Quotes

Richard Bandler

“Disappointment requires adequate planning.”

"Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem."

“If you can’t enjoy what you have, you can’t enjoy more of it.”

“The reason people have problems is that they have too much time to think.”

"They say one day you'll look back on this and laugh... my policy is why wait?"

“People always tell me with absolute certainty that they don’t trust themselves.”

“My mantra for silencing the inner dialogue is: ‘shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up,…’”

“Do you want to know a good way to fall in love? Just associate with all your pleasant experiences with someone, and disassociate from all the unpleasant ones.”

“We take the very best of what people do, synthesize it down, make it learnable and share it with each other – and that is what the real future of what NLP will be and its gonna stay that way!”

“Remember, it’s your own body, your own brain. You’re not a victim of the universe, you are the universe.”

“Brains aren't designed to get results; they go in directions. If you know how the brain works you can set your own directions. If you don’t, then someone else will.”

“The greatest personal limitation is to be found not in the things you want to do and can’t, but in the things you've never considered doing.”

“The best thing about the past is that it’s over. The best thing about the future is that it’s yet to come. The best thing about the present is that it’s here now.”

“If you say to yourself ‘It’s difficult to get up in the morning’, ‘It’s hard to cease smoking’, then you are already using hypnotic suggestions on yourself…”

“You know what ? Certain people think they will feel good if certain things happen… The trick is : you have to feel good for no reason…”

“I made the door in my house left-handed, because I’m left handed. When people come in, they push the door the wrong way, and hit themselves on the door. And you know what ? People try harder and harder to do it ! When something doesn't work, try the same thing harder!”

“You are born with only two fears: fear of falling and fear of loud noise. All the rest is learned. And it’s a lot of work!”

"Never be too busy to be alive..."

“Physics changes, but reality stays the same”

"Freedom Is Everything and Love Is All the Rest."

"All we are ever doing is putting things together or taking things apart…”

"You can't change people by removing something. You must create a void and then fill it..."

“People always tell me with absolute certainty that they don’t trust themselves. Or they tell me that they decided absolutely that they can't make good decisions. You know what, it's impossible for anyone to tell you anything that's a generalization about themselves that won't destroy itself... including that one!"

NLP Life Interview: In a recent seminar you mentioned that humour is your invisible shield.  Why is humour so important in your seminars?

Richard Bandler: Well, to me, humour is a tool that, as far as I’m concerned, shields you from the stupidity that’s rampant on the planet.

If you can’t look at how something is funny, you can’t get around it. I listen to people’s tragedy, have done for four decades, and if I empathize with them, then that is the opposite of having a sense of humour. My sense of humour isn’t a cruel one - although I do pick on people.  I try to get people to look from a different point of view, which is what humour really is about.  You describe the same thing in a different tone of voice and you take it to its logical extreme it becomes humorous. 

The notion that we can spend our way out of debt, there isn’t a politician who doesn’t like that idea cause they won’t be around when the bill comes, and when I hear politicians go “We just need spend more money and stimulate the economy” well I’m going “If I could spend my way out of debt, I can’t make a house payment and so I’m going to buy three houses” it just doesn’t make sense. It's ridiculous, and what humour does is get people to start looking at things not from the point of view of how bad it feels but how ridiculous it is. 

I’m very fond of saying, to people after they explain to me how stuck they are, “That sounds like a really good plan, doesn’t it?” 

Cause they’ll tell me that I think this and then I never try and that feels really bad and the more I feel bad the less I try and I go “Great plan!” It shields me from having to empathise with how much they’re suffering but it also shields them from the same thing.  They come up and smirk at me and they’ll go “Well, it’s not a good plan but I can’t help myself” and I said “There’s another good plan”.  And then pretty soon they go, “Well, what else can I do? and I go “Well you could do this, you can look at it this way and you maybe see yourself doing this”. 

I can give them detailed descriptions of what successful people think about.  I don’t try to fix what’s broken, what I try to do is replace it.  There are some things that you can restore to perfect condition like an old automobile, but there's something that’s not worth restoring in the first place: a bad idea. 

If somebody tells me I’m stupid because I got a low IQ score in high school, I go “Well, that’s really stupid to believe IQ stars. Einstein got bad grades in school.  He was bad at Math for heaven's sakes!"  And I say, "he did pretty good, actually, we all remember him for one equation." 

I said this to these people I met people from the Mensa Society. They may be able to answer obscure questions but most of them can’t get a date.  Which one’s smart and which one isn’t?

Over and over again I’ve looked at people who have told me something and I've just asked them the simple question: “Well, is this working for you?”  And they look at me and go “No” and I go “Well then maybe you should stop.”  And they go “But I don’t know how” and I go “Good, let me tell you.  It ain’t that hard."

