Quotes about understanding (7444 quotes, page 55)

“Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.”

James G. March (1928–2018) American sociologist

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen. "The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political life." American political science review 78.03 (1983): 734-749.

Life , Behavior , History , Idea

“If an idea is true, it belongs equally to all who are capable of understanding it.”

René Guénon (1886–1951) French metaphysician

Source: The Crisis of the Modern World (1927), p. 73

Idea

“I don't understand how any man would wish to pursue such a away of life. Causing pain, being hurt, risking death — and for what? so that a crowd of fat-bellied merchants can see blood flow.”

David Gemmell book Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

Source: Drenai series, Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf, Ch. 2

Life , Death , Pain , Hurt

““Do you not understand that I want to give this to you—and to Hain and the other worlds—and to the countries of Urras? But to you all! So that one of you cannot use it, as A-Io wants to do, to get power over the others, to get richer or to win more wars. So that you cannot use the truth for your private profit, but only for the common good.”
“In the end, the truth usually insists upon serving only the common good,” Keng said.
“In the end, yes, but I am not willing to wait for the end. I have one lifetime, and I will not spend it for greed and profiteering and lies. I will not serve any master.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 11 (pp. 345-346)

War , Truth , World , Waiting

“Thanks to the work of John Maynard Keynes and of Milton Friedman, we now have a better understanding of how governments can (at least in principle) reduce the severity of major economic downturns. Keynesian economics taught us that government spending can raise GDP and reduce unemployment.”

Martin Feldstein (1939–2019) American economist

"Economic Conditions and U.S. National Security in the 1930s and Today" (2009).

“Correctly understood, the phrase “tyranny of values” may supply the key to the understanding that all thinking about values only foments and intensifies the old and endless struggle between convictions and interests. Not much is gained by what the modern philosophy of values acknowledges as the “fundamental relationship,” according to which, occasionally the lower value may be preferred to the higher value, because that is the prerequisite of the higher value. All that points only to the confusion that affects the whole argumentation about values, which continually gives rise to new relations and points of view, thereby the position is always maintained from which the opponent is reproached that he does not heed the manifest values; or, in other words, he is disqualified as value-blind. The polemical utilization of the word “blind” is adequate to the logic of values as long as it is concerned with the systems of reference that it will build up out of viewpoints, standpoints, and vantage-points.”

Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) German jurist, political theorist and professor of law

"The Tyranny of Values" (1959)

Thinking

“Life itself is always pulling you away from the understanding of life.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

War Within and Without (1980)

Life

“Roger: Hmm.. I don't know. I like playing at home because sleeping at home after the show is a bonus. That's really nice. I'd have to say I really like playing Japan. There's just a different level of respect or something that goes on with the fans. They're just completely animalistic and going crazy during the show and then in between songs like as soon as a song stops, it's silent 'cause they want to hear what you have to say so they can try and understand what you're saying. It's really awesome - it's great. Even in the UK and London - places like that, fans are just rabid and go completely crazy and it's always fun. I'd have to say Tokyo and London are pretty awesome”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

Home , Sleep

“Let me see if I can put it in words that even the inebriated might understand.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

“What on earth has given opera its prestige in western civilisation — a prestige that has outlasted so many different fashions and ways of thought? Why are people prepared to sit silently for three hours listening to a performance of which they do not understand a word and of which they very seldom know the plot? Why do quite small towns all over Germany and Italy still devote a large portion of their budgets to this irrational entertainment? Partly, of course, because it is a display of skill, like a football match. But chiefly, I think, because it is irrational. "What is too silly to be said may be sung" — well, yes; but what is too subtle to be said, or too deeply felt, or too revealing or too mysterious — these things can also be sung and can only be sung.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: Civilisation (1969), Ch. 9: The Pursuit of Happiness; "What is too silly to be said may be sung" is a commonly used translation or paraphrase of lines from Act I, Scene ii of the play The Barber of Seville by Pierre de Beaumarchais, which was the basis of famous operas.

People , Way , Fashion , Thinking

“Standard economists don't seem to understand exponential growth. Ecological economics recognizes that the economy, like any other subsystem on the planet, cannot grow forever. And if you think of an organism as an analogy, organisms grow for a period and then they stop growing. They can still continue to improve and develop, but without physically growing, because if organisms did that you’d end up with nine-billion-ton hamsters. There is a great video on this.”

Robert Costanza (1950) American economist

Robert Costanza in: " What is Ecological economics http://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/what-ecological-economics," at Yale Insights, May 2010.

Thinking

“In the end one cannot avoid the conclusion that AIDS unites certain human themes — homosexuality, sexual disease, and death — about which society actively resists enlightenment. These are things that we are unwilling to address or even think about. We don't want to understand them. We would rather fear them.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Making Sense of AIDS" (1985)
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)

Death , Fear , Disease , Thinking

“I've been learning to live without you now
But I miss you sometimes
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning them again.”

