Quotes about understanding (7444 quotes, page 71)

“Sorry, I don’t understand ragas. Just show me the tune and I sing.”

K. L. Saigal (1904–1947) Indian actor

Then sing anything you like, said Boral, and Saigal started singing something in Raag Asawari.
In Begum Akhtar the Undisputed Malika of Ghazals, 28 September 2012, accessdate3 January 2014, New Age Islam http://www.newageislam.com/islamic-culture/begum-akhtar-the-undisputed-malika-of-ghazals/d/8820,

Singing

“Then afterwards, when victory is yours, we too-all of us Bengalis-will share in the honour and the glory. We do not need to understand what is it that you have done. Or to have given you any thought, time or money, but the moment we hear the chorus or praises in The Times from the lips of the Englishmen we shall lap it up. Some important news papers in our country will observe we are not inferior men; and another paper will observe we are making discovery after discovery in science. Earlier we shall not have felt an iota of responsibility towards you, but when victory has been won and you return home bearing a crop of records, then you will be one of us. Soughing and ploughing you will do alone; reaping we shall do together. The victory you will find will be more ours than yours.”

Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) Bengali polymath, physicist, biologist, botanist and archaeologist

After his recognition by the west Rabindranath Tagore wrote to Bose. Quoted in "Science and National Consciousness in Bengal: 1870-1930", pages=107-08

Money , Home , Time , Country

“He was a great teacher, who believed that learning is not for hoarding but to be shared. He had an unsurpassed enthusiasm for explaining the phenomenon of nature in a manner that the most uninitiated could understand.”

C. V. Raman (1888–1970) Indian physicist

Indira Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India quoted in [Cahn, R.W., The Coming of Materials Science, http://books.google.com/books?id=CCmJMr_K5NIC&pg=PA234, 16 March 2001, Elsevier, 978-0-08-052942-4, 272]

Teachers , Learning , Nature

“Analysis of a system reveals its structure and how it works. It provides the knowledge required to make it work efficiently and to repair it when it stops working. Its product is know-how, knowledge, not understanding. To enable a system to perform effectively we must understand it—we must be able to explain its behavior—and this requires being aware of its functions in the larger systems of which it is a part.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1990s, Re-Creating the Corporation (1999), p. 12.

Knowledge , Behavior , Making love , Parting

“If one analyses his career graph closely, one can understand that the arrow always pointed upwards. There were no major jumps, no deep plummeting…”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Dr Gayathri Sreekanth, in her well researched biography of the actor titled, The Name is Rajinikanth. “
Decoding Rajinikanth

“In fact, there’s probably only one thing worse than not being able to understand a person.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

“What’s that?” asked Nimrod.
“Being able to understand him completely.”
"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 20: The Tower" p. 76 (originally published in Author’s Choice Monthly #8: Swatting at the Cosmos)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

Personality

“All art is probably erotic in its ultimate character, but painting more than anything else is a purely nervous erotic activity… The eroticism of Caravaggio is special because it exists in that area between the simple sensual appreciation of the object which produces the desire to posses it, and the passionate but detached concern of the Observer, which also seeks to posses but to posses through understanding.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Some Notes on Caravaggio (1956)

Passion , Painting , Art

“Mengistu does not understand the meaning of self-determination, either historically or in the abstract. He cannot conceive of a nation as anything but an absolute centralized authority, totalitarianism, for his rule is nothing less than that now.”

Mengistu Haile Mariam (1937) Former dictator of Ethiopia

Dawit Wolde Giorgis (1989) Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia, The Red Sea Press Inc., p. 112
About Mengistu

Self-confidence

“What I did understand from the rebirth process was that the rebirth reproduced a physical duplicate of the original. But this is my point. It is physical.”

David Gemmell book The Swords of Night and Day

What truly makes a man who he is? Is it the strength of his arms, or the courage of his soul? You have your own soul, Harad. You are not Druss. Live your own life."
Source: Drenai series, The Swords of Night and Day, Ch. 8

“Mechanical knowledge may… be distinguished into three kinds; purely scientific knowledge, purely practical knowledge, and that intermediate kind of knowledge which relates to the application of scientific principles to practical purposes, and which arises from understanding the harmony of theory and practice.”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)

Knowledge , Relation ships

“And I will not ask what all others ask of you - why? Because what I have come to understand is that there is no why.”