To me, I’m always using humour in the sense that you chide someone.  Chiding is a particular skill that you need to be able to get people out of the crap they’re in.  Instead of going ,“Oh, that must be terrible” which just means it’s real, you need to get people to look at it and go “I don’t have to live this way”. When you start chiding people you start going “You don’t have to do this anymore, just step over here”. 

It’s the old flirting technique of come away closer.  You flirt with people not to marry them, you flirt with people you have the opportunity to find out who they are. 

Most people don’t flirt with themselves enough to know what they actually could do. My job is to chide them into trying new ways of thinking, new ways of acting, so that they can have more fun in life and get more stuff done."

On Speaking, Listening and Silence

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” 

― Ernest Hemingway

“We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.” 

― Zeno of Citium

"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk." - Doug Larson
"One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say." - Bryant H. McGil
"If you make listening and observation your occupation, you will gain much more than you can by talk." - Robert Baden-Powel
"Most of the successful people I've known are the ones who do more listening than talking." - Bernard Baruch

"I don't speak to teach something; I speak to create something. These are not lectures; these are simply a device for you to become silent, because if you are told to become silent without making any effort you will find great difficulty. I am making you aware of silences without any effort on your part. My speaking is for the first time being used as a strategy to create silence in you. Just in a moment, when I became silent, you become silent.... What remains is just a pure awaiting. You are not making any effort; neither am I making any effort. I enjoy talking. It is not an effort. I love to see you silent. I love to see you laugh. I love to see you dance. But in all these activities, the fundamental remains meditation." - Osho 

"I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have not spoken." - Publilius Syrus

"The Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao" - Lao Tzu

"Silence is a source of great strength." - Lao Tzu

"There is nothing harder, at moments, than talking to someone who has all the power of silence." - Elizabeth Kosova

"Talk, talk, talk: the utter stupidity of words." - William Faulkner 

"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is." - Morpheus, 'The Matrix'

"One learns more from listening than speaking. And both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls." - Thor Heyerdahl

"I am using words just to create silent gaps. The words are secondary; the silences between those words are primary. This is simply a device to give you a glimpse of meditation. And once you know that it is possible for you, you have traveled far in the direction of your own being." - Osho

"The wise speak when they have something to say, the fools when they have to say something."

“Always have something to say. The man who has something to say and who is known never to speak unless he has, is sure to be listened to.” - Dale Carnegie

"The word "listen" contains the same letters as the word "silent"". - Alfred Brendel

"Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence." - Arabic Proverb

"In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood" - Henry David Thoreau

"A little less conversation, a little more action, please." - Elvis

"Be silent or let thy words be worth than silence." - Pythagoras

"Never miss a good chance to shut up." - Will Rogers

"Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them." - John Ruskin

"He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words." - Elbert Hubbard

“Men use thought only as authority for their injustice, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.”  - Voltaire

“Men of few words are the best men.” - William Shakespeare, Henry V

"Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved." – Voltaire

"In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word." - Walt Whitman

"Everything in life is speaking in spite of its apparent silence." - Hazrat Inayat Khan

"There is a greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question." - Thomas Merton

“My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear — a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence. The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.” - Khalil Gibran

"Silence is so accurate." - Mark Rothko

"Work hard in silence, let success make all the noise."

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” - Stephen R. Covey

"Never say anything that doesn't improve on silence." - Richard Yates

"God is silent. Now if only man would shut up." - Woody Allen

"Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing." - William S. Burroughs

“It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.” - Honoré de Balzac

“The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.” - Edgar Allan Poe

      "And then a scholar said, "Speak of Talking." 
      And he answered, saying: 
      You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; 
      And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. 
      And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered. 
      For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words many indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly. 
      There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone. 
      The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape. 
      And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand. 
      And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words. 
      In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence. 
      When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue. 
      Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear; 
      For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered 
      When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more. " - Kahlil Gibran

 Others

"The map is not the territory." - Alfred Korzybski

"You cant solve a problem at the same level it was created at." - Albert Einstein

(A new type of thinking is essential to move toward higher levels)

“Whether you think you can or can't, you are right” by Henry Ford

"It always seems impossible until it's done." N. Mandela

"Energy flows where attention goes."

"Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do." - Bruce Lee

"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone."

" If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always got!"

"One cannot not communicate: Every behavior is a form of communication. Because behavior does not have a counterpart (there is no anti-behavior), it is impossible not to communicate. Even if communication is being avoided (such as the unconscious use of non-verbals or symptom strategy), that is a form of communication. “Symptom strategy” is ascribing our silence to something beyond our control and makes no communication impossible. Examples of symptom strategy are sleepiness, headaches, and drunkenness. Even facial expressions, digital communication, and being silent can be analyzed as communication by a receiver." - Paul Watzlawick