Don Henley (1947) American singer, lyricist, producer and drummer

"The Heart of the Matter"
Song lyrics, The End of the Innocence (1989)

Learning

“We don't have the user centricity. Until we understand context, which is way beyond presence — presence is the most trivial notion, just am I on this device or not; it doesn't say am I meeting with something, am I focused on writing something. i had to suck dicks this morning help me i gayyyyyy”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

.NET Briefing Day Speech (24 July 2002) http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2002/07-24netstrategy.asp
2000s

Way

“Because these people are operating at a very very low level of mental health, they are incapable of understanding the teaching.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

From Channel 4 documentary The Secret Life of Brian (2007)

People , Health

“Good scholars struggle to understand the world in an integral way (pedants bite off tiny bits and worry them to death). These visions of reality […] demand our respect, for they are an intellectual's only birthright. They are often entirely wrong and always flawed in serious ways, but they must be understood honorably and not subjected to mayhem by the excision of patches.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Men of the Thirty-Third Division: An Essay on Integrity", p. 136
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Death , World , Way , Reality

“There is no doubt that Sankara before him had set the wheel of inquiry by boldly declaring Advaita as the answers to all the questions posed by different Upanishads. He has tried to synthesize the approach and took up the Brahma sutras of Vyasa as the basic text for study. The Brahma sutras is an extraordinary text. Before Sage Vyasa a very great body of literature has accumulated mainly in the Upanishads, most of the time speaking in one voice about Brahama vidya and at the same time throwing in diverse suggestions It has grown up almost like a banyan tree with overgrown branches. Vyasa by reducing many of these concepts into short and crisp sutras has provided behind each sutra an ocean of knowledge. It is impossible to understand the whole body of knowledge in a unitary way. Sankara brought in a cohesion. He was close to the Vedic ideals in point of time …”

R. Nagaswamy (1930) Indian academic

"Ramanuja Myth & Reality A Critical Study Of Ramanujas Life & Works

Way , Literature , Question , Knowledge

“Towards the end of his life Neurath referred to the ‘mosaic of the sciences’. In the spirit of this formulation we can arrive at an understanding of his life’s work by means of a kind of collage, employing the regulative idea of the unity of science and society.”

Friedrich Stadler (1951) Austrian historian

Friedrich Stadler (1996). "Otto Neurath—encyclopedia and utopia." In: E. Nemeth & F. Stadler (Eds.). Encyclopedia and utopia: The life and work of Otto Neurath (1882–1945), Boston: Kluwer. Stadler, 1996, p. 3

Life , Idea , Science

“I cannot conceive, how a body, destitute of understanding and sense, truly so called, can moderate and determine its own motions; especially so as to make them conformable to laws that it has no knowledge of.”

Robert Boyle (1627–1691) English natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor

"A Free Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of Nature" Sect.1 ibid.

Law , Knowledge , Sense

“The lack of understanding of the history of Blacks in the United States, including the variation of slave utilization, coupled with narrow theoretical orientation of some of the more recent social sciences studies has stimulated the limited conception of the black experience, past and present; this, in turn, paves the way for internal conflict”

Vera Mae Green (1928–1982) American anthropologist and academic

among Blacks
Gacs, Ute (1988). Women Anthropologists: Selected Biographies. University of Illinois Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-252-06084-7.

Way , History , Study , Science

“Our dignity is not in what we do, but in what we understand. The whole world is doing things.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Source: Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion (1913), p. 199

World

“(Sign) Mid-year resolutions of the barely under-control. (Woman at desk) I will try to be more understanding of others. I will try to be more patient when dealing with the incompetent people that surround me. I will not slap anyone first thing in the morning. (Sign on desk) The buck stops before it gets here.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 78

People

“So the story of the baby-sitting co-op is not a mere amusement. If people would only take it seriously—if they could only understand that when great economic issues are at stake, whimsical parables are not a waste of time but the key to enlightenment—it is a story that could save the world.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Baby-Sitting the Economy", Slate (Aug. 13, 1998)

People , World , Time , Baby

“I was 16 when I got saved and all the atheists in my city started coming after me, trying to get me converted away from Christianity. And I had some real problems believing some of the things in the Bible. They were showing me supposed contradictions and all that. […] But I had to make a decision as a 16 year old new Christian. I said, "Lord, I'm going to believe your book until somebody can prove it's wrong." Some of my friends decided they're going to doubt the Bible until it's proven right. I think that's a mistake. I think I made the right decision. I said, "God, I'm going to believe you even for the things I don't understand." And he's proven himself on just about every one of them.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

God , Books , Problem , Thinking

“For ourselves, we firmly believe that the finger of Providence is pointing the way to all races, and colors, and nations, along the path that is to lead the east and the west alike to the great goal of human wants. Demons infest that path, and numerous and unhappy are the wanderings of millions who stray from its course; sometimes in reluctance to proceed; sometimes in an indiscreet haste to move faster than their fellows, and always in a forgetfulness of the great rules of conduct that have been handed down from above. Nevertheless, the main course is onward; and the day, in the sense of time, is not distant, when the whole earth is to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, "as the waters cover the sea.
One of the great stumbling-blocks with a large class of well-meaning, but narrow-judging moralists, are the seeming wrongs that are permitted by Providence, in its control of human events. Such persons take a one-sided view of things, and reduce all principles to the level of their own understandings. If we could comprehend the relations which the Deity bears to us, as well as we can comprehend the relations we bear to him, there might be a little seeming reason in these doubts; but when one of the parties in this mighty scheme of action is a profound mystery to the other, it is worse than idle, it is profane, to attempt to explain those things which our minds are not yet sufficiently cleared from the dross of earth to understand.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

Preface
Oak Openings or The bee-hunter (1848)

