Your article reminded me on two things my Grandma kept repeating to me.
1) "It's always easier to be a mouth than the ear!"
In other words, she was telling me how it's easier to talk and learn how to talk than listen, learn how to listen, and listen well.
As a child I didn't quite understand what did she meant by that, but through years I started to realize, every day more, the deep wisdom of her words.
And there is the second one.
2) "There isn't a man or woman, even if he or she is the biggest fool, you wouldn't be able to learn something from him or her!"
I remember how I was laughing when she told me that. I asked her, how the hence she can even come up with the idea I would be able to learn something from the biggest fool?!
She didn't argue with me abut it. She just calmly said, "He or she (the biggest fool) surely knows something that you still don't! As well, he or she might show you different observing angles, open new horizons and different perspectives, you would never ever consider or be aware of their existence before and otherwise."
I was shocked with her reply and of course didn't understand half of it, but again, through years I became aware of the meaning of another of her many deep wisdoms.
You are right, i also witness of those real wisdom words we heared in our childhood and now proving cent percent true.