Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation
“Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.”
“If children fail to understand one another, it is because they think they understand one another.”
The Language and Thought of the Child (1923) Tr. Marjorie and Ruth Gabain (1926)
Context: If children fail to understand one another, it is because they think they understand one another. The explainer believes from the start that the reproducer will grasp everything, will almost know beforehand all that should be known, and will interpret every subtlety. Children are perpetually surrounded by adults who not only know much more than they do, but who also do everything in their power to understand them, who even anticipate their thoughts and desires. Children, therefore... are perpetually under the impression that people can read their thoughts, and in extreme cases, can steal their thoughts away. It is obviously owing to this mentality that children do not take the trouble to express themselves clearly... This mentality does not contradict ego-centric mentality. Both arise from the belief of the child, the belief that he is the centre of the universe. These habits of thought account... for the remarkable lack of precision in the childish style.
Meaning and Purpose of History in Volume I
Historical essays (2001)
Source: It Came from Within!: The Shocking Truth of What Lurks in the Heart
The Sixties, 1963 entry.
The Journals of John Cheever (1991)
Albergo Empedocle
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)
“My guess is that we’ll one day understand consciousness as yet another phase of matter.”
Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality (2014)
Context: My guess is that we’ll one day understand consciousness as yet another phase of matter. I’d expect there to be many types of consciousness just as there are many types of liquids, but in both cases, they share certain characteristic traits that we can aim to understand.
