Quotes about understanding
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“But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

God, People, Way, Idea

“The hardest thing in the world to understand is income taxes.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed by his friend Leo Mattersdorf, who also said that "From the time Professor Einstein came to this country until his death, I prepared his income tax returns and advised him on his tax problems." In a letter to Time magazine, 22 February 1963. See this post from The Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/07/einstein-income-taxes/#more-2031 for more background. <br class="br">Attributed in posthumous publications

World

“when faced with a problem you do not understand, do any part of it you do understand, then look at it again.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Problem, Parting

“Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.”

Aphra Behn The Rover

The Rover, Part II, Act III, sc. i.

Money, Sense

“Later on in life, you expect a bit of rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did, anyway. But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life's business.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Life, Business, Thinking

“Life isn't long enough to enjoy and understand all at the same time. You have to decide which is more important”

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez (1950) Cuban writer

Source: Dirty Havana Trilogy

Life, Time

“Book lovers will understand me,
and they will know too that part of the pleasure
of a library lies in its very existence.”

Jan Morris (1926) British historian

Pleasure, Books, Lovers, Parting

“You understand my music.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Music

“In time we often become one with those we once failed to understand.”

Patti Smith M Train

Source: M Train

Time

“We couldn't understand because we were too far… and could not remember because we were traveling in the night of first ages, those ages that had gone, leaving hardly a sign… and no memories.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Age, Travel, Memory, Night

“People who understand everything get no stories.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

People

“The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race.”

Carter G. Woodson book The Mis-Education of the Negro

Source: The Mis-Education of the Negro

History

“Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating… but there are other ways to understanding.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Way, Drawing

“He dunked his tea bag and watched the results critically. “I really must get a new supplier. This tea is pathetic. America just doesn’t understand tea at all.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: The Dead Girls' Dance

Tea

“Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

Source: The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Education

“There are some people who will never understand what
loyalty means. They could tell you what it was, of course,
but they will never know. They will never see it from the inside.
They couldn't imagine a world where something like that was real.”

Jim Butcher book First Lord's Fury

Source: First Lord's Fury

People, World, Imagination, Loyalty

“Normal: lacking in taste, compassion, understanding, kindness, and ordinary human decency.”

Frank Portman King Dork

Source: King Dork

“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Women, World, Bird, Singing

“And then there is our personal history. Memories only we share. Things not another living soul would understand.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

Soul, History, Memory, Personality

“In truth, Freud sees nothing and understands nothing.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

Source: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Truth

“You're the one who doesn't understand, I've been standing on the edge with you for years.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

“And he understands. He understands why people hold hands: he’d always thought it was about possessiveness, saying This is mine. But it’s about maintaining contact. It is about speaking without words. It is about I want you with me and don’t go.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

People

“Don't try to understand me, just be grateful that you felt the warmth of Zaphod Beeblebrox's aura on your wonderstruck face.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

“I don't understand my feelings. I really don't. I don't understand how I could hate you so much after so much time. How, no matter how much I'd like to not hate you, I hate you even more. It grows.”

Sam Shepard Fool for Love

Source: Fool for Love

Hate, Feeling, Time

“There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding.”

Marilynne Robinson Home

Source: Home

Error, Forgiveness

“It's easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It's hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.”

Thomas Harris book Hannibal

Variant: I think it's easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It's hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.
Source: Hannibal

Learning, Parting

“We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 93

Life, World, Fear, History

“the beautiful are found in the edge of a room
crumpled into spiders and needles and silence
and we can never understand why they
left, they were so
beautiful.

they dont make it,
the beautiful die young
and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Beauty, Silence

“You can clear out whatever obstacles are preventing you from living your most creative life, with the simple understanding that whatever is bad for you is probably also bad for your work.”

Elizabeth Gilbert Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Source: Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Life

“I can see his pain, see it in the way he runs his fingers through his hair, over and over, and I understand what it costs him to hide it all.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Pain, Way

“Dogs make sense. They understand hierarchy and the need to cooperate. They come when you call them. A cat though—a cat will take your number and get back to you. Maybe. If he’s in a good mood.”

