Quotes about comprehension (457 quotes, page 2)

“There are progressive degrees of synergy, called synergy-of-synergies, which are complexes of behavior aggregates holistically unpredicted by the separate behaviors of any of their subcomplex components. Any subcomplex aggregate is only a component aggregation of an even greater event aggregation whose comprehensive behaviors are never predicted by the component aggregates alone. There is a synergetic progression in Universe—a hierarchy of total complex behaviors entirely unpredicted by their successive subcomplexes' behaviors. It is manifest that Universe is the maximum synergy-of-synergies, being utterly unpredicted by any of its parts.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

150.01 http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/s01/p5000.html
1970s, Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975), "Synergy" onwards

Behavior , Universe , Success , Parting

“Man is going to be displaced altogether as a specialist by the computer. Man himself is being forced to reestablish, employ, and enjoy his innate "comprehensivity." Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Universe

“The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928).
Judicial opinions

Life , Men , Pain , Pleasure

“There is much that is lacking in the political education of American troops, for which army policy cannot be criticized in view of the similar apathy on the home front. Late in the struggle the army became aware of this weakness among our soldiers. The Information and Education Division was then organized to repair this gap in the psychological preparation for combat. Some progress in the face of considerable resistance has been made by this service, but at the time of writing the men still have only a dim comprehension of the meaning of the fascist political state and its menace to our liberal democratic government. The war is generally regarded as a struggle between national states for economic empires. The men are not fully convinced that our country was actually threatened, or, if so, only remotely, or because of the machinations of large financial interests. In such passive attitudes lie the seeds of disillusion, which could prove very dangerous in the postwar period. Certainly they stand in startling contrast with the strong political and national convictions of our Axis enemies, which can inspire their troops, when the occasion demands, with a fanatical and religious fervor. Fortunately, strong intellectual motivation has not proved to be of the first importance to good morale in combat. The danger of this lack seems to be less to the prospect of military success than to success in the peace and to stability in the postwar period.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 38-39 cited in: The Clare Spark Blog (2009) Strategic Regression in “the greatest generation” http://clarespark.com/2009/12/09/strategic-regression-in-the-greatest-generation/ December 9, 2009

Men , War , Lie , Education

“Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

From Dada Manifesto 1918 (23 March 1918) by Tristan Tzara
Misattributed

Art , Understanding , Strong

“I try to condense the meaning of this body [of a woman] by drawing its essential lines. The charm will then become less apparent at first glance, but in the long run it will begin emanate from the new image. This image at the same time will be enriched by a wider meaning, a more comprehensively human one, while the charm, being less apparent, will not be its only characteristic. It will be merely one element in the general conception of the figure.”

Henri Matisse (1869–1954) French artist

Source: 1900s, Notes d'un Peintre (Notes of a Painter) (1908), p. 411

Time , Drawing

“I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

In discussion with an opera audience, January 14, 1930; cited from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 55.

Nature

“We cannot turn back. We cannot choose the dreams of unknowing. We shall, I expect, open the last door in the castle, even if it leads, perhaps because it leads, on to realities which are beyond the reach of human comprehension and control. And we shall do so with that desolate clairvoyance, so marvellously rendered in Bartok's music, because opening doors is the tragic merit of our identity.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Tomorrow"
In Bluebeard's Castle (1971)

Dreams , Music , Reality

“Yesterday a shaft of light cut into the darkness. Negotiations were concluded in Moscow on a treaty to ban all nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under international control-a goal first sought in 1946 when Bernard Baruch presented a comprehensive control plan to the United Nations.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty speech

Light , Water , Time

“Must God be defined in a way that places him or her beyond the scope of science?
I’d always believed that there was nothing beyond the scope of science.
And I still believe that.
Where do you draw the line?
Right here. For me, the answer was right here.
How do you define God?
Like this. A God I could understand, at least potentially, was infinitely more interesting and relevant than one that defied comprehension.”

Robert J. Sawyer book Calculating God

Source: Calculating God (2000), Chapter 34 (p. 326)

God , Way , Understanding , Science

“There was a time when philosophy might have been defined as the science of human activity, so all-comprehensive was it. The ambitious Greek who would attach his name to a philosophical system must include in his scheme all that could be known, done, and speculated about God, the world, and man. In the course of time and the specialization of the sciences this view of philosophy fell away, and was replaced by the more exact and narrower conception of modern times.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

" The Progress of Psychical Research http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_29/August_1886/The_Progress_of_Psychical_Research", in Popular Science Monthly (August, 1886) Vol. 29.

God , World , Science , Time

“Tsenov is famous in Italy for his logical Bulgarian erudition and in Germany, with his previous work, he has revolutionized the origin of the Bulgarians and the other Slavs in the Balkans … The thesis on the Thracian-Bulgarian origin of the Bulgarians was supported by Tsenov with a great controversial liveliness, sometimes quite brave, always resting on arguments that can not be denied without an absolute competence, because the author who has devoted his entire life to this study does not allow concessions … He establishes in a complete picture Irvine inhabit life, the language of the Thracians and Illyrians, ethnic influence they exercised on the development of peoples-conquerors in the Balkans, to reach aboriginal character of the Bulgarians, which is comprehensively addressed and clearly and accurately exposed. All this work has been examined with a critical chronological and convincing method. He deserves praise. Mr. Tsenov shows that he is a man who has a deep knowledge and a great skill, a man who has put all his love and his whole excitement, always inspired by a belief that undoubtedly gives him the right to delight.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

quotations for him
Source: prof. dr. Antonio Baldaci, член на Италианската АН, сп. „Светоглас”, юни (June), 1937 г., стр. 6

