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" People find birdsong relaxing and reassuring because over thousands of years, they have learnt when the birds sing, they are safe; it's when birds stop singing that people need to worry. "

Related Quotes:

" Most people think it's a linear relationship: I speak, you listen. Actually, it's a circle, because the way you listen affects how I speak, and the way I speak affects the way you listen. "

Julian Treasure

Speak

You

Think

" In the U.K., architects train for five years, and they spend one day on sound. "

" Just three minutes a day of silence is a wonderful exercise to reset your ears and to recalibrate so that you can hear the quiet again. If you can't get absolute silence, go for quiet; that's absolutely fine. "

" Sound in a space affects us profoundly. It changes our heart rate, breathing, hormone secretion, brain waves. It affects our emotions and our cognition. "

Julian Treasure

Heart

Space

" Music is made to be listened to, so you immediately have an issue where you're playing it in the background like wallpaper. Music doesn't want to behave like that. "

" Ears are made not for hearing but for listening. Listening is an active skill, whereas hearing is passive. Listening is something that we have to work at - it's a relationship with sound. And yet, it's a skill that none of us are taught. "

" You are one-third as productive in open-plan offices as in quiet rooms. I have a tip for you: if you work in spaces like that, carry headphones with you, with a soothing sound like birdsong. Put them on, and your productivity goes back up to triple what it would be. "

" If you want to be listened to, the first step is to listen well yourself. "

" You can't truly listen to someone and do anything else at the same time. "

" I often go into shops and ask them to turn the music down. "

Julian Treasure

Turn

Down

" Men tend to listen in what I call a reductive way, which is to say for a point, for a solution. You know, we like to have a problem and solve it. Bang. Thank you very much. On to the next thing. "

" This devaluing of listening is handed down from generation to generation. There are many children who don't have the experience of being listened to by their parents. "

" A great deal of our work involves switching music off. "

" My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative, and it's hard to listen. I remember one day, I said to her, 'It's October 1 today,' and she said, 'I know, isn't it dreadful?' It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative. "

" I'm totally obsessed with sound. It's my life. "

" As parents, we tend to be in Tell rather than Listen mode. "

" Unlike so many other sounds, there's no maximum exposure to birdsong. "

" It's time architects start designing for our ears as well as our eyes. "

" There's a little bit of protocol in the real world which is quite important. If you speak to me, we understand that we've entered into a social contract. But sound that you haven't given permission to receive is noise, and generally unwelcome. "

Julian Treasure

Real

Important

" Sound is complex; there are many countervailing influences. It can be a bit like a bowl of spaghetti: sometimes you just have to eat it and see what happens. "

Julian Treasure

You

Eat

" People often mistake our mission at The Sound Agency for a crusade for silence, but actually, silence is in many ways just as bad as too much noise. "

" I would suggest that our listening is the main way that we experience the flow of time from past to future. "

" We all like to look good. However, this basic human desire can often get in the way of our listening and our speaking. This tendency often evinces itself in two simple words: 'I know.' But if I know everything, what can I learn? Absolutely nothing. "

" Listening is an activity. It's not passive. We are creating the world by listening all the time. "

" There are just huge benefits to come from designing for the ears in our health care. "

" I've heard many reports of police attending scenes of domestic violence where they've had to turn off music and televisions and radios. Noise tends to drive us a bit crazy. "

" Music is designed to be listened to, so it's calling for attention all the time, syphoning off our very limited auditory bandwidth and elbowing aside our ability to listen to the voice in our head we need when we're doing mental work. "

" We vote for politicians with lower voices, it's true, because we associate depth with power and with authority. "

" Intention is very important in sound, in listening. When I married my wife, I promised her I would listen to her every day as if for the first time. Now that's something I fall short of on a daily basis. "

" Sound changes moods, yet most of the sound around us is unplanned. "

Julian Treasure

Changes

Moods