| | |

Understanding quotes

edits filters view all 96 quotes

“You have to know the past to understand the present.” Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” - 1980

“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” - 1947

“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” - 1945

“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” - 1791

“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” - 1916

“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” - 1869

“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” - 16 April 1963

“Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.” William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” - 1623

“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” - 1865

“If anything, I wanted to understand things and then be free of them.” Bob Dylan, “Chronicles, Volume One” - 2004

“What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Diary” - 2003

“No one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are, at once, both sweet and deep.” Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables” - 1862

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.” Bram Stoker, “Dracula” - 1897

“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” - 1843

“The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another.” Emma Goldman, “Anarchism and Other Essays” - 1910

“It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.” George Bernard Shaw, “Man and Superman” - 1903

“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” - 1748

“Woman, don't you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it's always perfectly new.” Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina” - 1877

“The highest endeavour of the mind, and the highest virtue is to understand things by the third kind of knowledge.” Baruch Spinoza, “Ethics” - 1677

“We understand more than we know.” Margaret Atwood, “Oryx and Crake” - 2003

“He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either be not minded or not understood.” John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” - 1689

“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” - 4th century BC

“Philosophy cannot and should not give faith, but it should understand itself and know what it has to offer and take nothing away, and least of all should fool people out of something as if it were nothing.” Søren Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling” - 1843

“EDUCATION, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.” Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” - 1906

“Friend, we understand not one another: I am too courtly, and thou art too cunning.” William Shakespeare, “Troilus and Cressida” - 1609

“In Nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read.” William Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra” - 1623

“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” - c. 170 - 180

“You should write a book . . . translating mad things girls do so boys can understand them.” J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” - 2003

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“My desolation does begin to make a better life.” William Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra” - 1623

“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” - 1951

“Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you—except the things that count?” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“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” - 1965

“That's what they mean by the love that passeth understanding: that pride, that furious desire to hide that abject nakedness which we bring here with us, carry with us into operating rooms, carry stubbornly and furiously with us into the earth again.” William Faulkner, “As I Lay Dying” - 1930

“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already,...” Leo Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is Within You” - 1894

“Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding.” David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” - 1748

“an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“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” - 1762

“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” - 1969

“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” - 1975

“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” - 1985

“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” - 1774

“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” - 1632

“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” - 2000

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince” - 1943

“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” - 1899

“Much learning does not teach understanding, otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus.” Heraclitus, “On Nature” - c. 535 – c. 475 BCE

“He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Great Gatsby” - 1925

“We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

Related topics

love knowledge life reason God words meaning feeling empathy heart teaching women wisdom ignorance language philosophy belief man woman experience

Related authors

William Shakespeare (6)
John Steinbeck (4)
J. K. Rowling (3)
Paulo Coelho (3)
Joseph Conrad (3)
Leo Tolstoy (3)
Søren Kierkegaard (3)
Bruce Lee (3)
Jane Austen (2)
Lewis Carroll (2)
David Hume (2)
Ayn Rand (2)
Carl Sagan (2)
Michel de Montaigne (2)
Albert Camus (2)
Galileo Galilei (2)
Bob Dylan (2)
Oscar Wilde (1)
George Bernard Shaw (1)
Ernest Hemingway (1)

Related sources

Fear and Trembling (3)
Tao of Jeet Kune Do (3)
Pride and Prejudice (2)
Antony and Cleopatra (2)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (2)
The Fountainhead (2)
The Alchemist (2)
Heart of Darkness (2)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (2)
The Plague (2)
East of Eden (2)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (2)
Chronicles, Volume One (2)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1)
Othello (1)
The Tempest (1)
Man and Superman (1)
Islands in the Stream (1)