Daily Inspiration Quote by Mignon McLaughlin

Listening gets romanticized as a civic virtue, but McLaughlin treats it like an endangered species for a reason: the incentives run the other way. The line opens with a blunt, almost gossipy absolutism ("No one really listens"), then pivots into a dare: try it. That little challenge is where the quote turns from complaint into diagnosis. She’s not merely accusing people of being self-absorbed; she’s suggesting that sustained listening is punished. You’ll "see why" because you’ll experience the asymmetry firsthand: you give attention, you receive monologue; you make space, the space gets taken. The subtext is less about moral failure than about social design.

As a mid-century journalist and aphorist, McLaughlin wrote in an era when conversation was increasingly mediated by institutions - advertising, politics, broadcast - all of them built on one-way transmission. Her punchline anticipates the modern attention economy: listening is labor, speaking is reward, and the loudest voices tend to collect both. The word "really" matters. It admits that people perform listening (the nods, the "uh-huhs") while privately composing their response, their rebuttal, their escape route. Real listening threatens identity because it requires letting someone else’s reality rearrange yours, even slightly.

The wit is dry but not cruel. It’s a survival tip disguised as a shrug: if you feel lonely in a crowd, it’s not just you being sensitive. It’s a system where attention is currency, and most people are broke.