Color , Way , Knowledge , Sense

“I went round to all these minority sports and I couldn't really appreciate them. Fencing, for example, is just "click, click, click" and it is over. Then they retire. Then they go again "On guard — click, click, click" and it is over again. You just think, "what is this sport?" I thought this is really boring and then I went to Judo and it was just the same thing. These two guys just endlessly circling each other, acting as if what they are trying to do is take the others shirt off without him realising this is what they are trying to do. I just thought "what is this? I don't understand this at all". Then I went to table tennis, which obviously I could identify with because I had played it myself — not quite at Olympic standard — but I could understand it. It suddenly became clear to me that these people really are so far beyond anything I could ever dream of becoming. I felt really terrible because I hadn't appreciated the fencers. The reason I couldn't follow them was because they were so damn good. Their hands were so quick that I couldn't see what was going on.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Interview with Stanford's Newsletter (June 2001)

People , Dreams , Guy , Thinking

“Isn’t a miserable reality better than the most interesting illusion? Or is it illusion, Barney? I don’t know anything about philosophy; you explain it to me because all I know is religious faith and that doesn’t equip me to understand this.”

Philip K. Dick book The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

Source: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), Chapter 8 (p. 143)

Faith , Reality

“A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious understanding; and by this understanding you will awaken to the truth.”

Huangbo Xiyun Chinese Zen Buddhist

The Wan Ling Record of Xiu Pei, quoted in Why Lazarus Laughed: The Essential Doctrine, Zen — Advaita — Tantra (2003) by Wei Wu Wei

Truth

“Gurdjieff said, “Change depends on you, and it will not come about through study. You can know everything and yet remain where you are. It is like a man who knows all about money and the laws of banking, but has no money of his own in the bank. What does all his knowledge do for him?”

Here Gurdjieff suddenly changed his manner of speaking, and looking at me very directly he said: “You have the possibility of changing, but I must warn you that it will not be easy. You are still full of the idea that you can do what you like. In spite of all your study of free will and determinism, you have not yet understood that so long as you remain in this place, you can do nothing at all. Within this sphere there is no freedom. Neither your knowledge nor all your activity will give you freedom. This is because you have no …” Gurdjieff found it difficult to express what he wanted in Turkish. He used the word varlik, which means roughly the quality of being present. I thought he was referring to the experience of being separated from one’s body.

Neither I nor the Prince [Sabaheddin] could understand what Gurdjieff wished to convey. I felt sad, because his manner of speaking left me in no doubt that he was telling me something of great importance. I answered, rather lamely, that I knew that knowledge was not enough, but what else was there to do but study?…”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: Witness: the Story of a Search (1962), p. 46–48 cited in: "Gurdjieff’s Temple Dances by John G. Bennett", Gurdjieff International Review, on gurdjieff.org; About Constantinople 1920

Money , Sadness , Law , Idea

“Brain research in the last five years at Dartmouth and elsewhere has shown that human brains are not fully developed until age 25 and are particularly deficient in their frontal lobes, which control decision-making, rational thinking, judgment, the ability to plan ahead and to resist impulses. Unfortunately, we didn't know that in 1971. Those of you who have made it to age 26 without dying in a stupid drinking game — and I think congratulations are in order, by the way — understand how insane it is to allow young people to vote.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Repeal the 26th Amendment!" (10 November 2010).
2010

People , Age , Stupidity , Way

““Promise me,” he said, “that you’ll say nothing, and if something happens to me, you’ll always honor our parents.” I swallowed. He was scaring me. “Look,” he continued, “I’ve met a lot of rich kids and their parents at the Academy, and I’ll tell you, there are no parents that I’m prouder to have as my father and mother than ours. They rose up with nothing, Mundo, except guts and faith and love. Do you understand?” I shook my head. “No, I don’t,” I said. He licked his lips. He seemed to be licking his lips all the time now. “You will,” he said. “You just pay close attention, and you will.””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Love , Faith , Parent , Time

“This vast pile of natural beauty, those crags and fir trees and hovering hawks, those echoing ravines and vast tumblings of snow and earth, brought me swiftly to the understanding of my own insignificance and, indeed, the insignificance of all human struggle.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 2 (pp. 194-195)

Beauty , Nature , Tree

“Anderson Cooper: You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?
Donald Trump: No, I didn't say that at all. I don't think you understood what was — this was locker room talk.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, October, Second presidential debate (October 9, 2016)

Women , Thinking

“Anyone who tries to range over the last 200 years of Australia's history, surveying the successes and failures, and trying to understand the obstacles that stood in the way, cannot easily accept the gloomier summaries of that history.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

"Balance Sheet On Our History," Quadrant (July 1993)

Way , History , Failure , Success

“Sandro was surprised when I tried to explain to him some of the ideas that at the time I was confusedly cultivating. That the nobility of man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conquerer of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to remain faithful to this nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed down in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed!”

Primo Levi book The Periodic Table

"Iron"
The Periodic Table (1975)

Faith , Error , Idea , Thinking

“Unfortunately, the critics of economics have had a tendency to discuss the whole structure as a tissue of misconceptions. It is a critique that fails. The strength of economics is its considerable, if far from complete, understanding of the flows and comparative advantages that underlie trade, jobs, capital and incomes, and the logic of optimising behaviour, all backed by glittering accomplishment in mathematics. That makes it a powerful analytical instrument, so that just a few misconceptions – such as a failure to understand the informal economy or resource depletion – have leverage: like a baby monkey at the controls of a Ferrari, they can turn it into an instrument with extraordinarily destructive potential. If it were a tissue of errors, it would not be dangerous: it is its 90 percent brilliance which makes it so.”

