Quotes about understanding
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“I wonder if you can understand, I never really knew what it was to want, until you.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Genuine Lies

“Why am I as I am? 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 book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Life, Birth, Personality

“I must learn more about these people―try to understand them, put myself in their place. No, instead I am so busy keeping my head above water that I scarcely know who I am, much less who anyone else is.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

People, Business, Learning, Water

“Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Way, Evil, Despair

“In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.”

Mark Twain book The Innocents Abroad

Source: The Innocents Abroad (1869), Ch. 61.
Context: The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

“A religion that is small enough for our understanding would not be big enough for our needs.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Religion

“You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: Anthony De Mello : Writings (1999), p. 8
Context: A master was once unmoved by the complaints of his disciples that, though they listened with pleasure to his parables and stories, they were also frustrated for they longed for something deeper. To all their objections he would simply reply: "You have yet to understand, my friends, that the shortest distance between a human being and truth is a story."

Truth

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: Provocations: Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard

“A cat understands how to be pleasant in the morning. He doesn't talk.”

Tamora Pierce book Mastiff

Source: Mastiff

Cats

“One of these grand defects, as I humbly conceive, is this, that children are habituated to learning without understanding.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 16: Letters and Personal Writings

Children, Learning

“To be mature you have to realize what you value most… Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Life

“It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Second Sex

Source: The Second Sex

Sex, Feeling, Question, Nature

“One of the pitfalls of childhood is that one doesn't have to understand something to feel it. By the time the mind is able to comprehend what has happened, the wounds of the heart are already too deep.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Feeling, Time, Heart, Childhood

“I think I need to face what I could have been in order to understand and accept what I am.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Variant: I think I need to face
what I could have been in order to understand and accept what I am.
Source: Where Rainbows End

Thinking

“For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

VIII. 585–586 (tr. G. H. Palmer).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Source: The Odyssey

Heart

“If you can develop this ability to see what you look at, to understand its meaning, to readjust your knowledge to this new information, you can continue to learn and to grow as long as you live and you’ll have a wonderful time doing it.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

Knowledge, Learning, Time

“It's you, so I feel that a person who will understand you, a person who will find you is waiting out there. So just keep on trying your best.”

Natsuki Takaya (1973) Manga artist

Feeling, Waiting, Personality

“The aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Love

“Once we truly know that life is difficult — once we truly understand and accept it — then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Life

“He pulls me around and kisses me. "You're Mac," he says. "And I'm Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?"
I do.
Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Love, Kiss

“No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.”

Franz Schubert (1797–1828) Austrian composer

People, Feeling, Imagination, Reality

“Understand the nature and influence of repeating patterns, from childhood experiences or even from past lives. Wthout understanding, patterns tend to repeat, unnecessarily damaging the relationship.”

Brian L. Weiss

Source: Messages from the Masters: Tapping into the Power of Love

Nature, Past, Childhood

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”

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

Variant: If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

“All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

As quoted in Angels in the workplace: stories and inspirations for creating a new world of work (1999) by Melissa Giovagnoli
Attributed

Truth

“It is not enough for the teacher to love the child. She must first love and understand the universe. She must prepare herself, and truly work at it.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

Love, Teachers, Universe

“You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Universe

“The golden rule for understanding spiritually is not intellect, but obedience. If a man wants scientific knowledge, intellectual curiosity is his guide; but if he wants insight into what Jesus Christ teaches, he can only get it by obedience.”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

Knowledge, Christ

“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Books, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The villains are all parts of me. For years I've been wondering what it would be like if all those negative elements were forced onto the main character's side. I can understand a character with that kind of anger.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Parting, Anger

“This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilization.

We cast this message into the cosmos. It is likely to survive a billion years into our future, when our civilization is profoundly altered and the surface of the Earth may be vastly changed. Of the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, some--perhaps many--may have inhabited planets and spacefaring civilizations. If one such civilization intercepts Voyager and can understand these recorded contents, here is our message:

This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

World, Hope, Music, Way

“Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.”

Amy Bloom (1953) Fiction writer, screenwriter, social worker, psychotherapist

Love, People, Wedding

“Genius is the ability to independently arrive at and understand concepts that would normally have to be taught by another person.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Personality

“It ain't the parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it's the parts that I do understand.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Parting

“Barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor illis.

(In this place I am a barbarian, because men do not understand me.)”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

Men

“I could not understand why men who knew all about good and evil could hate and kill each other.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

Men, Hate, Evil

“To look wise is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Life, Learning, Despair

“There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.”

Anne Rice book Servant of the Bones

Source: Servant of the Bones

Life, World, Beauty

“Explain to me what loving feels like, Beth. I want to understand.”

Jennifer Ashley (1974) American author

Source: The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie

Love, Feeling

“What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Fear

“Some things were beyond understanding.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

“If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet… maybe we could understand something.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

Silence

“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Imagination, Falseness

“The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Knowledge

“Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit has Brain."
There was a long silence.
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

Silence

“The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness cannot understand it”

Ted Dekker book House

Source: House

Light

“Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand, but the passages that bother me are those I do understand.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

People

“Don't you understand?" snarled Rincewind. "We are going over the Edge, godsdammit!"
"Can't we do anything about it?"
"No!"
"Then I can't see the sense in panicking," said Twoflower calmly.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

Sense

“I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”

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

“To understand everything is to hate nothing.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Hate

“There were several ways of understanding her: there was what she said, and there was what she meant, and there was something between the two, that was neither.”

