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Understanding quotes

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“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.” Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do

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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

“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

“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

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

“For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.” Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

“All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“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

“Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.” Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“If ya want a linguistic adventure, go drinkin' with a Scotsman. 'Cause ya couldn't fucking understand them before...” Robin Williams, Robin Williams Live On Broadway

“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

“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

“The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy, but they were listening in gibberish.” Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

“I know the Lord has a plan for us all, but sometimes, I just don’t understand what the message can be.” Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember

“Isabel’s written in a foreign tongue. I can’t make her out.” Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

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Related topics

empathy knowledge life reason feeling words meaning love wisdom ignorance woman relationship God heart teaching experience 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)
Lewis Carroll (2)
Albert Camus (2)
Haruki Murakami (2)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2)
Galileo Galilei (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)
Antony and Cleopatra (2)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (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)
On Nature (1)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1)