David Fleming (1940–2010) British activist

Lean Logic, (2016), p. 123, entry on Economics http://www.flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/lean-logic-surviving-the-future/

Error , Mathematics , Failure , Baby

“On Another Country "You are not a Communist because you understand Marx, you understand Marx because you are a Communist!" - that is to say, Judd understands Marx because he presupposes in advance, that Marx is the bearer of knowledge enabling access to the truth of history, like the Christian believer who does not believe in Christ because he has been convinced by theological arguments but, on the contrary, is susceptible to theological arguments because he is already illuminated by the grace of belief.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

41
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Truth , History , Knowledge , Christ

“What I have created here in Italy is neither very big nor profound (in the old sense of the word), but formidable. This summer I painted paintings that are the most profound that exist in the absolute. Let me explain these things somewhat…. profoundness as I understand it, and as Nietzsche intended it, is elsewhere than where it has been searched for until now. – My paintings are small (the biggest is 50 x 70 cm), but each of them is an enigma, each contains a poem, an atmosphere (Stimmung) and a promise that you can not find in other paintings. It brings me immense joy to have painted them – when I exhibit them, possibly in Munich this spring, it will be a revelation for the whole world”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from De Chirico's letter to Mr. Fritz Gartz, Florence, 26 Jan. 1910; from LETTERS BY GIORGIO DE CHIRICO, GEMMA DE CHIRICO AND ALBERTO DE CHIRICO TO FRITZ GARTZ, MILAN-FLORENCE, 1908-1911 http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/559-567Metafisica7_8.pdf, p. 562
1908 - 1920

World , Search , Spring , Sense

“After I wrote Handmaid’s Tale, people came up to me and asked why weren’t there any protests. And I said, “You don’t understand totalitarianism.” A real totalitarianism doesn’t fool around with protests in the streets.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

The Progressive interview (2010)

People , Fools

“I fully understand it takes time for free societies, truly free societies to evolve. I don't expect instant success.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Interview on Middle East Television Network, February 18, 2004 http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040218-10.html
2000s, 2004

Time , Success

“Do not burden yourself with problems that you do not understand,’ he said. ‘If you do, then only the problems win. Human life becomes a tragedy.”

Neamat Imam book The Black Coat

The Black Coat (2013)

Life , Problem

“Our whole policy since August 1, 1914, has been directed with a view to sparing the neutrals during the world war…I cannot yet put it down as a fact or as a result of this world war that our policy of sparing neutrals has extended the circle of our friends. Nor is it right to present it as a dogma that annexation or the detachment of territories creates hostility and hatred, while understanding and solicitude results in friendship.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

Friendship , Hostility , War , World

“The fact that functions may not be separated in organization does not in any way way destroy their identity as functions… The ideal of organized efficiency is not the complete segregation but the integrated correlation |of the three primary functions… The organizer must identify these functional principles, as they appear in every job, and make them the basis of his correlation… his duty is to correlate functions as such… The duty of the manager is to correlate who performs these functions… Management however represents the scalar principle… perpendicular correlations… true horizontal correlation requires other contact… The dissemination of understanding… of common purpose, of the relation of individuals to that purpose & to each other.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 50-59, as cited in Lyndall Urwick (1937;50)

Way , Appearance

“He had discovered that there was not just one God but many, and some were more than cruel — they were insane, and that changed all. Cruelty, after all, was understandable. With insanity, however, there was no arguing.”

Stephen King book Misery

Misery (1987)

God , Change

“When I see dads being most effective with children, it is usually when they have an intuitive understanding that, for example, the car trip to and from the soccer game is potentially as important as the game itself.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 118.

Children , Cars , Game

“Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Source: A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God (1908), IV

Nature , Chance

“To understand the nature of the people it needs to be a prince, and to understand that of princes it needs to be of the people.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

A cognoscer bene la natura de' popoli bisogna esser Principe, ed a cognoscer bene quella de' Principi conviene essere popolare.
Dedication
The Prince (1513)

People , Nature

“A good deal is said these days about being oneself. It is supposed to be healthy to be oneself. While it is a little hard for me to understand how one could be anything else, I suppose what is meant is that one should not strive to become anything other than what he is. This strikes me as a very dull way of living; in fact, I would be inclined to argue that all of us would be better off if we set out to be something other than what we are. Well, I’m not so sure we would all be better off - perhaps it would be more accurate to say life would be a lot more interesting.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Source: The Language of Hypothesis, 1964, p. 157, as cited in: Trevor Butt. Understanding People, 2003. p. 89; Described as "a critique of Cartesian dualism"

Life , Way

“My father was able to acquire a copy of the first printed edition of the Granth Saheb of Sri Garibdas soon after it was published from Baroda. He would frequently read it out to my mother and myself with his own running commentary on the lives of saints and bhaktas as they were mentioned in the sakhis and the ragas. I also sat sometimes turning the pages of this work. I hardly had the mental equipment to understand the mystic messages. But the stories of some great saints like Kabir, Nanak, Ravidas, Dadu, Namdev, Chippa, Pipa and Dhanna were very strongly impressed on my mind, as also the stories of renowned Muslim sufis like Rabiya, Mansur, Adham Sultan, Junaid, Bayazid and Shams Tabriz. These stories were to flower into an abiding satsanga (holy company) in years to come.”

