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

Source: Foreword to The Secret Parts of Fortune http://www.errolmorris.com/content/belief/rosenbaum.html

Source: 1990s, Fighting for the Future: Will America Triumph? (1999), p. 51

The Plague (1947)
Context: The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

Source: Nobel Address (1991)
Context: Preparing for my address I found in an old Russian encyclopedia a definition of "peace" as a "commune" — the traditional cell of Russian peasant life. I saw in that definition the people's profound understanding of peace as harmony, concord, mutual help, and cooperation.
This understanding is embodied in the canons of world religions and in the works of philosophers from antiquity to our time.

Parkyn's Case (1696), 13 How. St. Tr. 134.

Original: Il tempo è sempre stato un buon alleato per capire chi avevamo al nostro fianco: perfetti sconosciuti.
Source: prevale.net

2013, Cape Town University Address (June 2013)
Context: We always have the opportunity to choose our better history. We can always understand that most important decision -- the decision we make when we find our common humanity in one another. That’s always available to us, that choice. [... ] it can be heard in the confident voices of young people like you. It is that spirit, that innate longing for justice and equality, for freedom and solidarity -- that’s the spirit that can light the way forward. It's in you.

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

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