Ian Cameron Esslemont book Return of the Crimson Guard

To ask why is to impose expectations on mute existence - expectations it is in no way obliged to meet or even extend. And so I make no more, ask no more.
Return of the Crimson Guard (2008)

“If you really want to contribute to our theoretical understanding of physical laws — and it is an exciting experience if you succeed!”

Gerardus 't Hooft (1946) Dutch theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winner

there are many things you need to know. First of all, be serious about it!
How to become a good theoretical physicist http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html

Law

“The truly great English midfield player of the generation. Didn’t just play the game, he thought about the game. You could see every pass, every decision, was based on his intelligence and understanding.”

Paul Scholes (1974) English footballer

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/andrea-pirlo-dream-xi-paul-scholes-the-only-englishman-as-juventus-star-leaves-out-cristiano-ronaldo-in-favour-of-pippo-inzaghi-9992885.html
Andrea Pirlo

Game , Intelligence , Decision

“Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual modes of the world. My poor friend Smart showed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not called in question.”

Christopher Smart (1722–1771) English poet

Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, Life of Dr. Johnson http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/smart.html

World , Madness , Question

“All this will have left you disposed to understand one of our principal Futurist efforts, which consists of abolishing in literature the apparently indissoluble fusion of the two concepts of Woman and Beauty.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

This ideological a fusion has reduced all romance to a sort of heroic assault that a bellicose and lyrical male launches against a tower that bristles with enemies, a story which ends when the hero, now beneath starlight, carries the divine Beauty-Woman away to new heights. Novels such as Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo or Salammbô by Flaubert can clarify my point. It is a matter of a dominant leitmotif, already worn out,c of which we would like to disencumber literature and art in general.
1910's, Multiplied Man and the Reign of the Machine' 1911
Source: Poggi, Christine, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. Yale University Press, 2009. p. 89

Beauty , Literature , Effort

“The host of specifically religious suggestions and images, in a story that until now has been devoid of such concern, suggests very strongly that Peake is here referring to the Christian religion as a debasing influence. Peake’s treatment of Gormenghast’s ritual shows that he dislikes any system of values imposed on the individual from outside, offering him nothing directly relevant for himself and encouraging him in whatever weakness he possesses. So, here, the Lamb can break down but not build; despite his worshipper’s praise, he does not really understand how to keep his creatures alive. Still the Lamb glories in his power. True, in changing men he has destroyed them, denying them freedom to develop for themselves; to the Lamb, however, that is incidental to his own gratification.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Joseph L. Sanders, “The Passions in Their Clay” Mervyn Peake’s Titus Stories, reprinted in the omnibus edition The Gormenghast Novels published by The Overlook Press, p. 1093

Religion , Freedom , Men , Change

“I became a philosophy major literally to understand why I should put up with this shit.”

Art Spiegelman (1948) cartoonist from the United States

After taking all the difficult art classes, Spiegelman was required to take the easy ones to obtain an arts major. He discusses here switching instead to a philosophy major; as quoted in "Breakfast with the FT: Art Spiegelman 'Drawn from Memory'" in Financial Times (29 November 2008).

“When people are content, they are difficult to maneuver. We are perennially discontent and offered placebos as remedies. My intention in writing this book is to make you feel better, to offer you a solution to the way you feel. I am confident that this is necessary. When do you ever meet people that are happy? Genuinely happy? Only children, the mentally ill, and daytime television presenters. My belief is that it is possible to feel happier, because I feel better than I used to. I am beginning to understand where the solution lies, primarily because of an exhausting process of trial and mostly error. My qualification to write a book on how to change yourself and change the world is not that I’m better than you, it’s that I’m worse. Not that I’m smarter, but that I’m dumber: I bought the lie hook, line, and sinker. My only quality has been an unwitting momentum, a willingness to wade through the static dissatisfaction that has been piped into my mind from the moment I learned language. What if that feeling of inadequacy, isolation, and anxiety isn’t just me? What if it isn’t internally engineered but the result of concerted effort, the product of a transmission? An ongoing broadcast from the powerful that has colonized my mind? Who is it in here, inside your mind, reading these words, feeling that fear? Is there an awareness, an exempt presence, gleaming behind the waterfall of words that commentate on every event, label every object, judge everyone you come into contact with? And is there another way to feel? Is it possible to be in this world and feel another way? Can you conceive, even for a moment, of a species similar to us but a little more evolved, that have transcended the idea that solutions to the way we feel can be externally acquired? What would that look like? How would that feel—to be liberated from the bureaucracy of managing your recalcitrant mind. Is it possible that there is a conspiracy to make us feel this way?”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Confidence , Reading , Making love , Children