Henry James book The Europeans

Source: The Europeans

Way

“Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

Way, Failure, Learning

“When children are loved, they live off trust; their bides and hearts open up to those who respect and love them, who understand and listen to them.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Becoming Human

Love, Children, Heart

“as they die, the ones we love, we lose our witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is nothing left but the endless flow.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love, Water

“We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

Love

“He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Silence, Deep

“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 (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love, Feeling, Deep, Relationship

“I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

People

“For he comes, the human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping
than he can understand.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Stolen Child http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1695/, st. 1 Crossways (1889) Variant: Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Context: p>Where dips the rocky highland Of Sleuth Wood in the lake, There lies a leafy island Where flapping herons wake The drowsy water rats; There we've hid our faery vats, Full of berries And of reddest stolen cherries.Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand. </p

World, Water

“As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Time

“Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward. It is only when you stop and look to the rear that you see the corpse caught under your wheel.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

Life

“If you do not help me," Tessa said to Jem, "I swear, I will change into you, and I will lift him myself. And then everyone here will see what you look like in a dress." She fixed him with a look. "Do you understand?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Change, Help

“The complete irresponsibility of man for his actions and his nature is the bitterest drop which he who understands must swallow.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Source: Human, All Too Human

Nature

“I don't think you will ever fully understand how you've touched my life and made me who I am. I don't think you could ever know just how truly special you are that even on the darkest nights you are my brightest star”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Life, Star, Thinking, Night

“I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Speed

“The world and the universe is an extremely beautiful place, and the more we understand about it the more beautiful does it appear. It is an immensely exciting experience to be born in the world, born in the universe, and look around you and realise that before you die you have the opportunity of understanding an immense amount about that world and about that universe and about life and about why we're here. We have the opportunity of understanding far, far more than any of our predecessors ever. That is such an exciting possibility, it would be such a shame to blow it and end your life not having understood what there is to understand.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

An Interview by Sheena McDonald (1995)

Life, World, Beauty, Universe

“It is perhaps well enough that the people of the Nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Misattributed

People

“I understand a fury in your words
But not your words.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

“I've never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a 'fat cat' and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a 'public-spirited philanthropist'.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Money, Cats

“Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.”

E.M. Forster book A Room with a View

Source: A Room with a View

“Worship is a posture of life that takes as its primary purpose the understanding of what it really means to love and revere God.”

Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher

Source: Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message

Love, Life, God

“Understanding is a two-way street.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

As quoted in Modern Quotations for Ready Reference (1947) by Arthur Richmond, p. 455
Source: The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

Way

“I understand pain. I've lived with pain my entire life. But pain is nothing compared to betrayal. And betrayal is nothing compared to knowing that the javelin in your back was rammed there by the one person in your life you actually trusted.”

Brad Meltzer book The Book of Lies

Source: The Book of Lies

Life, Pain, Betrayal, Personality

“Perhaps it would be simpler if you just did what you're told and didn't try to understand things.”

Terry Pratchett book Sourcery

Source: Sourcery

“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

McKenna interview (1992)
Context: I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child. When you're a child, something as simple as a tree doesn't make sense. You see it in the distance and it looks small, but as you go closer, it seems to grow — you haven't got a handle on the rules when you're a child. We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experienced is a narrowing of the imagination.

Imagination, Thinking

“Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent.”

John Dee (1527–1608) English mathematican, astrologer and antiquary

Source: The Hieroglyphic Monad

Learning

“Half of the time I don't know what they're talking about; their jokes seem to relate to a past that everyone but me has shared. I'm a foreigner in the world and I don't understand the language.”

Jean Webster (1876–1916) American novelist

World, Time, Past

“Running toward danger is foolhardy…. But so is closing your eyes to it. Many perils become less dangerous once you understand their potential hazards.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

Source: Rise of the Evening Star

“I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Beauty, Thinking

“The world is not always ours to understand….”

Heather Graham (1970) actress from the United States

Source: Dust to Dust

World

“Pop, I'm nothing! I'm nothing, Pop. Can't you understand that? There's no spite in it any more. I'm just what I am, that's all.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Source: Death of a Salesman

“Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwhile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

“If you want to love a parent you have to understand the incredible investment he or she has in you. If you are a parent, and you want to be loved, you have to deserve it.”

Jodi Picoult book Songs of the Humpback Whale

Source: Songs of the Humpback Whale

Love, Parent

“the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Variant: The best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them.

“I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.”

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896–1953) American novelist

“I understand what you're saying, and your comments are valuable, but I'm gonna ignore your advice.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

Source: Fantastic Mr. Fox

“If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Life, Sense

“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

(1993), Epilogue, p. 155
The First Three Minutes (1977; second edition 1993)

Life, Effort, Universe

“The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

1920s, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922)
Context: This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism. For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world. (5.62)

World