Quotes about understanding
page 49

“A war was on. … On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of Lod in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli reader understand how he felt?”

Gideon Levy (1953) Israeli journalist

This Biography Makes It Clear: The Founder of the Palestinian Popular Front Was Right (April 15, 2018)

Love, War, Family, Home

“This was a distilled essence of life; this was the way people behaved when they took off the masks which all adults seemed to me to wear; this was noble. A veil had been rent between the greatness of mankind and myself, and I knew that I would never be the same again. Nor was I. Since that night I have made some progress in my attempt to understand mankind, but I have never made another such giant leap.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Three Worlds, Three Summers — But Not the Summer Just Past.

Life, People, Way, Night

“As I understand it, the claim is that the less you use Homeopathy, the better it works. Sounds plausible to me.”

David Deutsch (1953) British physicist

http://web.archive.org/web/20040817050226/http://www.qubit.org/people/david/index.php?blog=20040808030513
Weblog

“The executive in every walk of life, whether he knows it or not, directs social forces and determines the destiny of countless people, not only those who work in his immediate organization but among the larger public as well. He should comprehend this and recognize his responsibility. The role of statesman is thrust upon him by the nature and demands of the position he occupies. To fulfill it he mnst be a philosopher. But he cannot be a successful philosopher unless he understands the inherent life of institutions, the reasons why people in institutional situations behave as they do. This knowledge is the philosophy and technique of management.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: The Executive in Action, 1945, p. 1, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 418-9

Life, People, Nature, Knowledge

“At least Alzheimer's patients do not know what is happening to their brains and bodies. Some say this makes Alzheimer's less terrible than ALS, where the patient understands everything. But if lack of comprehension is of some small blessing to the Alzheimer's victim, it does nothing to help the family. Care of the stricken spouse or parent can consume a family's time, energy and resources. Instead of enjoying retirement years, a husband or wife, whose own strength may be declining with age, can find every day consumed by care giving. Then there is the wrenching decision of whether to place the loved one in a nursing home, a decision that can result in enormous cost, not to mention guilt.”

John Danforth (1936) American politician

Page 95
Faith and Politics (2006)

Love, Age, Family, Home

“As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.”

Jürgen Habermas book The Theory of Communicative Action

Source: The Theory of Communicative Action, 1987, p. 308

World

“The historical significance of the Proclamation is not so much that it enacted the emancipation of people of African descent; on the contrary, it was a military strategy. But if we examine the meaning of this historical moment we might better be able to grasp the failures as well as the successes of emancipation. I have thought that perhaps we were not asked to reflect on the significance of the Emancipation Proclamation because we might realize that we were never really emancipated. But anyway, at least we may be able to understand the dialectics of emancipation; because we still live the popular myth that Lincoln freed the slaves and that this continues to be perpetuated in popular culture, even by the film Lincoln. Lincoln did not free the slaves. We also live with the myth that the mid-twentieth century Civil Rights Movement freed the. Civil rights, of course, constitute an essential element of the freedom that was demanded at that time, but it was not the whole story.”

Angela Davis (1944) American political activist, scholar, and author

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities (2013)

People, Failure, Freedom, Time

“To understand the relationship between behavior and brain one has to begin by defining the function, or computational goal, of a complete behavior. Only then can a neuroscientist determine how the brain achieves that goal.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

Source: Paul W. Glimcher (2004). Decisions, Uncertainty, and the Brain.

Behavior

“Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense impression and thought, can, following Plato, interpret the process of understanding nature as a correspondence, that is, a coming into congruence of pre-existing images of the human psyche with external objects and their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato, looks on the pre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development of a conscious point of view, so that the word "dialectic" which Plato is fond of using may be applied to the process of development of human knowledge.”

Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) Austrian physicist, Nobel prize winner

Writings on Physics and Philosophy http://books.google.com/books?id=ueTd4g7pc5MC (1994) 16. "Science and Western Thought" p. 142

Nature, Knowledge, Sense

“One of humanity's prime drives is to understand and be understood. All other living creatures are designed for highly specialized tasks. Man seems unique as the comprehensive comprehender and co-ordinator of local universe affairs.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Universe

“The study of race differences in intelligence is an acid test case for psychology. Can behavioral scientists research this subject with the same freedom, objectivity, thoroughness, and scientific integrity with which they go about investigating other psychological phenomena? In short, can psychology be scientific when it confronts an issue that is steeped in social ideologies? In my attempts at self- analysis this question seems to me to be one of the most basic motivating elements in my involvement with research on the nature of the observed psychological differences among racial groups. In a recent article (Jensen, 1985b) I stated:I make no apology for my choice of research topics. I think that my own nominal fields of expertise (educational and differential psychology) would be remiss if they shunned efforts to describe and understand more accurately one of the most perplexing and critical of current problems. Of all the myriad subjects being investigated in the behavioral and social sciences, it seems to me that one of the most easily justified is the black- white statistical disparity in cognitive abilities, with its far reaching educational, economic, and social consequences. Should we not apply the tools of our science to such socially important issues as best we can? The success of such efforts will demonstrate that psychology can actually behave as a science in dealing with socially sensitive issues, rather than merely rationalize popular prejudice and social ideology.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

p. 258
Source: Differential Psychology: Towards Consensus (1987), pp. 438-9

Education, Behavior, Intelligence, Motivation

“Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention, and the first wave of nuclear power, and this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be a part of it — we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Rice University speech