“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.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

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
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

Painting , Search , Sense , Summer

“I was overwhelmed to realize that he could never understand me or the scalding experiences that had swept me beyond his life and into an area of living that he could never know.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Life

“Yes, all right, Landsman understands, so go shit in the ocean, that he made not the right but the only choice. He understands that the necessity of covering up for the dark deeds of the boys in the top drawer is one that nozzes have been making into a virtue since the dawn of police work.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Source: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chapter 45

Making love , Boy

“I have been thinking of what you say about form... I feel that a real living form is the natural result of the individual’s effort to create the living thing out of the adventure of his spirit into the unknown.... and from that experience comes the desire to make the unknown known. By unknown I mean the thing that means so much to the person that he want to put it down - clarify something he feels but does not clearly understand... Making the unknown known.... if you stop to think of form as form you are lost.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Quote in a letter to Sherwood Anderson, October 1923; as quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life, Roxana Robinson, University Press of New England, 1999
1917 - 1929

Personality , Nature , Thinking , Making love

“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.”

Josefa Iloilo (1920–2011) President of Fiji

on the government's controversial plans to set up a Commission empowered to compensate victims and pardon perpetrators of the political upheaval of 2000
Speech opening Parliament, 1 August 2005 (excerpts)

Help

“Ki tests are not founded on the idea of testing for strength or weakness. The most important factor in ki testing is to accurately inform the person of the state of his or her mind. Thus, the person performing ki tests must truly understand and exhibit oneness of mind and body from the outset and then perform the tests correctly.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

22 : The treasure of ki testing
Ki Sayings (2003)

Idea , Personality

“Men and women will never understand each other; my advice is to just stop trying. Just forget it. I know I will never understand women. I will never understand how you can take boiling hot wax, pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root…and still be afraid of a spider.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Forgetting , Women , Men

“I love people. And I think if you take the 7 billion people on the planet and you round it off, about 7 billion of them are good. To find bad people is really difficult. Not people doing bad things, but really bad people who get up in the morning and say, How can I fuck people up? That’s a really rare thing. Misguided, you know, mistaken, but I just can’t understand how this view of humanity that all we want to do is horrible things to each other and it’s just this belief in something else that stops us. And that that is what you see over and over again through the Bible. There’s reward and punishment but there’s no – I mean, nothing feels better than helping someone out. I mean, there’s nothing better, nothing better in the world than someone whose life was fucked up and you do a little something and now their life isn’t. I mean, you can talk about the joy of sex, hedonistic joys of food, and you can talk about the joy with your children, but man, someone is going through a hard time and you help them out, man you feel good for months.”

Penn Jillette (1955) American magician

2010s, Penn Jillette Rapes All the Women He Wants To (2012)

Time , Food , Bad luck , Children

“To few men was it given to realize so completely the element of eternity — of time-effacing enjoyment in work — as it was to John Muir. The secret of it all was in his soul, the soul of a child, of a poet, and of a strong man, all blended into one. … An innate nobility of character, an unstudied reverence for all that is sublime in nature or in life, unconsciously called forth the best in his friends and acquaintances. In the spiritual as in the physical realm flowers blossomed in his footsteps where he went. After all it is to such men as John Muir that we must look for the sustenance of those finer feelings that keep men in touch with the spiritual meaning and beauty of the universe, and make them capable of understanding those rare souls whose insight has invested life with imperishable hope and charm. … To all who knew John Muir intimately his gentleness and humaneness toward all creatures that shared the world with him, was one of the finest attributes of his character. … Among those who have won title to remembrance as prophets and interpreters of nature he rises to a moral as well as poetical altitude that will command the admiring attention of men so long as human records shall endure.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

