Understanding Quotes

Ignorance is not not knowin' - Ignorance is knowin' what ain't so.

She tried to be calm, and leave things to take their course; and tried to dwell much on this argument of rational dependence – “Surely, if there be constant attachment on each side, our hearts must understand each other ere long. We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment’s inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.” And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt as if their being in company with each other, under their present circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.

Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond.

One could never judge a man without seeing him close, for oneself.

I would not want to form a partnership with an architect who has only a little knowledge of building or a broker who has a limited knowledge of the stock market. Still, we form what we hope to be permanent relationships in love with people who have hardly any knowledge of what love is.

No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it.

Don't get stuck on the level of words. A word is no more than a means to an end. It's an abstraction. Not unlike a signpost, it points beyond itself

What a man does not understand, he does not possess.

If you are to judge a man, you must know his secret thoughts, sorrows, and feelings; to know merely the outward events of a man's life would only serve to make a chronological table-a fool's notion of history.

Common sense is so very simple but very difficult to grasp.

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men.

To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads; such is the behavior of the multitude.

I try to find what makes even the worst, most despicable character sympathetic at his or her core.

If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved

I'm not afraid to upset people. But I am not as upset because I understand what I'm up against.

Understanding a question is half an answer.

Enter others' minds and let them enter yours.

Listening is an important key to HEARING.

Sometimes we need to be apart to understand just how much we truly love each other .

But eternity is not temporality at a standstill. What is oppressive about the concept of the eternal is the justification, incomprehensible to us, that time must undergo in eternity and the logical conclusion of that, the justification of ourselves as we are.

Knowledge studies others, wisdom is self known.

for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge

You have to understand the good in things, to detect the real evil.

On this platform of peace, we can create a language to translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.

The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

Nonviolence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used.

That we understand something perfectly, that we accomplish something better than anyone else around us, that is what matters.

Most people do not take heed of the things they encounter, nor do they grasp them even when they have learned about them, although they suppose they do.

Always the laws of light are the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary.

Understanding comes about through feeling, from moment to moment in the mirror of relationship.

If someone smells a flower and says he does not understand, the reply to him is: there is nothing to understand, it is only a scent. If he persists, saying: that I know, but what does it all mean? Then one has either to change the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the flower.

Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood.

By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause.

The truth is always an abyss.

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?

Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.

...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

If aught I have said is truth, that truth shall reveal itself in a clearer voice, and in words more kin to your thoughts.

Teaching is the highest form of understanding.

Animals have personalities like people and must be studied.

All can hear, but only the sensitive can understand.

Truth is always present; it only needs to lift the iron lids of the mind's eye to read its oracles.

The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

My broad sense of this is that authors like Smil really paint the clear picture, and once you see that, it's kind of Oh, of course. That's such a primal thing to all these physical services that we take for granted.

Marvelous as may be the power of my dog to understand my moods, deathless as his affection and fidelity, his mental state is as unsolved a mystery to me as it was to my remotest ancestor.

He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.

The philosopher's conception of things will, above all, be truer than other men's, and his philosophy will subordinate all the circumstances of life. To live like a philosopher is to live, not foolishly, like other men, but wisely and according to universal laws.

To be radical is to grasp things by the root.

It is tragic-comic to see that all this knowledge and understanding exercises no power at all over men's lives, that their lives do not express in the remotest way what they have understood, but rather the opposite.

The question is not what you look at – but how you look & whether you see.

If you're familiar with a principle you don't have to be familiar with all of its applications.

Science bestowed immense new powers on man, and at the same time, created conditions which were largely beyond his comprehension.

Mathematics is merely the means to a general and ultimate knowledge of man.

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.

If Blake said that, said Father Brian, he never lived in Dublin.

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous. I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

Non-comprehenders are often distressed. Not you, though-because with good humor you're blessed. After all, your thoughts went like this, I dare say: It was none but the Lord who made us that way.

It is easier to understand mankind in general than any individual man.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.