Hostility, Age, World, Peace

“Please, you don't want to raise a generation of science students who don't understand how we know our place in the cosmos, who don't understand natural law.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, 3, Sarah Whitman, Age-old feud: In the beginning, Tampa Bay Times, Florida, February 7, 2014]

Law, Nature, Science

“Soft systems viewpoints are those held by behavioural, management, social anthropology, social psychology and other science students concerned with observing the living world, and in particular the human world. Human activity systems (HASs) are messy, in that they do not exhibit a clear need or purpose - if they can be said to exhibit purpose at all. Indeed, so complex is the real world of people that the idea of driving towards optimal solutions may be a non-starter - perhaps we should see if we can simply understand and concern ourselves with improving the situation.”

Derek Hitchins (1935) British systems engineer

Source: Putting systems to work (1992), p. 7; as cited in: Stuart Anderson (2006)

People, World, Idea, Optimism

“Strategy making needs to function beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that produces new perspectives and new combinations… Once managers understand this, they can avoid other costly misadventures caused by applying formal techniques, without judgement and intuition, to problem solving.”

Henry Mintzberg (1939) Canadian busines theorist

Mintzberg (1994), (partly) cited in Douglas C. Eadie (1997) Changing by design: a practical approach to leading innovation in nonprofit organizations. p. 128

Problem, Learning, Box

“The discovery of the art of Printing unbarred afresh the gates of Heaven, and let in that flood of light, of knowledge, and of wisdom, which enabled men to emancipate themselves again from the slavery of superstition—to take their proper place in the ranks of created beings—and in ennobling themselves, in gradually exalting their understandings and amending their hearts, to pay at length the worthiest homage to the goodness of their common Parent, and prove themselves to be—as the Almighty himself originally formed them—inferior only to the Angels.”

Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet (1788–1856) Scottish metaphysician (1788–1856)

The History of Medicine, Surgery, and Anatomy, from the Creation of the World, to the Commencement of the Nineteenth Century (1831), Vol. 1

Wisdom, Men, Art, Angels

“… one can still say that quantum mechanics is the key to understanding magnetism. When one enters the first room with this key there are unexpected rooms beyond, but it is always the master key that unlocks each door.”

John Hasbrouck Van Vleck (1899–1980) American physicist

Quantum Mechanics, The Key to Understanding Magnetism, Nobel Lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1977/vleck-lecture.pdf (December 8, 1977)

“I, for one, remain unpersuaded that a crisis of major proportions has been identified, but at the same time I am open to the possibility that such a crisis has been glimpsed, though perhaps only subliminally, by Bell and his great predecessors: Einstein, Schrodinger, de Broglie, Bohm and Wigner. This is a roster which should give us all pause. To my understanding, however, this crisis has not yet been formulated with sufficient precision to facilitate the birth of a great offspring.”

Kurt Gottfried (1929) American physicist

Does quantum mechanics carry the seeds of its own destruction? (1991)

Birth, Time

“I accept the fact that the important painting of the last hundred years was done in France. American painters have generally missed the point of modern painting from beginning to end... Thus the fact that good European moderns [European artists who lived in the U. S. because of the Nazi-regime] are now here is very important, for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting. I am particularly impressed with their concept of the source of art being the unconscious. These idea interests me more than these specific artists do, for the two artists I admire most, Picasso and Joan Miró, are still abroad.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

As quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York, 1990, p. 138
1940's, Art and Architecture (1944)

Art, Idea, Problem, Painting

“As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing.”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire (1777-11-25)

“Abjection is a methodological conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of divine understanding.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Saint Genet

141
Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr (1952)

World

“Better understanding of the Asian mind ‑ Indian and Chinese ‑ had one further consequence which needs emphasis. It had been almost a dogma of European thought that everything of value arose in the regions that touched the Aegean Sea. Religion, philosophy, art and even science, it was claimed, originated in this area. In fact, for all civilization a Greek origin was postulated. A persistence in this belief was responsible in the early years of Oriental research for the futile attempts made to date events in Asia, especially Indian history, to periods where they could be conveniently adjusted to developments in Greece. That belief in a monopoly of wisdom for the Greeks had to be reluctantly abandoned, as a result of increased knowledge of Asian civilizations. The liberalization of the Furopean mind consequent upon the recognition of the fact that all nations have contributed towards the growth of human civilization, is a gain of considerable significance.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Wisdom, Religion, Art, History

“Indeed, most of what is in history books is stark, raving mad —the maddest of all being the historian's belief that it is sane. For some time now, I often cry when I watch the evening news, read newspapers, or study history books, a reaction I was trained to suppress in every school I attended for 25 years. In fact, it is because we so often switch into our social alters when we try to study history that we cannot understand it —our real emotions are dissociated. Those who are able to remain outside the social trance are the individuals whose personal insights are beyond those of their neighbors.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The Emotional Life of Nations (2002), Ch. 5, pp. 108-109.