William Frederic Badé (pages 38-40)
Sierra Club Bulletin - Memorial Issue

Soul , Time , Strong , Beauty

“Never have I met another man of such singleness of mind in his devotion to nature as Muir. He lived and moved and had his being as a devotee. … Of himself he took little heed, but no zealous missionary ever went abroad to spread the gospel with his fervor in communicating a love of nature. And with him a love of nature meant an understanding of her laws. He sauntered over the mountains, claiming kinship with the rocks and growing things and gathering them all to his heart. He has told me that he found it necessary, in getting people to listen, to tell them stories such as his immortal tale of Stickeen, but the real hope in his heart was to awaken their interest so they would want to go to nature themselves and to delve into the mysteries of her ways. … Every tree and flower, every bird and stone was to him the outward token of an invisible world in process of making.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Charles Keeler (pages 17-18)
Sierra Club Bulletin - Memorial Issue

Tree , Law , Mountain , People

“The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self.”

Greg Bear (1951) American writer best known for science fiction

We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?
"Introduction to 'Plague of Conscience'", The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (2002)

Self-confidence , Science

“If sin must be kept alive, then hell must be kept alive; but while I regard the smallest sin as infinitely loathsome, I do not believe that any being, never good enough to see the essential ugliness of sin, could sin so as to deserve such punishment. I am not now, however, dealing with the question of the duration of punishment, but with the idea of punishment itself; and would only say in passing, that the notion that a creature born imperfect, nay, born with impulses to evil not of his own generating, and which he could not help having, a creature to whom the true face of God was never presented, and by whom it never could have been seen, should be thus condemned, is as loathsome a lie against God as could find place in heart too undeveloped to understand what justice is, and too low to look up into the face of Jesus.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

From ‘’Justice’’ in Unspoken Sermons Series III (1889)

God , Hell , Justice , Question

“This vain presumption, of understanding everything, can have no other basis than never understanding anything.”

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

For anyone who had experienced just once the understanding of one single thing, thus truly tasting how knowledge is accomplished, would then recognize that of the infinity of other truths, he understands nothing.
Source: Galileo's Dream (2009), Ch. 15, p. 354; note: though this statement is incorporated into the story as one Galileo spoke, it is actually a quotation of one he historically made in his Dialogue Concerning The Two Chief World Systems http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kimler/hi322/Dialogue-extracts.html as translated by Stillman Drake.

“Throughout time, leading thinkers, academicians, and government leaders have attempted to develop an understanding of how to build peace. Many approaches have been explored, all attempting to create favorable conditions for peace. These solutions have drawn from economics, history, international law, comparative peace studies, conflict resolution, political science, sociology, anthropology, and more. Prem Rawat’s message of peace is rooted in the need for each person to find peace within themselves. He emphasizes that whether our search is for world peace or for personal peace, we very much need to look at the search for peace as a personal quest, rooted in an understanding of who we are.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

Professor Dr. Surapon Nitikraipot, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Rector of Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand, May 17 2005
About, 2000s

Peace , Study , Time , History

“I don’t understand writers who have to work at it. I like to play. I’m interested in having fun with ideas, throwing them up in the air like confetti and then running under them.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)

Idea

“Above all there is our fixed joint determination to build a strong and united Fiji, rich in diversity and pampered with tolerance, goodwill and understanding.”

Kamisese Mara (1920–2004) President of Fiji

(Attributed to Mara by his successor as President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, 10 October 2005).
Independence Day address, 10 October 1970.

