“You say it as you understand it.”
Act II, sc. vi
Wallenstein (1798), Part I - Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini)
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Friedrich Schiller 111
German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright 1759–1805Related quotes
“When you say your prayers try to understand”
Music, Cross Road (1994)
“In general, I feel if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.”
Criterion Collection essay on Rashamon, excerpted from Something Like an Autobiography as translated by Audie E. Bock (1982) http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/196-akira-kurosawa-on-rashomon
Context: Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings — the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave — even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and displayed by the ego. You say that you can’t understand this script at all, but that is because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it.
“Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.”
Source: The Hotel New Hampshire
“When you say "I" and "my" too much, you lose the capacity to understand the "we" and "our."”
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 97
