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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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“I am afraid our eyes are bigger than our bellies, and that we have more curiosity than capacity; for we grasp at all, but catch nothing but wind.” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

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

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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either be not minded or not understood.” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

“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

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

“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

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

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

“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

“His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.” John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

“And it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing!” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“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

“Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.” Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

“Look, he's winding up the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.” William Shakespeare, The Tempest

“He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“You might be able to put it all into one paragraph or into one verse of a song if you could get it right.” Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“We could not understand because we were too far and could not remember because we were travelling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign—and no memories.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

“It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.” Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

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Related topics

knowledge life reason meaning empathy love ignorance wisdom 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)
Lewis Carroll (2)
Ayn Rand (2)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)
Galileo Galilei (2)
Albert Camus (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
Michel de Montaigne (2)
Bob Dylan (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)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2)
Pride and Prejudice (2)
Chronicles, Volume One (2)
The Fountainhead (2)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (2)
Antony and Cleopatra (2)
Heart of Darkness (2)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (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)