Strong

“The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian have no regard for human life and is an all out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Statement (8 August 1945), as quoted in General Patton : A Soldier's Life (2002) by Stanley P. Hirshson, p. 650
Source: [Charles M. Province, The unknown Patton, https://books.google.com/books?id=yXshAAAAMAAJ&q=The+difficulty+in+understanding+the+Russian+is+that+we+do+not+take+cognizance+of+the+fact+that+he+is+not+a+European,+but+an+Asiatic,+and+therefore+thinks+deviously.+We+can+no+more+understand+a+Russian+than+a+Chinese+or+a+Japanese,+and+from+what+I+have+seen+of+them,+I+have+no+particular+desire+to+understand+them+except+to+ascertain+how+much+lead+or+iron+it+takes+to+kill+them.+In+addition+to+his+other+amiable+characteristics,+the+Russian+has+no+regard+for+human+life+and+they+are+all+out+sons-of-bitches,+barbarians,+and+chronic+drunks.&dq=The+difficulty+in+understanding+the+Russian+is+that+we+do+not+take+cognizance+of+the+fact+that+he+is+not+a+European,+but+an+Asiatic,+and+therefore+thinks+deviously.+We+can+no+more+understand+a+Russian+than+a+Chinese+or+a+Japanese,+and+from+what+I+have+seen+of+them,+I+have+no+particular+desire+to+understand+them+except+to+ascertain+how+much+lead+or+iron+it+takes+to+kill+them.+In+addition+to+his+other+amiable+characteristics,+the+Russian+has+no+regard+for+human+life+and+they+are+all+out+sons-of-bitches,+barbarians,+and+chronic+drunks.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAmoVChMItdm-0viRyQIVyeQmCh2khgS9, 1983, Hippocrene Books, 978-0-88254-641-4, 99]
Source: [English Teacher X, Vodkaberg: Nine Years in Russia, https://books.google.com/books?id=ZR2TBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA2&dq=The+difficulty+in+understanding+the+Russian+is+that+we+do+not+take+cognizance+of+the+fact+that+he+is+not+a+European,+but+an+Asiatic,+and+therefore+thinks+deviously.+We+can+no+more+understand+a+Russian+than+a+Chinese+or+a+Japanese,+and+from+what+I+have+seen+of+them,+I+have+no+particular+desire+to+understand+them+except+to+ascertain+how+much+lead+or+iron+it+takes+to+kill+them.+In+addition+to+his+other+amiable+characteristics,+the+Russian+has+no+regard+for+human+life+and+they+are+all+out+sons-of-bitches,+barbarians,+and+chronic+drunks.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMItdm-0viRyQIVyeQmCh2khgS9#v=onepage&q=The%20difficulty%20in%20understanding%20the%20Russian%20is%20that%20we%20do%20not%20take%20cognizance%20of%20the%20fact%20that%20he%20is%20not%20a%20European%2C%20but%20an%20Asiatic%2C%20and%20therefore%20thinks%20deviously.%20We%20can%20no%20more%20understand%20a%20Russian%20than%20a%20Chinese%20or%20a%20Japanese%2C%20and%20from%20what%20I%20have%20seen%20of%20them%2C%20I%20have%20no%20particular%20desire%20to%20understand%20them%20except%20to%20ascertain%20how%20much%20lead%20or%20iron%20it%20takes%20to%20kill%20them.%20In%20addition%20to%20his%20other%20amiable%20characteristics%2C%20the%20Russian%20has%20no%20regard%20for%20human%20life%20and%20they%20are%20all%20out%20sons-of-bitches%2C%20barbarians%2C%20and%20chronic%20drunks.&f=false, English Teacher X, 2–, GGKEY:2DPNH0X04GB]
Source: [Evi Martyn, Captain Philip Markopoulos a Patton's Hero: An Incredible True Story When Fate and Destiny Outpower Weapons, https://books.google.com/books?id=IdkUq5EixE8C&pg=PA176&dq=The+difficulty+in+understanding+the+Russian+is+that+we+do+not+take+cognizance+of+the+fact+that+he+is+not+a+European,+but+an+Asiatic,+and+therefore+thinks+deviously.+We+can+no+more+understand+a+Russian+than+a+Chinese+or+a+Japanese,+and+from+what+I+have+seen+of+them,+I+have+no+particular+desire+to+understand+them+except+to+ascertain+how+much+lead+or+iron+it+takes+to+kill+them.+In+addition+to+his+other+amiable+characteristics,+the+Russian+has+no+regard+for+human+life+and+they+are+all+out+sons-of-bitches,+barbarians,+and+chronic+drunks.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAWoVChMItdm-0viRyQIVyeQmCh2khgS9#v=onepage&q=The%20difficulty%20in%20understanding%20the%20Russian%20is%20that%20we%20do%20not%20take%20cognizance%20of%20the%20fact%20that%20he%20is%20not%20a%20European%2C%20but%20an%20Asiatic%2C%20and%20therefore%20thinks%20deviously.%20We%20can%20no%20more%20understand%20a%20Russian%20than%20a%20Chinese%20or%20a%20Japanese%2C%20and%20from%20what%20I%20have%20seen%20of%20them%2C%20I%20have%20no%20particular%20desire%20to%20understand%20them%20except%20to%20ascertain%20how%20much%20lead%20or%20iron%20it%20takes%20to%20kill%20them.%20In%20addition%20to%20his%20other%20amiable%20characteristics%2C%20the%20Russian%20has%20no%20regard%20for%20human%20life%20and%20they%20are%20all%20out%20sons-of-bitches%2C%20barbarians%2C%20and%20chronic%20drunks.&f=false, 2009, AuthorHouse, 978-1-4389-8409-4, 176–]
Source: http://www.military-history.us/2014/03/now-would-be-a-good-time-for-a-bit-of-revisionism/