Garib Das (1717–1778) Hindu Yogi

Goel, S. R. (2007). How I became a Hindu.

Flowers , Reading

“Politics, I now understand, is at its best when it enlightens us via an opponent's insight.”

Yanis Varoufakis (1961) Greek-Australian political economist and author, Greek finance minister

And the Weak Suffer What They Must? : Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future (2016), Ch. 4, Trojan Horse

“He wanted me to understand two big things: First, that nobody, no group, is above others. Public servants are obliged to level with everybody, whether or not they'll like what he has to say. And second, that politics was a matter of personal honor. A man's word is his bond. You give your word, you keep it. For as long as I can remember, I've had a sort of romantic notion of what politics should be- and can be. If you do politics the right way, I believe, you can actually make people's lives better. And integrity is the minimum ante to get into the game. Nearly forty years after I first got involved, I remain captivated by the possibilities of politics and public service. In fact, I believe- as I know my grandpop did- that my chosen profession is a noble calling.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Pages xv-xvi
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

People , Way , Game , Personality

“Miracles are not the intercession of an external, divine agency in violoation of the laws of nature. A miracles is something impossible from an old understanding of reality, and possible from a new one.”

Charles Eisenstein (1967) American writer

Charles Eisenstein, A New Story of the People: Charles Eisenstein at TEDxWhitechapel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjoxh4c2Dj0, YouTube, 13 February 2013

Law , Nature , Reality

“Archibald: To understand this, it is not necessary to think of anything at all.
Saphir: Let us think of nothing at all!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Patience (1881)

Thinking

“I have not done anything to merit being thrown out. I don't understand why I am being attacked and held personally responsible. I am more loyal to my mother-in-law than even to my mother.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On being driven away by her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi, as quoted in "Son's Widow Quits Gandhi Household" http://www.nytimes.com/1982/03/31/world/son-s-widow-quits-gandhi-household.html, The New York Times (31 March 1982)
1981-1990

Law , Personality

“Art is the closest we can come to understanding how a stranger really feels.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

"Living Testament" speech http://video.cpt12.org/video/2364991008 at 11th Hour, Colorado Public Television (1994)

Art , Feeling

“I have been asked who caused the riots and the killing in L. A. My answer has been direct and simple. Who is to blame for the riots? The rioters are to blame. Who is to blame for the killings? The killers are to blame. Yes, I can understand how people were shocked and outraged by the verdict in the Rodney King trial. But there is simply no excuse for the mayhem that followed.”

Dan Quayle (1947) American politician, lawyer

Commonwealth Club speech

People

“The earlier views, those of Hobbes or Locke for instance, saw language as an instrument, and understood meaning in terms of designation. Discovering the meaning of words is finding what ideas or things they stood for. … By contrast, a hermeneutical view requires a very different conception. If we are partly constituted by our self-understanding, and this in turn can be very different according to the various languages which articulate for us a background of distinctions of worth, then language does not only serve to depict ourselves and the world, it also helps constitute our lives. Certain ways of being, of feeling, of relating to each other are only possible given certain linguistic resources.”

Charles Taylor (1931) Canadian philosopher

Human Agency and Language (Cambridge: 1985), pp. 9-10

World , Way , Feeling , Idea

“You can understand why a system would seek information - but why in hell does it offer information? Why do we strive to be understood? Why is a refusal to accept communication so painful?”

James Tiptree, Jr (1915–1987) American science fiction writer

"I'm Too Big But I Love To Play" in Ten Thousand Light-Years From Home (1973)

Pain , Communication , Hell

“If the physician clearly perceives what is to be cured in diseases, that is to say, in every individual case of disease (knowledge of disease, indication), if he clearly perceives what is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual medicine (knowledge of medical powers), and if he knows how to adapt, according to clearly defined principles, what is curative in medicines to what he has discovered to be undoubtedly morbid in the patient, so that the recovery must ensue - to adapt it, as well in respect to the suitability of the medicine most appropriate according to its mode of action to the case before him (choice of the remedy, the medicine indicated), as also in respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it required (proper dose), and the proper period for repeating the dose; - if, finally, he knows the obstacles to recovery in each case and is aware how to remove them, so that the restoration may be permanent, then he understands how to treat judiciously and rationally, and he is a true practitioner of the healing art.”

Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843) German physician best known for creating a system of alternative medicine called homeopathy

Aphorism 3 of The Organon of the Healing Art http://www.homeopathyhome.com/reference/organon/organon.html.

Disease , Art , Knowledge

“The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond… But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so.”