Books, School, History, Study

“Education has to do with insight, with valuing, with understanding, with the development of the power of discrimination, the ability to make choice amongst the possibilities of experience and to think and act in ways that distinguish men from animals and higher men from lower.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 42

Men, Education, Way, Thinking

“After the war, Japan was occupied by the allied forces, and based on peace and democracy as values to be upheld, established the Constitution of Japan, undertook various reforms and built the foundation of Japan that we know today. I have profound gratitude for the efforts made by the Japanese people at the time who helped reconstruct and improve the country devastated by the war. I also feel that we must not forget the help extended to us in those days by Americans with an understanding of Japan and Japanese culture. Today, more than sixty years since the end of the war, we have seen that, in the face of major disasters such as the Great East Japan Earthquake [March 11, 2011], there are so many people in Japan who value the bonds between people, can deal with various situations calmly, and work hard towards reconstruction. I have found this most reassuring.”

Akihito (1933) Emperor of Japan

War, People, Peace, Feeling

“Science focuses on the study of the natural world. It seeks to describe what exists. Focusing on problem finding, it studies and describes problems in its various domains. The humanities focus on understanding and discussing the human experience. In design, we focus on finding solutions and creating things and systems of value that do not yet exist.
The methods of science include controlled experiments, classification, pattern recognition, analysis, and deduction. In the humanities we apply analogy, metaphor, criticism, and (e)valuation. In design we devise alternatives, form patterns, synthesize, use conjecture, and model solutions. \
Science values objectivity, rationality, and neutrality. It has concern for the truth. The humanities value subjectivity, imagination, and commitment. They have a concern for justice. Design values practicality, ingenuity, creativity, and empathy. It has concerns for goodness of fit and for the impact of design on future generations.”

Béla H. Bánáthy (1919–2003) Hungarian linguist and systems scientist

Source: Designing Social Systems in a Changing World (1996), p. 34-35, as cited in Alexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner (1992) " Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf" In: J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998. Ch. 3, pp. 47-74.

Truth, World, Justice, Imagination

“Times when I understand myself a little, I understand others less.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Las veces que me comprendo un poco, comprendo menos a los demás.
Voces (1943)

Time

“Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.”

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. (1954) American activist

In "Crimes against nature" in Rolling Stone magazine (11 December 2003).

Democracy, Country

“No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted words "failure" and "success." and measure them by the eternal, not by the earthly standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be preeminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross — was that a failure? Nay, my brethren. it was the death of Him who lived that we might follow His footsteps, it was the life, it was the death of the Son of God.”

Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903) British clergyman and author

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 113.

Life, Death, God, World

“You can see for what reason I commend the study of eloquence to you—because we can neither explain what we ourselves want, nor understand the surviving writing written by our ancestors, unless we have thoroughly studied a fixed rule for speaking. For my part, I do not see how there could be others who wish neither to explain what they think, nor to understand what is excellently said.”

Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) German reformer

Source: Praise of Eloquence (1523), p. 64

Thinking, Study, Parting

“Painting is created from within and we must begin from within if we are to understand it.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Italian Report (1955)

Painting

“I can take long walks, as I understand Greta Garbo does, and no one interferes with my thoughts and tranquility. Come to think of it, the other day I was on Fifth Avenue in New York and I saw a woman who could very well have been Garbo; I was a bit tempted to go up to her, but then I thought, "My God, practice what you preach! If it is her, you'll be intruding — just the thing you don't like yourself."”

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) British actress

Source: Audrey Hepburn (2002), p. 305

God, Thinking

“The adversities that we have had to face together have taught all of us involved in the struggle to build a truly democratic political system in Burma that there are no gender barriers that cannot be overcome. The relationship between men and women should, and can be, characterized not by patronizing behavior or exploitation, but by METTA (that is to say loving kindness), partnership and trust. We need mutual respect and understanding between men and women, instead of patriarchal domination and degradation, which are expressions of violence and engender counter-violence. We can learn from each other and help one another to moderate the "gender weaknesses" imposed upon us by traditional or biological factors.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Love, Women, Men, Behavior

“…there, strung out under the cornice of the building, was the motto, which he had never noticed before, of the Federal Communications Agency:
PLANNED FREEDOM IS THE ROAD TO
LASTING PROGRESS.
So simple, so direct, and yet, when you thought about it, almost impossible to understand.”

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) Novelist, short story writer, poet

"The Man Who Had No Idea".
The Man Who Had No Idea (and other stories) (1982)

Communication, Freedom

“Basically there is no difference between precognition and telepathy. The apparent difference is the result of an inadequate understanding of the nature of time.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 240, Page 3
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 6

Nature, Time

“Perhaps there is no other way of reaching some understanding of being than through art? Writers themselves don't analyze what they do; to analyze would be to look down while crossing a canyon on a tightrope.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

Art, Way

“A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

L'homme d'entendement n'a rien perdu, s'il a soi-même.
Book I, Ch. 39
Essais (1595), Book I

“If this world is wearing thin
And you're thinking of escape
I'll go anywhere with you
Just wrap me up in chains
But if you try to go alone
Don't think I'll understand (Stay) Stay with me”

Siobhan Fahey (1958) singer and songwriter in Banarama and Shakespears Sister

"Stay" (written with Marcella Detroit and David A. Stewart) - Video and full text online http://viddigger.blogspot.com/2007/04/shakespears-sister-stay.html <br class="br">Hormonally Yours (1992)

World, Thinking

“We must learn to live with contradictions, because they lead to deeper and more effective understanding.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

"Science and Morality" in Science (1998), Vol. 280, p. 1200

Learning

“From its earliest days, science has been embedded in society, there has been a continuous learning process in society as a whole, based on day to day experiences and this can become the body of the knowledge from which applications and understanding have grown. … Everything on earth has to function in harmony as a system, and it is only in such a system that humanity can flourish.”