Bitch , Life , Thinking

“From that time that it was shewed I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord’s meaning. And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in ghostly understanding, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord’s meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love.”

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

Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord’s meaning.
The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 86

Time , Learning , Love , Making love

“Thus in these same five words aforesaid: I may make all things well, etc., I understand a mighty comfort of all the works of our Lord God that are yet to come. There is a Deed the which the blessed Trinity shall do in the last Day, as to my sight, and when the Deed shall be, and how it shall be done, is unknown of all creatures that are beneath Christ, and shall be till when it is done.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 32

God , Christ , Making love

“One time our good Lord said: All thing shall be well; and another time he said: Thou shalt see thyself that all MANNER of thing shall be well; and in these two the soul took sundry understandings. One was that He willeth we know that not only He taketh heed to noble things and to great, but also to little and to small, to low and to simple, to one and to other. And so meaneth He in that He saith: ALL MANNER OF THINGS shall be well. For He willeth we know that the least thing shall not be forgotten.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 32

Soul , Time

“Gold, he learned, was considered to be a reliable store of value because extracting it from the ground required a certain amount of effort that tended to remain stable over time. When new, easy-to-mine gold deposits were found, or new mining technologies developed, the value of gold tended to fall. It didn’t take a huge amount of acumen, then, to understand that the value of virtual gold in the game world could be made stable in a directly analogous way: namely, by forcing players to expend a certain amount of time and effort to extract a certain amount of virtual gold…”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Economics of gold farming, Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Time , Game , Learning , Way

“What people need to understand is pussy is the Front Door to Life. Do you get that? Nobody ever thinks about it like that in the dusty ancient cabinet of old white men that think they know everything.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, FEMINISM

People , Thinking , Life , Men

“The Thibet priests have methods of their own of discovering what Man is Greatest, fit to be supreme over them. Bad methods: but are they so much worse than our methods,—of understanding him to be always the eldest-born of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a difficult thing to find good methods for!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Bad luck

“All this is merely saying that he, in a degree once common, but now very unusual, threw his feelings into his opinions; which truly it is difficult to understand how any one who possesses much of both, can fail to do. None but those who do not care about opinions, will confound it with intolerance. Those, who having opinions which they hold to be immensely important, and their contraries to be prodigiously hurtful, have any deep regard for the general good, will necessarily dislike, as a class and in the abstract, those who think wrong what they think right, and right what they think wrong: though they need not therefore be, nor was my father, insensible to good qualities in an opponent, nor governed in their estimation of individuals by one general presumption, instead of by the whole of their character.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/50/mode/1up pp. 50-51

Thinking , Feeling , Hurt

“He who will establish himself on a certain height must yield according to circumstances, like the weather-cock on a church-spire, which, though it be made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it remained obstinately immovable, and did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind. But a great man will never so far contradict his own feelings as to see, or, it may be, increase, with cold-blooded indifference, the misfortunes of his fellow country-men.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

English Fragments (1828), Ch. 11 : The Emancipation
Variant: The weather-cock on the church spire, though made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind if it did not understand the noble art of turning to every wind.

