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Understanding quotes

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“A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.” Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“You have to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.” Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” George Orwell, 1984

“All our knowledge begins with sense, proceeds thence to understanding, and ends with reason, beyond which nothing higher can be discovered in the human mind for elaborating the matter of intuition and subjecting it to the highest unity of thought.” Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason

“The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point.” Albert Camus, The Plague

“You women have a way of understanding without thinking. Woman was created out of God's own fancy. Man, He had to hammer into shape.” Rabindranath Tagore, The Home and the World

“To understand that of any person, his whole life, from birth, must be reviewed. All of our experiences fuse into our personality. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.” Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.” Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail

“We understand more than we know.” Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone.” Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are, at once, both sweet and deep.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“If anything, I wanted to understand things and then be free of them.” Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“Silence is the snare of the demon, and the more one keeps silent, the more terrifying the demon becomes; but silence is also the mutual understanding between the Deity and the individual.” Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling

“How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm...” Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

“What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately.” John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

“Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.” William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

“It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.” Bram Stoker, Dracula

“The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another.” Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays

“Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a...” David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

“It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.” George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

“You never understand anybody that loves you.” Ernest Hemingway, Islands in the Stream

“She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of a lack of knowledge.” Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.” J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him.” Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements . . . profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view” Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder, 'Why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.” Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

“Relationship is understanding.” Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do

“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

“In Nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read.” William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“I understand a fury in your words, but not the words.” William Shakespeare, Othello

“It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome.” Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” Oscar Wilde, The Remarkable Rocket

“My teachings are easy to understand and easy to put into practice. Yet your intellect will never grasp them, and if you try to practice them, you'll fail. My teachings are older than the world. How can you grasp their meaning? If you want to know...” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality.” Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“He values my understanding and talents more highly than my heart, but I am proud of the latter only.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

“My desolation does begin to make a better life.” William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

“People, I have discovered, are layers and layers of secrets. You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to...” Veronica Roth, Insurgent

“the mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.” Frank Herbert, Dune

“But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty, for here it succeeds in understanding necessity, beyond which there can be no greater sureness.” Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

“Nobody listens any more. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you...” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” Francis Bacon, The Essays of Francis Bacon

“They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway.” Franz Kafka, The Trial

“They think me mad—Starbuck does; but I’m demoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that’s only calm to comprehend itself!” Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

“We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

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Related topics

knowledge life reason meaning empathy love wisdom ignorance woman relationship God heart teaching feeling experience words women man religion self

Related authors

George Orwell (1)
John Steinbeck (4)
J. K. Rowling (3)
Carl Sagan (2)
William Shakespeare (6)
Paulo Coelho (5)
Leo Tolstoy (4)
Bruce Lee (3)
Søren Kierkegaard (3)
Joseph Conrad (3)
Jane Austen (2)
Ayn Rand (2)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)
Galileo Galilei (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
Albert Camus (2)
Lewis Carroll (2)
Bob Dylan (2)
Michel de Montaigne (2)
David Hume (2)

Related sources

Fear and Trembling (3)
Tao of Jeet Kune Do (3)
East of Eden (2)
Man and Superman (1)
The Alchemist (3)
Anna Karenina (2)
The Plague (2)
Chronicles, Volume One (2)
Pride and Prejudice (2)
The Fountainhead (2)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2)
Antony and Cleopatra (2)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (2)
Heart of Darkness (2)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (2)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (2)
A History of Western Philosophy (1)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1)
On Nature (1)