“Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
“If the politics of disease are to be understood, particularly in the dreadful countries where this understanding is most needed, then the politics of total collapse have to be understood first.”
All the Trouble in the World (1994)
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P. J. O'Rourke 185
American journalist 1947Related quotes
Source: The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception
“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
“Every discord is a harmony not understood. Happiness is a disease, and pain, a medicine.”
The Way to Peace, Power and Long Life (1945), p. 121 (2001 edition)
Quote from an interview on the Belgian radio, 1982; As cited in: Andersson, Patrik Lars. Euro-pop: the mechanical bride stripped bare in Stockholm, even. (2001). p. 50.
Quotes, 1980's
Context: With Dada I.... have in common a certain mistrust toward power. We don't like authority, we don't like power, To me art is a form of manifest revolt, total and complete. It's a political attitude which doesn't need to found a political party. It's not a matter of taking power; when you are against it, you can't take it. We're against all forms of force which aggregate and crystallize an authority that oppresses people. Obviously this is not a characteristic of my art alone - it's much more general, a basic political attitude. It's a clear intention, more necessary today than ever, to oppose all forms of force emanating from a managing, centralizing political power.
interview with TF-1 Television Channel (France) http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/text/speeches/2006/07/12/1829_type82916_108548.shtml, taken on July 12, 2006
2006- 2010
Speaking in 1997 during an interview with The Independent about her South-Africa related political discussions with friend Mangosuthu Buthelezi http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19970406/ai_n14117510
Other
“I write to understand as much as to be understood.”