Country , Indifference , Art , Weather

“What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially. We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform. Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families. Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing.”

Sean Reardon American sociologist

No Rich Child Left Behind, 2013

School , Family , Success , Children

“And if they’re accused of a crime, as DeSean’s friends have been, should that reflect poorly on me? Consider that for every several guys I try to help who end up dead or in jail, there’s another person I was able to rescue from a similar end. Should I give up on everybody out of fear of being dirtied by the media? Sorry, but I was born in this dirt. NFL teams understand that. The Seattle Seahawks get it. The Philadelphia Eagles apparently do not.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Stardom Doesn’t Change Where You’re From (April 02, 2014)

Dead , Personality , Help , Guy

“I wasn’t really shocked or anything. Because of what I saw after the incident after the NFC championship game. You’ve got a lot of racial backlash, and a lot of racist comments that were uncalled for – I can never see a time where racism is called for. So it didn’t shock me as much as it would have had I not experienced that personally, had I not seen those things. Because it showed me that America still had some progress to make. On equality, and understanding that it doesn’t matter what color you are, you treat people as people. And whether a good person or a bad person, you don’t judge them off the color of their skin. You can know a person is a good person or a bad person by who they are, not by what they look like. In that situation, it just seems like a lot of people gave him a lot of flack, well deserved, but you know – I feel like a lot more people were surprised then they should have been.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

About Donald Sterling's racist remarks.
The NFL Would Not Have Banned A Donald Sterling For Life (May 7, 2014)

Time , Personality , Bad luck , Game

“People want to it to be done, they want that uncomfortable truth to be over with, they want the racism to be done, they want to believe everything is great and hunky-dory. And it’s not. There’s a lot of racism still alive and still active. And it just forced America to rethink it once again. And to really, really understand that racism isn’t gone. We have to actively push it out. And snuff it out.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

The NFL Would Not Have Banned A Donald Sterling For Life (May 7, 2014)

Truth , People

“I think even if they were paid an hourly wage, it’d be quite an improvement from what they get. And you know, I understand the arguments about they’re getting their education paid for, they’re this that and the other, but there are people on academic scholarships that don’t have to deal with any extra rigors. They get their education paid for. And they don’t have to deal with eight hours a day of football, and you know, if you mess up your knee you’ve got to deal with two hours of rehab everyday. So that’s 10 hours of your day gone, and there’s only 24 in a day. So, if they just gave him an hourly wage, even if they gave him 10 bucks, 12 bucks an hour, that’d be a vast improvement over what they got now.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

About college players' wages.
The NFL Would Not Have Banned A Donald Sterling For Life (May 7, 2014)

People , Thinking , Education , Football

“If integration is to be a reality, the Negro must struggle for it. And so the Negro must continue to work through legislation; he must continue to work to double the number of registered voters, so that he political climate can be changed; he must continue to work through the courts, and get the law clarified and the Constitution clear on this issue. Then even after working in these areas, he must understand that a court order can only declare rights; it can never thoroughly deliver them. And only when people themselves begin to act, are rights which are on thin paper given life blood. And so the Negro must supplement all that is done through legislation, through voting, and through the courts with non-violent direct action.”

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

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

Law , People , Reality , Life

“I realized it had everything to do with how I grew up and the interaction I had with my father, that he was somewhat abusive…That made me understand that your body retains not just physical damage, but emotional perforations.”

Lucy Liu (1968) American actress and model

On her “41 Series” in “Lucy Liu on making art to find a sense of belonging” https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lucy-liu-artsy/index.html in CNN (2019 Nov 28)

“It is a question of relativity. In order to understand it more clearly we must cleanse our minds of old ideas instilled into us by false education, both religious and scientific, and philosophic too”

Gottfried de Purucker (1874–1942) Author, Theosophist

Ch 2
Man in Evolution (1941)

Question , Falseness , Education , Idea