Sister Souljah
(1964) American hip hop-generation author, activist, recording artist, and film producer
Quotes about understanding
page 19
Anne Lamott
(1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Alberto Moravia
(1907–1990) Italian writer and journalist
Interviewed in The New Yorker, May 7, 1955.
“The trouble with people is they don't understand people.”
David Goodis
(1917–1967) Novelist, screenwriter
Michel De Montaigne
(1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman
Source: The Complete Essays
Source: City of Heavenly Fire
Stephen Fry
(1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist
Source: The Fry Chronicles
Source: Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993) p. 12.
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird
Dale Carnegie
(1888–1955) American writer and lecturer
Source: How to Win Friends & Influence People
Brené Brown
(1965) US writer and professor
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Clary and Luke, pg. 407
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Bones (2007)
Elisabeth Elliot
(1926–2015) American missionary
Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control
Robert McCloskey
(1914–2003) children's book author and illustrator from the United States
L.J. Smith
(1965) American author
Source: Secret Vampire
“If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.”
Ian Stewart
(1945) British mathematician and science fiction author
Source: The Collapse of Chaos: Discovering Simplicity in a Complex World
“Even though you may not understand how God works, you know he does.”
Max Lucado
(1955) American clergyman and writer
Source: When God Whispers Your Name
“People always fear what they don't understand, Evangeline. History proves that.”
Libba Bray
book
The Diviners
Source: The Diviners
“I understand once again that the greatness of God always reveals itself in the simple things.”
Source: Like the Flowing River
James Clavell
book
Shōgun
Source: Shōgun
Julie Garwood
(1946) American writer
Source: Guardian Angel
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
Stephen R. Covey
(1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker
John Steinbeck
(1902–1968) American writer
Journal entry (1938), quoted in the Introduction to a 1994 edition of Of Mice and Men by Susan Shillinglaw, p. vii
Context: In every bit of honest writing in the world … there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love. There are shorter means, many of them. There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that base theme. Try to understand each other.
“You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?”
Raymond Carver
book
Cathedral
Source: Cathedral
“love, I've come to understand is more than three words mumbled before bedtime.”
Nicholas Sparks
(1965) American writer and novelist
Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven
“Horror was rooted in sympathy… in understanding what it would be like to suffer the worst.”
Joe Hill
(1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World
Source: Heart-Shaped Box
“I see things and I hear things I do not understand. I'm a skilled, resourceful… vegetable!”
Source: The Bourne Identity
“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”
John Steinbeck
(1902–1968) American writer
Source: No Country for Old Men
Stanley Kubrick
(1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor
“Would she understand that time had stopped while she was gone.”
Miranda July
(1974) American performance artist, musician and writer
Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You
“If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.”
Kurt Lewin
(1890–1947) German-American psychologist
Attributed to Kurt Lewin in: Charles W. Tolman (1996) Problems of Theoretical Psychology - ISTP 1995. p. 31.
“Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?”
Terence McKenna
(1946–2000) American ethnobotanist
“You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
Albert Einstein
(1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
variant: If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself.
variant: If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Frequently attributed to Richard Feynman
Probably based on a similar quote about explaining physics to a "barmaid" by Ernest Rutherford
Page 418 of Einstein: His Life and Times (1972) by Ronald W. Clark says that Louis de Broglie did attribute a similar statement to Einstein:
: To de Broglie, Einstein revealed an instinctive reason for his inability to accept the purely statistical interpretation of wave mechanics. It was a reason which linked him with Rutherford, who used to state that "it should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid." Einstein, having a final discussion with de Broglie on the platform of the Gare du Nord in Paris, whence they had traveled from Brussels to attend the Fresnel centenary celebrations, said "that all physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart ought to lend themselves to so simple a description 'that even a child could understand them.' "
The de Broglie quote is from his 1962 book New Perspectives in Physics, p. 184 http://books.google.com/books?id=xY45AAAAMAAJ&q=%22mathematical+expression+apart%22#search_anchor.
Cf. this quote from David Hilbert's talk Mathematical Problems given in 1900 before the International Congress of Mathematicians:
: "A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street."
Cf. this quote from Kurt Vonnegut's novel Cat's Cradle:
: Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.
Misattributed
Mortimer J. Adler
(1902–2001) American philosopher and educator
Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Bestselling Guide to Reading Books and Accessing Information
Source: The Wretched of the Earth
Source: The Princess Bride
“To understand all is to forgive all.”
Evelyn Waugh
(1903–1966) British writer
Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns
David Levithan
(1972) American author and editor
Source: My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories
Carl Sagan
(1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Bringing Science Down to Earth (1994), co-authored with Anne Kalosh, in Hemispheres (October 1994), p. 99 http://books.google.com/books?id=gJ1rDj2nR3EC&lpg=PA99&pg=PA99; this is similar to statements either mentioned in earlier interviews or published later in the book The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995)
Variants:
We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.
"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990) http://www.csicop.org/si/show/why_we_need_to_understand_science
Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world.
"With Science on Our Side" https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1994/01/09/with-science-on-our-side/9e5d2141-9d53-4b4b-aa0f-7a6a0faff845/, Washington Post (9 January 1994)
We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?
Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553, May 27, 1996.
I know that science and technology are not just cornucopias pouring good deeds out into the world. Scientists not only conceived nuclear weapons; they also took political leaders by the lapels, arguing that their nation — whichever it happened to be — had to have one first. … There’s a reason people are nervous about science and technology.
And so the image of the mad scientist haunts our world—from Dr. Faust to Dr. Frankenstein to Dr. Strangelove to the white-coated loonies of Saturday morning children’s television. (All this doesn’t inspire budding scientists.) But there’s no way back. We can’t just conclude that science puts too much power into the hands of morally feeble technologists or corrupt, power-crazed politicians and decide to get rid of it. Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Advances in transportation, communication, and entertainment have transformed the world. The sword of science is double-edged. Rather, its awesome power forces on all of us, including politicians, a new responsibility — more attention to the long-term consequences of technology, a global and transgenerational perspective, an incentive to avoid easy appeals to nationalism and chauvinism. Mistakes are becoming too expensive.
"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990)
Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything — new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science.
"Why We Need To Understand Science" in The Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 14, Issue 3 (Spring 1990)
Science is [...] a way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we’re up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along.
Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553 (27 May 1996)
Source: The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
Aimee Bender
(1969) Novelist, short story writer
Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
