by getting rid of conflict is getting rid of diversity, and it is of the utmost importance that these should not be considered the same. We may wish to abolish conflict, but we cannot get rid of diversity. We must face life as it is and understand that diversity is its most essential feature... Fear of difference is dread of life itself. It is possible to conceive conflict as not necessarily a wasteful outbreak of incompatibilities, but a normal process by which socially valuable differences register themselves for the enrichment of all concerned.

In any system, once a relative orderliness has been achieved, the only means by which a broader and more complex interrelationship among the various elements can be achieved is by introducing or generating disorder. The system can come apart to be put together in a much more integrated way. Any system that resists this creative disintegration and re-integration can only suffer the gradual erosion of its established order due to the energy required to protect the system from change.

The great mediator of any community is human morality.

The shining spark of truth cometh forth only after the clash of differing opinions.

Let us speak, though we show all our faults and weaknesses,—for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it; not in set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation. But I am falling into my old foible,—preaching.

“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over.

But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’

If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.