Calvin Coolidge Famous Quotes

The legendary newspaper editor William Allen White, who had found President Harding “almost unbelievably ill-informed,”6 found it more difficult to criticize his replacement, Vice President Calvin Coolidge, who was easily reelected in 1924. Coolidge was so hands-off there simply wasn’t much to say. Even friends called him “silent Cal.” The best White could manage as criticism was an observation that the aloof Coolidge always seemed to be “looking down his nose to locate that evil smell which seemed forever to affront him.”7 Even Dorothy Parker, the witty founder of the Algonquin Round Table, couldn’t skewer the president. As the story went, at a dinner party she asked him, “Mr Coolidge, I’ve made a bet against a fellow who said it was impossible to get more than two words out of you.” His famous reply was, “You lose.”8(Parker got the last word, as she typically did. When told in 1933 that Coolidge had died, she quipped, “How can you tell?”9)

And yet, listening is arguably more valuable than speaking. Wars have been fought, fortunes lost, and friendships wrecked for lack of listening. Calvin Coolidge famously said, “No man ever listened himself out of a job.” It is only by listening that we engage, understand, connect, empathize, and develop as human beings. It is fundamental to any successful relationship—personal, professional, and political. Indeed, the ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.” So it’s striking that high schools and colleges have debate teams and courses in rhetoric and persuasion but seldom, if ever, classes or activities that teach careful listening. You can get a doctorate in speech communication and join clubs like Toastmasters to perfect your public speaking, but there’s no comparable degree or training that emphasizes and encourages the practice of listening.