Mambillikalathil Govind Kumar Menon (1928–2016) Indian physicist

in Impact of Advances in science and new technologies on society http://www.here-now4u.de/eng/impact_of_advances_in_science_.htm, 1998.

Knowledge, Learning, Science

“After September 11th I had tons of interviews everywhere, except the United States of course, and often it was national radio and TV. A couple of times it turned out to be Irish television and BBC back to back, and the difference in reaction was startling. If I said this much on Irish TV, OK, discussion over, everyone understands what I'm talking about. You try to say it on BBC, you have to go on for like about an hour to explain to them what you mean. The Irish sea is a chasm, and it just depends who's been holding the whip for 800 years and who's been under it for 800 years.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

In Noam Chomsky - Rebel Without a Pause, 2003 http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/1614027.php <br class="br">Quotes 2000s, 2003

Time, Dependency, Sea

“What you understand, you know; and what you know, you don't forget.”

Michel Thomas (1914–2005) American linguist and language teacher

Speak French with Michel Thomas, Disc 1

Forgetting

“I've come to understand that arguing with her about it has never solved anything. So instead of denying it, I've learned to take her hands, look her in the eyes, and respond with those three magic words that every woman wants to hear:
"You're right, sweetheart."”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Nicholas Sparks, Prologue, p. 1
2000s, Three Weeks with My Brother (2004)

Learning

“Semiotic provides a basis for understanding the main forms of human activity and their interrelationship, since all these activities and relations are reflected in the signs which mediate the activities … In giving such understanding, semiotic promises to fulfil one of the tasks which traditionally has been called philosophical. Philosophy has often sinned in confusing in its own language the various functions which signs perform. But it is an old tradition that philosophy should aim to give insight into the characteristic forms of human activity and to strive for the most general and the most systematic knowledge possible. This tradition appears in a modern form in the identification of philosophy with the theory of signs and the unification of science, that is, with the more general and systematic aspects of pure and descriptive semiotic.”

Charles W. Morris (1903–1979) American philosopher

Source: "Foundations of the Theory of Signs," 1938, p. 58-59 as cited in: Adam Schaff (1962). Introduction to semantics, p. 88-89

Knowledge, Appearance, Science

“Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

C 23
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook C (1772-1773)

Learning, Appearance, Science, Chance

“Organizational theories have three origins: Max Weber’s original work on bureaucracies which came to define the theory for sociologists, a line of theory based in business schools that had as its focus, the improvement of management control over the work process, and the industrial organization literature in economics. Unlike many fields in sociology, organizational theory has been a multidisciplinary affair since World War II, and it is difficult to understand its central debates without considering its linkages to business schools and economics departments.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: Organizations: Theoretical Debates and the Scope of Organizational Theory, 2001, p. 1

War, World, School, Literature

“And that brings me to the other big lesson that I want to share with you today. It’s a lesson about how to get through those struggles, and that is, instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed. Now, I know that many of you have already dealt with some serious losses in your lives. Maybe someone in your family lost a job or struggled with drugs or alcohol or an illness. Maybe you’ve lost someone you love […]. […] So, yes, maybe you’ve been tested a lot more and a lot earlier in life than many other young people. Maybe you have more scars than they do. Maybe you have days when you feel more tired than someone your age should ever really feel. But, graduates, tonight, I want you to understand that every scar that you have is a reminder not just that you got hurt, but that you survived. And as painful as they are, those holes we all have in our hearts are what truly connect us to each other. They are the spaces we can make for other people’s sorrow and pain, as well as their joy and their love so that eventually, instead of feeling empty, our hearts feel even bigger and fuller. So it’s okay to feel the sadness and the grief that comes with those losses. But instead of letting those feelings defeat you, let them motivate you. Let them serve as fuel for your journey.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep graduates (2015)

Love, Life, Pain, People

“It's so hard to understand why the world is your oyster but your future's a clam.”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

When You're Young (1979)

World, Future

“The Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. 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 determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.”

David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 2
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)

Faith, Religion, Personality

“The word taste has different meanings, which it is easy to mistake. There is a difference between the taste which in certain objects has an attraction for us, and the taste that makes us understand and distinguish the qualities we judge by.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), III. On Taste

“We're at that kind of moment where we really have to understand that everyone is totally connected and everyone is important.”

Becky Stark (1976) American singer

As quoted in Lavender Diamond seeks world peace, by Jake Coyle in USA Today (27 April 2007) http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/2007-04-27-3719120128_x.htm

“"I welcome the democratic process allowing all sections of society to express their views on the proposed legislation. The debate taking place is, in itself, helping the nation to understand that reconciliation is a difficult but necessary process." (on the government's controversial plans to set up a Commission empowered to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the political upheaval of 2000).”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

Speech opening Parliament, 1 August 2005 (excerpts)

Help

“The spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform would insensibly become agricultural: commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book A Vindication of Natural Diet

A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813)

Love, Feeling, Nature, Personality

“I can understand deposing the Queen from the throne perfectly well. I can understand an attempt made on the life of the Queen perfectly well, or expelling her from her dominions but I do not, for the life of me, know what it is to depose her ‘from the style, honour, or royal name of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom.”