Francis Bacon book Novum Organum

Aphorism 48
Novum Organum (1620), Book I

World

“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture.. The unique talent of leaders is their ability to understand and work with culture; and that it is an ultimate act of”

Edgar H. Schein (1928) Psychologist

Source: Organizational Culture and Leadership, 1985, p. 11

“Yet the telescope held it rigidly standing on its head; the microscope revealed a universe that defied the senses; gunpowder killed whole races that lagged behind; the compass coerced the most imbruted mariner to act on the impossible idea that the earth was round; the press drenched Europe with anarchism. Europe saw itself, violently resisting, wrenched into false positions, drawn along new lines as a fish that is caught on a hook; but unable to understand by what force it was controlled.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Idea , Sense , Fish , Universe

“It belongeth to us to have three manner of knowings: the first is that we know our Lord God; the second is that we know our self: what we are by Him, in Nature and Grace; the third is that we know meekly what our self is anent our sin and feebleness. And for these three was all the Shewing made, as to mine understanding.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 72

God , Nature

“Writing the book (The Hottest State) had to do with dropping out of college, and with being an actor. I didn't want my whole life to go by and not do anything but recite lines. I wanted to try making something else. It was definitely the scariest thing I ever did. And a huge learning experience about how not everybody's going to like you, or like what you do. And you have to ask yourself, is it worthwhile? Or am I just doing it to be liked? And it was just one of the best things I ever did. The second book (Ash Wednesday) was so much more fun because of that. The first was just a novelty act, like, 'The kid from Reality Bites wrote a book? Who does he think he is?”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

And I understand that.
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/oct/08/features.fiction (2005-10-08)
2005–2009

Life , Books , Thinking , Reality

“When we come to nonattachment, then we can understand the marvelous mystery of the universe: how it is intense activity and at the same time intense peace, how it is work every moment and rest every moment.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Peace , Universe , Time

“Then saw I truly that it is more worship to God, and more very delight, that we faithfully pray to Himself of His Goodness and cleave thereunto by His Grace, with true understanding, and steadfast by love, than if we took all the means that heart can think. For if we took all these means, it is too little, and not full worship to God: but in His Goodness is all the whole, and there faileth right nought.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The First Revelation, Chapter 6

Love , God , Thinking , Heart

“If craftsmen and blacksmiths were feared for transforming material substance, if traders were feared for transforming such intangible qualities as value, how much more will the banker be feared for the transformations he effects with the most abstract and immaterial of all economic institutions? Thus we reach the climax of the progressive replacement of the perceivable and concrete by abstract concepts shaping rules guiding activity: money and its institutions seem to be beyond the boundary of laudable and understandable physical efforts of creation, in a realm where the comprehension of the concrete ceases and incomprehensible abstractions rule.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Source: 1980s and later, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism (1988), p.102

Money , Fear , Effort

“You live in an age that is dominated by science and engineering. …Thus if you wish to be effective in the world and to achieve the things that you want, it is necessary to understand both science and engineering”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

and those require mathematics
Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

Age , World , Mathematics , Science

“In this situation, it becomes vital that our own country orient its policies in consonance with this basic evolutionary condition rather than pursue a course blind to the reality that the colonial era is now past and the Asian peoples covet the right to shape their own free destiny. What they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding, and support — not imperious direction — the dignity of equality and not the shame of subjugation.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

1950s, Farewell address to Congress (1951)

People , Support , Reality , Past

“The New World Order schemers are absolutely determined to have their way. They have been able to go a long way toward their goal by using subterfuge and deceit. But ultimately the transformation of a world of independent nations into the global plantation they are aiming at will involve changes so profound and so traumatic that subterfuge and deceit will not be enough to keep the serfs under control. They will need raw police power, applied KGB style. They want to begin developing that power now. They're a pretty bold and arrogant bunch of schemers, but they understand that according to the old way of looking at things -- according to our way -- they are traitors. They understand that if the general public ever gets a real inkling of what they are up to, if they ever lose their grip on the situation, they'll all end up hanging from lampposts. What they are planning is so monstrous, so evil, that the thought of being brought to account for it frightens them. They want to use every means at their disposal to make sure their plan succeeds. And, my friends, we will resort to every means at our disposal to insure that their scheme does not succeed and that they do indeed end up hanging from lampposts.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

The New World Order, 1997.
1990s, 1990

World , Way , Evil , Change

“Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind — as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don't understand and never will.”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 11: "The Thinkers", p. 158

Courage , Thinking , Decision

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn't do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life's assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i. e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. Yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don‘t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You'd have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest (1996)

Life , Death , People , Fear

“We must… maintain that mathematical geometry is not a science of space insofar as we understand by space a visual structure that can be filled with objects - it is a pure theory of manifolds.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Mathematics , Science

“Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order.”

Johan Olsen (1939) Norwegian political scientist

James G. March and Johan P. Olsen. "The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political life." American political science review 78.03 (1983): 734-749; Abstract.

Life , Behavior , History , Idea

“Without an understanding of causality there can be no theory of communication. What passes as information theory today is not communication at all, but merely transportation.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1990s and beyond, The Book of Probes : Marshall McLuhan (2011), p. 362

Communication

“When I became vegan I stopped training for myself and started training with a purpose greater than my own. Veganism for me is about mindfulness. I do this to liberate animals. … Before I went vegan I had tendonitis, and I would get joint aches and ligament strains, and my knees would be sore. All that went away as soon as I switched to a wholefood plant-based diet. It’s anti-inflammatory, and your digestive system gets a break. … I didn’t understand what it meant to be an athlete. I was big, muscularly, but I was swollen; it wasn’t ‘healthy big’. Now I’m leaner, sharper, quicker, and my mind’s sharper too.”

Tim Shieff (1988) American freerunner

"An interview with vegan parkour wonder Tim Shieff" https://www.vegansociety.com/whats-new/blog/interview-vegan-parkour-wonder-tim-shieff, interview with The Vegan Society (11 March 2016).