Eileen Wilks Mortal Danger

Source: Mortal Danger

Dogs, Cats, Mood, Sense

“It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different--men and women live in different worlds… at core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Women, Men, World

“Do you understand now why books are hated and feared? Because they reveal the pores on the face of life. The comfortable people want only the faces of the full moon, wax, faces without pores, hairless, expressionless.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Life, Hate, People, Books

“Sweet, crazy conversations full of half sentences, daydreams and misunderstandings more thrilling than understanding could ever be.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

“There are some people who can receive a truth by no other way than to have their understanding shocked and insulted.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

In Reckless Ecstasy (1904)

People, Truth, Way

“Gratitude, not understanding, is the secret to joy and equanimity.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Secret, Joy, Gratitude

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Nature, Wise, Deep, Beauty

“We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: You Are Here: Discovering the Magic of the Present Moment

Knowledge, Reality, Learning

“Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

People, Faith, Thinking

“Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.”

Beverly Cleary book The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Source: The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Love, Boy, Nature

“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States
Context: Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.

People, Nature, Knowledge, Envy

“Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Suffering

“I don’t understand hate. I’ve seen its power. I’ve known its wrath. I’ve even felt it coursing through my veins, pushing me on. But I don’t know where it comes from or why it lasts, how it can take hold in some people and grow.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

Hate, People

“Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.”

Dan Brown book The Da Vinci Code

Source: The Da Vinci Code

Faith

“The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

Source: The Trial (1920)

“I'm not broken, I'm ruined. Do you understand the difference? With broken maybe you can fix things. Ruined? All you can do is wait to bury me.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

Waiting

“Love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

Love

“Everybody's got something. In the end, what choice does one really have but to understand that truth, to really take it in, and then shop for groceries, get a haircut, do one's work; get on with the business of one's life.

That's the hope, anyway.”

David Rakoff (1964–2012) writer

Source: Half Empty

Life, Truth, Hope, Business

“However difficult it may be to accept what happens to us, one must understand that moments such as this give us the possibility for radical change in our behavior.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

Behavior, Change

“You have to understand what you’re missing before you can really feel a loss.”

Jodi Picoult book Sing You Home

Source: Sing You Home

Feeling, Loss

“When you have just been told that the girl you love is definitely betrothed to another, you begin to understand how Anarchists must feel when the bomb goes off too soon.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Summer Lightning

Source: Summer Lightning (1929)

Love, Feeling, Girl

“i can't understand her"
well son, you might as well try to understand the sun”

Robert Jordan The Fires of Heaven

Source: The Fires of Heaven

Sun

“They say great themes make great novels.. but what these young writers don't understand is that there is no greater theme than men and women.”

John O'Hara (1905–1970) American journalist

Women, Men

“The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow

Past, Future

“Most people don't cry when they're upset or frightened, but rather when they're frustrated. Your frustration is understandable. You've been through a most trying time." -Hodge”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

People, Time, Cry

“Regin to Fegley:

"I finally understand what a dickie-do is. Your gut does stick out more than your dickie do.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

“I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble.”

Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 11 : The Dragon in My Garage, p. 180
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Context: I try not to think with my gut. If I'm serious about understanding the world, thinking with anything besides my brain, as tempting as that might be, is likely to get me into trouble. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.

World, Thinking

“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

Life, Women, Men, Evil

“No one reads; if someone does read, he doesn't understand; if he understands, he immediately forgets.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

Reading, Forgetting

“Today I will go to wait for her again, because I cannot help it, because my whole being seems now to be bound up in the being of one so different from myself and yet so exquisitely familiar that I can scarely understand what has happened.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: La historiadora

Waiting, Help

“Let us study things that are no more. It is necessary to understand them, if only to avoid them.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Study

“Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts.. if we can keep them open to God, will find their own intuitive way.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

God, Way, Heart

“To understand the world at all, sometimes you could only focus on a tiny bit of it, look very hard at what was close to hand and make it stand in for the whole;”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

World

“So what's the point of using words nobody else knows or can say comfortably? I just don't understand that.”

Stephen Chbosky (1970) American writer

“So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.”

Philip K. Dick The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Source: The Transmigration of Timothy Archer

Books, World

“Maybe in order to understand sex fully/one has to risk being destroyed by it.”

Sharon Olds (1942) American poet

Sex

“Why should things be easy to understand?”

Thomas Pynchon (1937) American novelist

Pynchon's response to Jules Siegel about the complexity of V, as quoted in "Who Is Thomas Pynchon... And Why Did He Take Off With My Wife?", Playboy (March 1977)