Robert Holmes (1765–1859) Irish writer

Speech (1848-05-20) in the case of John Mitchel, Young Irelander and one of the Irish Confederation Leaders. Mitchel was later sentenced to fourteen years transportation.

Life

“Like a forensic accountant trying to solve a corporate fraud, following the trail of money around the circle is a good way to understand what actually happens as capitalism unfolds.”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 2, Chapter 10, Closing The Little Circle, p. 121
Economics For Everyone (2008)

Money, Way, Fraud

“Men will mock the signs of the end of the age by saying, 'These signs have always been around.' This will be because they fail to understand that God is not subject to the dimension of time”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

2 Peter 3:44
God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

Men, God, Age, Time

“Being able to communicate with someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand them.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Communication

“Folks never understand the folks they hate.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 2.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

Hate

“Keepe pursed his lips, nodded. “We’re already in a very strong position in this country, of course. We’ve taken over all of the antigovernment militias, most of the religious groups who think of themselves as conservative, plus what’s left of the KKK and the American Nazi party, but they’re only pocket change. We now own the Republican party. Any moderates still hiding in there have been flushed out. We’ve been managing the press for over twenty years now, and the public is accustomed to our view of the world.”
Jagger paid attention. “I didn’t realize…”
“Oh, yes. People don’t want to absorb new information. They like predictability. So as long as we don’t surprise the public with the truth, we’re free to move as we like. Very shortly we won’t even have to be covert about it. And then, of course, people are sick of issues. Civil rights, human rights, women’s rights—people are tired of all that. You understand?””

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 2 (p. 52; spoken by one of the leaders of a secretive neo-fascist organization)

Women, People, Truth, World

“The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism. … The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God's own condition. This is the essence of the Biblical revelation. By electing Israelite slaves as the people of God and by becoming the Oppressed One in Jesus Christ, the human race is made to understand that God is known where human beings experience humiliation and suffering…Liberation is not an afterthought, but the very essence of divine activity.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: A Black Theology of Liberation (1970), pp. 63-64

God, People, Suffering, Christ

“I guess those of us who have been with NASA … kind of understand the tremendous excitement and thrills and celebrations and national pride that went with the Apollo program is just something you're not going to create again, probably until we go to Mars.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

James Endrst (July 8, 1994) "It's Been 25 Years Since We Took That Giant Leap For Mankind - Moon Odyssey", The Hartford Courant, p. B1.

“My reason will still not understand why I pray, but I shall still pray, and my life, my whole life, independently of anything that may happen to me, is every moment of it no longer meaningless as it was before, but has an unquestionable meaning of goodness with which I have the power to invest it.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

Pt. VIII, ch. 19
Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Life

“What is striking here is the degree to which the Russians were willing to undertake such an audacious and risky action against the most powerful nation on earth. That ought to be a warning to us, that if we thought that the Russians would not dare to so blatantly interfere in our affairs, we were wrong. And if we do not do our very best to understand how the Russians accomplished this unprecedented attack on our democracy and what we need to do to protect ourselves in the future, we will have only ourselves to blame.”

Adam Schiff (1960) American politician

Open Letter to the Committee Hearing Re: FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers

Democracy, Future

“The scientist tries to understand the origin of our solar system, the structure of the universe and the laws governing the atom. He has discovered X rays, the radioactive substances, and he has built cyclotrons. He has foreseen the existence of electromagnetic and electronic waves. Out of his thought has grown the technique of our century. But not until today has he begun to notice that the earth on which he moves is covered with sweat and with blood and that in the world in which he lives "the son of man has nowhere to lay his head."”

Leopold Infeld (1898–1968) Polish physicist

Quest: An Autobiography [1941] (second edition, 1980), Book III, "Search and Research", p. 338

World, Law, Universe

“Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Love your enemy." This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)
Context: The Greek language comes out with another word for love. It is the word agape. …agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. It is a love that seeks nothing in return. It is an overflowing love; it’s what theologians would call the love of God working in the lives of men. And when you rise to love on this level, you begin to love men, not because they are likeable, but because God loves them. You look at every man, and you love him because you know God loves him. And he might be the worst person you’ve ever seen. And this is what Jesus means, I think, in this very passage when he says, "Love your enemy." And it’s significant that he does not say, "Like your enemy." Like is a sentimental something, an affectionate something. There are a lot of people that I find it difficult to like. I don’t like what they do to me. I don’t like what they say about me and other people. I don’t like their attitudes. I don’t like some of the things they’re doing. I don’t like them. But Jesus says love them. And love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive goodwill for all men, so that you love everybody, because God loves them. You refuse to do anything that will defeat an individual, because you have agape in your soul. And here you come to the point that you love the individual who does the evil deed, while hating the deed that the person does. This is what Jesus means when he says, "Love your enemy." This is the way to do it. When the opportunity presents itself when you can defeat your enemy, you must not do it.