Animals , Training

“The finest virtues can become deformed with age. The precise mind becomes finicky; the thrifty man, miserly; the cautious man, timorous; the man of imagination, fanciful. Even perseverance ends up in a sort of stupidity. Just as, on the other hand, being too willing to understand too many opinions, too diverse ways of seeing, constancy is lost and the mind goes astray in a restless fickleness.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“An Unprejudiced Mind,” p. 324
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

Age , Stupidity , Way , Imagination

“If we experience our power of awareness, feel something to be conscious right here and now, know that there is something between and behind the thoughts that perceives and understands, then everything is free play and a gift.”

Lama Ole Nydahl (1941) Danish lama

Knowing Our Experiencing Mind, Buddhism Today Issue 21, Spring/Summer 2008.

Feeling

“This decision is absolutely contrary to my understanding of what the plan was to be in the event of an invasion.”

Walter Warlimont (1894–1976) German general

Quoted in "The Longest Day: June 6, 1944" - Page 230 - by Cornelius Ryan - History - 1994

Decision

“The most successful saloonkeepers don’t drink themselves and they understand that my temperance is a business proposition, just like their own. p. 77”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 19, The Successful Politician Does Not Drink

Drink , Business , Success

“I guess people don't understand that I'm just a person.”

Yolanda King (1955–2007) American actress

1970s

People , Personality

“Our common speech contains numberless verbs with which to describe the infliction of violence or cruelty or brutality on others. It only really contains one common verb that describes the effect of violence or cruelty or brutality on those who, rather than suffering from it, inflict it. That verb is the verb to brutalize. A slaveholder visits servitude on his slaves, lashes them, degrades them, exploits them, and maltreats them. In the process, he himself becomes brutalized. This is a simple distinction to understand and an easy one to observe. In the recent past, idle usage has threatened to erode it. Last week was an especially bad one for those who think the difference worth preserving…Col. Muammar Qaddafi's conduct [killing his protesters] is far worse than merely brutal—it is homicidal and sadistic…and even if a headline can't convey all that, it can at least try to capture some of it. Observe, then, what happens when the term is misapplied. The error first robs the language of a useful expression and then ends up by gravely understating the revolting reality it seeks to describe…Far from being brutalized by four decades of domination by a theatrical madman, the Libyan people appear fairly determined not to sink to his level and to be done with him and his horrible kin. They also seem, at the time of writing, to want this achievement to represent their own unaided effort. Admirable as this is, it doesn't excuse us from responsibility. The wealth that Qaddafi is squandering is the by-product of decades of collusion with foreign contractors. The weapons that he is employing against civilians were not made in Libya; they were sold to him by sophisticated nations.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2010s, 2011

People , Error , Thinking , Reality

“Everyone lets the present moment slip by, and then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this. But while grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. Once a man has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bear his truth in mind.”

Rati Tsiteladze (1987) Georgian Filmmaker

As Quoted in The Gerorgian Times in 2008 http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=12354.eng

Truth , Personality

“To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

Proms 2013: Daniel Barenboim interview http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/nov/02/daniel-barenboim-conductor-interview, 8 May 2013.

Knowledge

“The aim of poetry—in this primal and primary sense as enchantment—is to awaken us to a fuller sense of our own humanity in both its social and individual aspects. Poetry offers a way of understanding and expressing existence that is fundamentally different from conceptual thought”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

22
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), Poetry as Enchantment (2015)

Way , Sense

“It was my understanding that there would be no math.”

Chevy Chase (1943) American comedian, writer, and television and film actor

From the Saturday Night Live sketch, Presidential Debate in 1976 (Chase played Gerald Ford).
Attributed

“Johnson represents a clear and coherent economic and political philosophy that conservative and libertarian economists can understand and support if they choose.”

Brent Budowsky (1952) American journalist

In shock poll, Libertarian Johnson beats Trump among economists (August 23, 2016)

Support

“Look. What happened, that was just business. Personal betrayal I can understand. But never betrayal of one’s people you serve, or your country.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

2000s, A Bag of Earth, A Promise To Keep (2005)

People , Business , Betrayal , Personality

“The expected effects of a sea-level rise typify the many consequences of a global warming. On the one hand, they are so big we literally can't understand them. If there is a significant polar melting, the Earth's center of gravity will shift, tipping the globe in such a way that the sea level might actually drop at Cape Horn and along the coast of Iceland—I read this in a recent EPA report and found that I didn't really understand what it meant to tip the Earth, through I was awed by the idea. On the other hand, the changes ultimately acquire a quite personal dimension: Should I put in a wall in front of my house? Does this taste salty to you? And, most telling of all, the human response to the problems, the utterly natural human attempt to preserve the old natural way of life in this postnatural world, creates entirely new consequences. The ocean rises; I build a wall; the marsh dies, and, with it, the fish.”

