Understanding Quotes

[I would] rather discover one cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.

~ Democritus

Man has one name, and many more than two natures. But the essential two are these: that he shall strive to impose order on chaos, and that he shall strive to take advantage of chaos… A third element of man’s nature is this: that he shall not understand what he is doing.

~ John Brunner

The true reader must be an extension of the author. He is the higher court that receives the case already prepared by the lower court. The feeling by means of which the author has separated out the materials of his work, during reading separates out again the unformed and the formed aspects of the book—and if the reader were to work through the book according to his own idea, a second reader would refine it still more, with the result that, since the mass that had been worked through would constantly be poured into fresh vessels, the mass would finally become an essential component—a part of the active spirit.Through impartial rereading of his book the author can refine his book himself. With strangers the particular character is usually lost, because the talent of fully entering into another person’s idea is so rare. Often even in the author himself. It is not a sign of superior education and greater powers to justifiably find fault with a book. When receiving new impressions, greater sharpness of mind is quite natural.

~ Novalis

Max Weber was right in subscribing to the view that one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar. But there is a temptation for us theoretical sociologists to act sometimes as though it is not necessary even to study Caesar in order to understand him. Yet we know that the interplay of theory and research makes both for understanding of the specific case and expansion of the general rule.

~ Robert K. Merton

We cannot be judge and jury, the hardest thing is to understand the unknown and in knowing the hidden all things are revealed giving truth.God is watcher during all moments and at the end the real Judge.

~ Zarina Bibi

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer - he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.

~ Bernard Malamud

I knew in that moment that everything happens for a reason, but we can’t always know the reason when the journey begins. Some things we can only understand at the end of our journey.

~ Mike Ericksen

Those who do not feel pain seldom think that it is felt.

~ Samuel Johnson

I was to discover that the quest for human understanding is a lifetime one that has no end in sight.

~ Margaret Bourke-White

We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening. The truth which one puts into one's words does not carve out a direct path for itself, it is not irresistibly self-evident. A considerable time must elapse before a truth of the same order can take shape in them.

~ Marcel Proust

Alice More: As for understanding, I understand that you are the best man that I ever met, or am likely to; And, if you go...Well, God knows why I suppose. Though as God's my witness God's kept deadly quiet about it!

~ Robert Bolt

You don't have to have sex to find a feeling of closeness and understanding. Lord knows I feel that way about you. Use that to shackle your hunger. Isn't that what love is?

~ Kim Harrison

The most courageous act in politics is to try to understand your opponent.

~ Alain De Botton

When they find what they don't like , they destroy it. Because it scares them-and you girls would scare them as much as anything they've ever seen.' 'Why?' asked Isobel. 'Because . . . because of what they believe.

~ Gordon Dahlquist

Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late.

~ Javier Marías

Relationship is understanding. It is a process of self-revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself -- to be is to be related.

~ Bruce Lee

Recognising our own mistakes helps us to empathise non-judgementally with others and helps enable us to understand their issues.

~ Jay Woodman

If you want to be with somebody who gets you, you prefer collusion to desire, safety to excitement (sometimes good things to prefer but not always the things most wanted). The wish to be understood may be our most vengeful demand, may be the way we hang on, as adults, to the grudge against our mothers; the way we never let our mothers of the hook for their not meeting our every need. Wanting to be understood, as adults, can be, among many other things our most violent form of nostalgia.

~ Adam Phillips

I think he's beginning to understand, and understanding is a horrible thing.

~ Lauren Destefano

When you pray and hope for a change. Don't expect a change to come. Expect the opportunity for a change to come.

~ Jonathan Anthony Burkett

The most precious gift you can ever give to a young woman is, appreciating and understanding her true feelings

~ M.f. Moonzajer

We must take the money out of politics, and end psychopathic, self-destructive government and corporate madness.

~ Bryant Mcgill

We must rebuild organic communities, where people can come together and have analogue conversations and share stories, art, music and emotions.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Some years ago I read a book that brought Einstein's theory of relativity down to an eighth grade level. This convinced me that any subject can be made easy. In other words, always beware of anyone who tells you a topic is above you or better left to experts. This person may, for some reason, be trying to shut you out. You CAN understand almost anything.

~ Richard J. Maybury

Some things are more than we can understand.

~ Christie Watson

The freest societies are in a constant state of revolution.

~ Bryant Mcgill

Seek first to respectThen to understand

~ Jo Murphy

? Life is all about relationships and what actually happens when people relate, when people understand each other. To see each other for who they are, not what we want or expect of them.” Margaret Bouchard

~ Ted Magnuson

Men were not supposed to be mushy, but one thing his mother taught him was that it was better to understand your feelings than hide from them

~ A.j. Wiliams

We must understand that out of community and dialogue, the answers will arrive in their own time and way.

~ Bryant Mcgill

To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation?

~ Pascal Mercier

depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.

~ John Green

I saw something I could never forget. I saw lifetimes of acknowledgement, fear, wisdom, questioning, and understanding in a child's eye. It was the worst thing I would ever witness.

~ Shannon A. Thompson

At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.

~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

the underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us...

~ Barack Obama

All I have learned in life really just boils down to this: there is only one difference between the so-called wise and the so-called foolish...and between those who are truly happy and those who are not. Those who are wise - and those who are happy - embrace and appreciate life. Those who are unhappy and unwise do not. That is all, that is the only difference.

~ Rasheed Ogunlaru

The unexplainable thing in nature that makes me feel the world is big fat beyond my understanding – to understand maybe by trying to put it into form. To find the feeling of infinity on the horizon line or just over the next hill.

~ Georgia O'keeffe

When we look back, it becomes clear that the acts and accomplishments of human beings are the signatures of history. Human signatures have created an enormous chasm between the joyeous light of the age of the Renaissance to the dark shadow of September 11, 2001. Those of us living on that fateful day experienced the lower depths of mankind. As an author, avid reader, world traveler, and person of enormous curiosity, my life experiences have taught me that discord often erupts from a lack of knowledge and education. To discourage future dark moments, I believe we must nourish the minds of our young with learning that creates understanding between ethnic and religious groups. Perhaps understanding will lead to a marvelous day when we take a last fleeting look at violence so harmful to so many. I sincerely believe that nothing will further the cause of peace more than the education of our young. I would like for readers to know that a percentage of the profits from the sale of this book will be devoted to the cause of education.May all roads lead to peace.

~ Jean Sasson

He showed the fineness of his nature by being kinder to me after that misunderstanding than before. Nay, the very incident which, by my theory, must in some degree estrange me and him, changed, indeed, somewhat our relations; but not in the sense I painfully anticipated. An invisible, but a cold something, very slight, very transparent, but very chill: a sort of screen of ice had hitherto, all through our two lives, glazed the medium through which we exchanged intercourse. Those few warm words, though only warm with anger, breathed on that frail frost-work of reserve; about this time, it gave note of dissolution. I think from that day, so long as we continued friends, he never in discourse stood on topics of ceremony with me.

~ Charlotte Brontë

... understanding, and action proceeding from understanding and guided by it, is the one weapon against the world's bombardment, the one medicine, the one instrument by which liberty, health, and joy may be shaped or shaped towards, in the individual, and in the race.

~ James Agee