Love, Men, God, Hate

“In reality, a person questioning the existence of the Satanic conspiracy is merely pointing out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. In that case, one can understand why the emperor's tailors get upset and suggest the person doing the pointing is a tool of the devil. Then the question comes down to one of whether the crowd will believe the evidence they have before them, or if they will buy into the tailors' fantasies.”

Michael A. Stackpole (1957) science fiction author

[Stackpole, http://members.tripod.com/~limsk/pulling.htm, "The Pulling Report", 2007-05-27]

Question, Reality, Personality, Clothes

“As for Picasso, the specialist was amazed by the rapidity of his understanding. The tradition he came from had prepared him better than ours for a problem to do with structure. And Berthe Weil was right when she treated those who compared him/confused him with, a Steinlen or a Lautrec as idiots. He had already rejected them in their own century, a century we had no intention of prolonging. Whether or not the Universe was endowed with another dimension, art was going to move into a different field.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Art, Problem, Universe

“The New Englander is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he has an interest in it because he shares in its management; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he invests his ambition and his future in it; in the restricted sphere within his scope, he learns to rule society; he gets to know those formalities without which freedom can advance only through revolutions, and becoming imbued with their spirit, develops a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and in the end accumulates clear, practical ideas about the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter V.

Love, Idea, Nature, Freedom

“I think I’ve always thought of culture as DNA. I don’t know a lot about genetics, but I understand some of it and I think that what you really want are the genes that are positive to hyper-express themselves in culture.”

Marissa Mayer (1975) American business executive and engineer, former ceo of Yahoo!

fortune.com http://fortune.com/2013/10/17/transcript-marissa-mayer-at-fortune-mpw/.

Thinking

“The central idea of quantum theory is that energy, like matter, is not continuous but it exists only in discrete packets. Discreteness of matter and charge on the microscopic scale seems entirely reasonable and familiar to us, based on the modern picture of atomic structure. But, the idea that energy also exists only in discrete chunks is contrary to our experience of the macroscopic world. The motions of a soccer ball rolling up and down the sides of a gully involve arbitrary amounts of kinetic and potential energy; nothing in ordinary human experience suggests that the energy of a system should change abruptly by “jumps.” Understanding quantum mechanics requires that we develop a new kind of physical intuition, based on the results of experiments that are impossible to understand using classical mechanics. These results are completely divorced from ordinary human experience in the macroscopic world around us, and our physical intuition from the macroscopic world cannot be transferred to the quantum domain. We must resist the urge to interpret these quantum results in terms of ordinary experience.”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 4 : Introduction to Quantum Mechanics

World, Idea, Change

“As the psychic coherence of the group can be obtained only by the full contribution of every member, so we see that a readiness to compromise must be no part of the individual's attitude. Just so far as people think that the basis of working together is compromise or concession, just so far they do not understand the first principles of working together.”

Mary Parker Follett The New State

Source: The New State, 1918, p. 26

People, Thinking, Parting

“It had always been one of my convictions that Jews and Arabs could live together. Even as a child it never occurred to me that Jews might someday be living in Israel without Arabs, or separated from Arabs. On the contrary, for me it had always seemed perfectly normal for the two people to live and work side by side. That is the nature of life here and it always will be…. though Israel is a Jewish nation, it is, of course, not only a Jewish nation… I begin with the basic conviction that Jews and Arabs can live together. I have repeated that at every opportunity, not for journalists and not for popular consumption, but because I have never believed differently or thought differently, from my childhood on. I am not afraid of Arabs. I feel I can live with them. I believe I understand their problems. I know that we are both inhabitants of this land, and although the state is Jewish, that does not mean that Arabs should not be full citizens in every sense of the word.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Ariel Sharon, ‎David Chanoff (2002) Warrior: An Autobiography p. 343, 542-3
2000s

Life, People, Feeling, Nature

“Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

“Our house is God's house. If our state is correct, our heart (qalb) is God's house, God's kingdom, God's justice, love, compassion, and unity. Before this state of beautiful peace and unity comes, we need a place in which to meet, unite, understand, think, and reflect every minute and second, establishing relationships of unity and peace. Instead of wasting time in the world, we can go to this place five or six times a day to do prayers and worship. We can gather at God's house, focus on God, think about God, pray to God, and remember God. It is for this purpose that we are building this place.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Spoken on March 10, 1983

Love, God, World, Peace

“These Disciplines [mathematics] serve to inure and corroborate the Mind to a constant Diligence in Study; to undergo the Trouble of an attentive Meditation, and cheerfully contend with such Difficulties as lie in the Way. They wholly deliver us from a credulous Simplicity, most strongly fortify us against the Vanity of Scepticism, effectually restrain from a rash Presumption, most easily incline us to a due Assent, perfectly subject us to the Government of right Reason, and inspire us with Resolution to wrestle against the unjust Tyranny of false Prejudices. If the Fancy be unstable and fluctuating, it is to be poised by this Ballast, and steadied by this Anchor, if the Wit be blunt it is sharpened upon this Whetstone; if luxuriant it is pared by this Knife; if headstrong it is restrained by this Bridle; and if dull it is roused by this Spur. The Steps are guided by no Lamp more clearly through the dark Mazes of Nature, by no Thread more surely through the intricate Labyrinths of Philosophy, nor lastly is the Bottom of Truth sounded more happily by any other Line. I will not mention how plentiful a Stock of Knowledge the Mind is furnished from these, with what wholesome Food it is nourished, and what sincere Pleasure it enjoys. But if I speak farther, I shall neither be the only Person, nor the first, who affirms it; that while the Mind is abstracted and elevated from sensible Matter, distinctly views pure Forms, conceives the Beauty of Ideas, and investigates the Harmony of Proportions; the Manners themselves are sensibly corrected and improved, the Affections composed and rectified, the Fancy calmed and settled, and the Understanding raised and excited to more divine Contemplation. All which I might defend by Authority, and confirm by the Suffrages of the greatest Philosophers.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