Bill McKibben book The End of Nature

Source: The End of Nature (1989), p. 117-118

Life , World , Way , Idea

“Amanpour: Secretary of State Colin Powell has spoken to you, I understand. He has also spoken publicly. He called on you to rein in the violence. What do you make of that statement, and can you and will you rein in that violence?
Arafat: Are you asking me while I am under complete siege? You are a wonderful journalist. You have to respect your profession.… No, you have to be accurately when you are speaking with General Yasser Arafat. Be quiet! … You are covering, with such questions, the terrorist activities of the Israeli occupation and the Israeli crimes. Take care not to make these fatal mistakes. Thank you. Bye, bye!”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Exchange http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0203/29/bn.26.html with CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour (29 March 2002) during Operation Defensive Shield
New millennium

Question

“I decided a handful of years ago that I just want to write songs that you can understand as soon as you put the record on. There’s no need to veil what’s happening in the song the way I used to.
My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Source: The Meaning Of Life, II

Way

“The worship of images is intimately connected with that of the saints. They were rejected by the primitive Christians; but St Irenæus, who lived in the second century, relates that there was a sect of heretics, the Carpocratians, who worshipped, in the manner of Pagans, different images representing Jesus Christ, St Paul, and others. The Gnostics had also images; but the church rejected their use in a positive manner, and a Christian writer of the third century, Minutius Felix, says that “the Pagans reproached the Christians for having neither temples nor simulachres;” and I could quote many other evidences that the primitive Christians entertained a great horror against every kind of images, considering them as the work of demons. It appears, however, that the use of pictures was creeping into the church already in the third century, because the council of Elvira in Spain, held in 305, especially forbids to have any picture in the Christian churches. These pictures were generally representations of some events, either of the New 5 In his Treatise given below. 11 or of the Old Testament, and their object was to instruct the common and illiterate people in sacred history, whilst others were emblems, representing some ideas connected with the doctrines [008] of Christianity. It was certainly a powerful means of producing an impression upon the senses and the imagination of the vulgar, who believe without reasoning, and admit without reflection; it was also the most easy way of converting rude and ignorant nations, because, looking constantly on the representations of some fact, people usually end by believing it. This iconographic teaching was, therefore, recommended by the rulers of the church, as being useful to the ignorant, who had only the understanding of eyes, and could not read writings.6 Such a practice was, however, fraught with the greatest danger, as experience has but too much proved. It was replacing intellect by sight.7 Instead of elevating man towards God, it was bringing down the Deity to the level of his finite intellect, and it could not but powerfully contribute to the rapid spread of a pagan anthropomorphism in the church.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 10-11

God , People , Way , Quotes

“The principles upon which this nation was founded are those upon which its survival, no less than its prosperity, depend. These are the principles upon which we believe our freedom and prosperity as individuals, and that of our children depend. These principles are simple and familiar enough for anyone to understand who wishes to understand. Selfish motives, miseducation, or ideological blindness may lead some to deny or disparage them. But nothing can obscure their shining truth… Lincoln at Gettysburg said that the nation, at its birth, had been dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Earlier, Lincoln had said that the proposition of equality was the 'central idea' of the founding, from which all its minor thoughts emanated.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008)

Men , Children , Truth , Motivation

“It might seem limited to impose our human perception to try to deduce the grandest cosmic code. But we are the product of the universe and I think it can be argued that the entire cosmic code is imprinted in us. Just as our genes carry the memory of our biological ancestors, our logic carries the memory of our cosmological ancestry. We are not just imposing human-centric notions on a cosmos independent of us. We are progeny of the cosmos and our ability to understand it is an inheritance.”

Janna Levin (1967) American theoretical cosmologist

How the Universe Got its Spots (2002)

Thinking , Universe , Memory

“For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 173

Time

“I came to the riverbank. The sand underfoot crunches and sounds like my grandmother sighing. She is fond of chattering endlessly, although no-one understands her. If you ask, Grandmother, what did you say? She will look up absentmindedly and, after a while, say, oh, you’re back from school? Are you hungry? There are sweet potatoes in the bamboo steamer. When she chatters it is best not to interrupt; she is talking about when she was a young woman. But if you eavesdrop from behind her chair, she seems to be saying. It’s hidden, it’s hidden, everything is hidden, everything… All these memories are making noises in the sand under your feet.”

Gao Xingjian (1940) Chinese novelist and playwright

Source: Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (2005), p. 100

School , Memory

“As a mathematician Erdös is what in other fields is called a "natural". If a problem can be stated in terms he can understand, though it may belong to a field with which he is not familiar, he is as likely as, or even more likely than, the experts to find a solution.”

Mark Kac (1914–1984) Polish-American mathematician

Source: Enigmas Of Chance (1985), Chapter 4, On Toast!, p. 93.

Nature , Problem

“Today the world has far more potential than in the past to understand the message of the Holy Prophet (s. w. a). The more human knowledge increases, the more likely it becomes that the message of Islam will gain ground. The more powerful people in different parts of the world use brutal tools in order to suppress human feelings and to bring them under their yoke, the more the ground will be prepared for identifying the light of Islam and the more thirsty human beings will become for Islam. Today we see the signs of this thirst for the message of Islam, which is the message of monotheism, the message of spirituality, the message of justice, the message of human dignity. Human beings are enthusiastic about the message of Islam.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

"Supreme Leader's Speech in a Meeting with Officials and Ambassadors of Islamic Countries" http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1871&Itemid=4, Khamenei.ir (October 25, 2000)
2000

People , World , Justice , Feeling

“… a newly raised unit of young men fresh from the depots of France, and they were half-trained, ill disciplined, resentful of an Emperor who had marched them off to a war they mostly did not understand and, above all, hungry.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

Men , War , Training

“I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan… We will defend ourselves on every front, defensively and offensively.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Press conference http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-finally-speaks-his-mind/.
2010s, 2014

People , Thinking

Quotes about understanding page 55

Quotes about understanding
page 55