“People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding — a thing which is rather surmised and never spoken than known and clothed in words.”

— Wilhelm Stekel

Marriage at the Crossroads (1931), p. 144

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Wilhelm Stekel 17

Austrian physician and psychologist 1868–1940

Ralph Smart

“The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Fragment 5, as translated by G. W. T. Patrick
Numbered fragments
Source: Clement, Stromates, II, 8, 1

“My top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves.”

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

“Wisdom is the fruit of communion; ignorance the inevitable portion of those who "keep themselves to themselves," and stand apart, judging, analysing the things which they have truly never known.”

Evelyn Underhill book Practical Mysticism

Source: Practical Mysticism (1914), Chapter I, What Is Mysticism?, p. 24

“Those who break the rules ethically are those who have mastered them first and disciplined themselves to understand the necessity of those rules, and break them in keeping with the spirit rather than the letter of the law.”

Jordan Peterson book Beyond Order

Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 85

“I don't understand it any more than you do, but one thing I've learned is that you don't have to understand things for them to be.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

“There was a world of mutants, men and women who were more than normal men and women, persons who had certain human talents and certain human understandings which the normal men and women of the world had never known, or having known, could not utilize in their entirety, unable to use intelligently all the mighty powers which lay dormant in their brains.”

Clifford D. Simak book Ring Around the Sun

Ring Around the Sun (1954)

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

Kim Stanley Robinson book Galileo's Dream

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.

“Things we never said come together,
The hidden truth no longer haunting me.
Tonight we touched on the things that were never spoken,
That kind of understanding sets me free.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

The Last Song
Song lyrics, The One (1992)

“There is no "state" on the one hand, and people who live in it on the other. The "state" much rather belongs to what people do and understand. People do not live in the state. The state lives in the people.”

Gustav Landauer (1870–1919) German anarchist

"Tucker's Revelation," in Revolution and Other Writings: A Political Reader, p. 249

“People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding — a thing which is rather surmised and never spoken than known and clothed in words.”

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Wilhelm Stekel 17

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