Source: Mathematical Lectures (1734), p. 31: Prefatory Oration

Pleasure, Truth, Lie, Food

“As I went down to my car, [Peter Randall] said, "If you don't want to get involved I'll understand" I looked back at him. "You know damn well I'd have no choice." "I didn't," he said. "But I was hoping."”

Michael Crichton book A Case of Need

A Case of Need (1968)

Hope, Cars

“I touch your mouth, I touch the edge of your mouth with my finger, I am drawing it as if it were something my hand was sketching, as if for the first time your mouth opened a little, and all I have to do is close my eyes to erase it and start all over again, every time I can make the mouth I want appear, the mouth which my hand chooses and sketches on your face, and which by some chance that I do not seek to understand coincides exactly with your mouth which smiles beneath the one my hand is sketching on you.”

Julio Cortázar book Hopscotch

Rayuela (Hopscotch) (1963)

Smile, Appearance, Chance, Time

“The studious and good and true, never suffer their minds to be warped by the passions of hatred and envy, which unfit men duly to weigh the arguments that are advanced in behalf of truth, or to appreciate the proposition that is even fairly demonstrated. Neither do they think it unworthy of them to change their opinion if truth and undoubted demonstration require them to do so. They do not esteem it discreditable to desert error, though sanctioned by the highest antiquity, for they know full well that to err, to be deceived, is human; that many things are discovered by accident and that many may be learned indifferently from any quarter, by an old man from a youth, by a person of understanding from one of inferior capacity.”

William Harvey (1578–1657) English physician

"Dedication to Dr. Argent and Other Learned Physicians".
De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis (1628)

Men, Truth, Youth, Error

“I no longer see a future.
I've been told when I get older
That I'll understand
It all.
But I'm not sure if I want to.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Future

“If you say that you reject violence when it exceeds the limits imposed by the needs of defense, they accuse you of pacifism, without understanding that violence is the whole essence of authoritarianism, just as the repudiation of violence is the whole essence of anarchism.”

Errico Malatesta (1853–1932) Italian anarchist

"Anarchism, Authoritarian Socialism and Communism" in Fede (28 October 1923); also in What Is Anarchism? : An Introduction edited by Donald Rooum (1992, 1995) p. 59

“I told him (Zhang Zhijun) that this (daily massive protest) is pretty much what we (Republic of China government) experience in our daily lives. We are used to it. Now that he is head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, he has to understand Taiwan more.”

Wang Yu-chi (1969) Taiwanese politician

Wang Yu-chi (2014) cited in " CROSSING THE STRAIT: Protesters hurl paint at Chinese official’s convoy http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2014/06/29/2003593937" on Taipei Times, 29 June 2014

“In the near future, neurobiology will address a matter of more general and fundamental importance: the biology of human mental processes. …Psychology and psychiatry can illuminate and define for biology the mental functions that need to be studied if we are to have a meaningful and sophisticated understanding of the biology of the human mind.”

Eric R. Kandel (1929) American neuropsychiatrist

Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and the New Biology of Mind (2008)

Study, Future

“If we compare the third-person attitude of someone who simply says how things stand (this is the attitude of the scientist, for example) with the performative attitude of someone who tries to understand what is said to him (this is the attitude of the interpreter, for example), the implications … become clear. … First, interpreters relinquish superiority that observers have by virtue of their privileged position, in that they themselves are drawn, at least potentially, into negotiations about the meaning and validity of utterances. By taking part in communicative action, they accept in principle the same status as those whose utterances they are trying to understand. … It is impossible to decide a priori who is to learn from whom.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Source: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1983), p. 26

Communication, Learning, Parting, Personality

“Perpetual peace is a dream,” he said, “as much as we may yearn for it—but war! War is an integral part of God’s ordering of the universe, without which the world would be swamped in selfishness and materialism. War is the very vessel of honor, and who of us could endure a world without the divine folly of honor? That faith is especially true and adorable which leads a soldier to throw away his life in obedience to a blindly accepted duty, in a cause he little understands, during a campaign of which he has little notion, under tactics of which he does not see the use. On the field of battle, where a man lives or dies by the caprice of a bullet or the verdict of a bayonet, life is at its best and healthiest.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 246 (spoken by the tyrannical president Deklan Comstock)

Life, God, War, World

“Quantum field theory is the basic tool to understand the physics of the elementary constituents of matter. … It is both a very powerful and a very precise framework: using it we can describe physical processes in a range of energies going from the few millions electrovolts typical of nuclear physics to the thousands of billions of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). And all this with astonishing precision.”

Luis Álvarez-Gaumé Spanish physicist

Source: An Invitation to Quantum Field Theory (2012), Ch. 1 : Why Do We Need Quantum Field Theory After All?

“It is a common myth that idlers are incapable of working. The term “idler” is used as a pejorative by the forces of dullness and authority as they like the idea that idleness equates to evil, and they want society at large to despise the idler. The non-idler cannot understand the paradox of the working idler. He likes things to be simple: you are either working, or not working.”

Tom Hodgkinson (1968) British writer

“Idleness and Industry,” The Idler.

Idea, Evil

“A Little Learning misleadeth, and a great deal often stupifieth the Understanding.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Moral Thoughts and Reflections

Learning

“It is understandable but implausible…to insist upon prominent media accounts about law-abiding citizens and quotidian virtue; this is a bit like the airline industry complaining that the press does not write stories about airplanes that land safely.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 7

Law

“By capital we understand everything that, from the special use by the individual, or from its being placed at the disposal of others, produces a revenue or rent. We do not inquire into its origin, or ask whether it has been acquired by inheritance or by labour.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 15.

“When it comes to understanding the future, history is bunk (…) There is no place history is heading, except toward the maximum-entropy heat death of the universe.”

Alexander Rosenberg (1946) American philosopher

The Atheist's Guide to Reality (2011)

Death, History, Universe, Future

“Just in proportion as the soul is in fellowship with the Lord Jesus, in communion with His will, shall we trace His leadings, hear His voice, and understand in part.”

Anna Shipton (1815–1901) British religious writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 247.

Soul, Parting

“A savage (or primitive) man, questioned (or asked) on what is good and what is wrong, answered: 'Right is when I defeat (or beat or hit) and deprive (or strip) others; wrong is when I am beated and deprived by them.' This is ("c'est là," Fr.) the voice of the natural man, who does not understand that good is always good, and wrong is always wrong, whether it happens to ourselves or it happens to others.*”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 43.

Question, Nature

“I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 1
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

“There are a lot to learn in both Eastern and western civilizations. If we summarize the Western civilization to American civilization and take it as an example, we can better understand the vast area of knowledge that the East can pick up and learn from it. Likewise, the Westerners have to look up to the Eastern civilizations to get new and more inner or spiritual ideas in every dimension of life.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

360 Doctrines and Comprehensive Theories, Union of Civilizations

Life, Idea, Knowledge, Learning

“For earth cannot understand heavenly wisdom. Words enough and Dutch enough can be found for all things on earth, but I do not know any Dutch or any words that answer my purpose. Although I can express everything insofar as this is possible for a human being, no Dutch can be found for all I have said to you, since none exists to express these things, so far as I know”

Hadewijch (1200–1260) 13th-century Dutch poet and mystic

Letter XVII.
Letters

Wisdom

“He did not know the way things were going: he was too Victorian to understand the Victorian epoch. He did not know enough ignorant people to have heard the news.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

On William Makepeace Thackeray Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists (p. 65)
The Victorian Age in Literature (1913)

People, Way

“It is dangerous these days for a male to write even glancingly on feminist themes. Did anyone attack Margaret Atwood’s right to extrapolate religio-machismo in The Handmaid’s Tale? Women writers appear vouchsafed insight into the souls of men—credit that seldom flows the other way. It is a sexist and offensive assumption, which does not advance understanding.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Afterword (p. 561)
Glory Season (1993)

Women, Men, Way, Soul

“The planet is fine. The people are [bleeped out]. Because everyone is trying to save the planet. The planet doesn’t need that. The planet will take care of itself. People are selfish. And that's what they're doing is trying to save the planet for themselves to have a nicer place to live. They don't care about the planet in theory. They just care about having a comfortable place. And these people with the fires and the floods and everything, they overbuild, they put nature to the test and they get what's coming to them. That's what I say. That's what's happening, and I can't wait for the sea levels to rise. I can't wait for some of these cities to disappear. There are places that are going to go away. The map is going to change and that's because -- people think nature is outside of them. They don't take into them the idea that we are part of it. They say, "oh, we're going for a nature walk. We're going to the country because we like nature." Nature is in here. [points to chest] And if you're in tune with it, like the Indians, the Hopis, especially, the balance of life, the balance, the harmony of nature, if you understand that, you don't overbuild. You don’t do all this moron stuff.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

The View, 24 October 2007 http://newsbusters.org/blogs/justin-mccarthy/2007/10/24/george-carlins-view-wildfire-victims-get-whats-coming-them <br class="br">Interviews, Television Appearances

Life, People, Idea, Nature

“Excuse me pal! This is IELTS; you understand? This is International English Language Testing System…not a Bihar Board exam where candidates are accompanied by their friends, neighbours and relatives until they finish writing the test.”

Gaurav Sharma (author) (1992) Author and novelist

Gone are the Days (2016)

“It is important, therefore, to understand at the outset the simplicity of this book - what it can accomplish and what it cannot. What it does try to do is to isolate certain psychological factors and to demonstrate rigorously by quantitative scientific methods that these factors are generally important in economic development.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. ix

Books

Quotes about understanding page 49

Quotes about understanding
page 49