Love , Life , People , Exercises

“The truly awesome intellectuals in our history have not merely made discoveries; they have woven variegated, but firm, tapestries of comprehensive coverage. The tapestries have various fates: Most burn or unravel in the footsteps of time and the fires of later discovery. But their glory lies in their integrity as unified structures of great complexity and broad implication.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Men of the Thirty-Third Division: An Essay on Integrity", p. 125
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Fate , History , Time

“One may say "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

From the article "Physics and Reality" (March 1936), reprinted in Out of My Later Years (1956). The quotation marks may just indicate that he wants to present this as a new aphorism, but it could possibly indicate that he is paraphrasing or quoting someone else — perhaps Immanuel Kant, since in the next sentence he says "It is one of the great realizations of Immanuel Kant that the setting up of a real external world would be senseless without this comprehensibility."
Other variants:
The eternally incomprehensible thing about the world is its comprehensibility.
In the endnotes to Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson, note 46 on p. 628 http://books.google.com/books?id=cdxWNE7NY6QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA628#v=onepage&q&f=false says that "Gerald Holton says that this is more properly translated" as the variant above, citing Holton's essay "What Precisely is Thinking?" on p. 161 of Einstein: A Centenary Volume edited by Anthony Philip French.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
This version was given in Einstein: A Biography (1954) by Antonina Vallentin, p. 24, and widely quoted afterwards. Vallentin cites "Physics and Reality" in Journal of the Franklin Institute (March 1936), and is possibly giving a variant translation as with Holton.
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
As quoted in Speaking of Science (2000) by Michael Fripp
The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility … The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.
As quoted in Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson, p. 462 http://books.google.com/books?id=cdxWNE7NY6QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA462#v=onepage&q&f=false. In the original essay "The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle" appears at the end of the paragraph that follows the paragraph in which "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility" appears.
1930s

World

“More positively, taking pleasure in music is the most obvious sign of comprehension, the proof that we understand it, and we may extend that to sympathy with other listeners' enjoyment …”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

Pleasure , Music , Understanding

“The enormity of the universe revealed by science cannot readily be grasped by the human brain, but the music of The Planets enables the mind to acquire some comprehension of the vastness of space where rational understanding fails.”

Gustav Holst (1874–1934) English composer

Quoted in Michael Short, Gustav Holst 1874-1934: A Centenary Documentation

Music , Understanding , Universe , Science

“We should take comfort in two conjoined features of nature: first, that our world is incredibly strange and therefore supremely fascinating … second, that however bizarre and arcane our world might be, nature remains potentially comprehensible to the human mind.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"A Special Fondness for Beetles", pp. 386-387
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

World , Nature

“I was surprised, while preparing this lecture, to notice how, among my friends who had read the book, a division into two groups appeared. Both groups are equally discerning and educated, and as far as I can tell, equal in numbers. One group is eager to say that they don't understand a word of it, and there are artists and historians among them. Those of the other group claim that they understood it all on first reading, without difficulty. Of course I believe them both, without understanding the combination that separates them so sharply. Perhaps distinctive and contrasting features in the comprehension of works of art are responsible. What I say speaks to some, but not to others. Some are ready, and others are not. But when both someday find that they agree in understanding it, that day may be its last as a book alive in the dissension over its intelligibility.”

George Kubler (1912–1996) American art historian

George Kubler (1982)"The Shape of Time, Reconsidered," in: Perspecta (Volume 19, MIT Press)

Books , Education , Art , Intelligence

“I must avert here once again to my view of the opposition that exists between individuality and personality, notwithstanding the fact that the one demands the other. Individuality is, if I may so express it, the container or thing which contains, personality the content or thing contained, or I might say that my personality is in a certain sense my comprehension, that which I comprehend or embrace within myself — which is in a certain way the whole Universe — and that my individuality is my extension; the one my infinite, the other my finite.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VIII : From God to God

Way , Sense , Universe , Personality

“I think often, and never without a certain fear of Nessim's love for Justine. [-] It coloured his unhappiness with a kind of ecstasy [-] Yet one touch of humour would have saved him from such dreadful comprehensive suffering.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Justine (1957)

Love , Fear , Thinking , Suffering

“American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically "larger" public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 1, Equality and Efficiency, p. 23

Learning , Country

“An intellectual … lives for ideas—which means that he has a sense of dedication to the life of the mind which is very much like a religious commitment. This is not surprising, for in a very important way the role of the intellectual is inherited from the office of the cleric: it implies a special sense of the ultimate value in existence of the act of comprehension. Socrates, when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living, struck the essence of it. We can hear the voices of various intellectuals in history repeating their awareness of this feeling, in accents suitable to time, place and culture. “The proper function of the human race, taken in the aggregate,” wrote Dante in De Monarchia, “is to actualize continually the entire capacity possible to the intellect, primarily in speculation, then through its extension and for its sake, secondarily in action.””

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

The noblest thing, and the closest possible to divinity, is thus the act of knowing.
Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), pp. 27-28

Life , Way , Feeling , History

“In the knowledge of nature," Aristotle writes, the test of principles "is the unimpeachable evidence of the senses as to the fact." He holds that "lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in the intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundation of their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development; while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Theories should be accredited, Aristotle insists, "only if what they affirm agrees with the facts."
Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Nature , Knowledge , Sense

“A happy childhood means - or ought to mean - that one's first experience of the world is a true experience - not yet comprehensive, of course, yet comprehending the prime reality, so that it becomes an experience of an essential order which thenceforward will serve as a basis of comparison, in whose light all future falsification, all disorder, will be recognised as wrong and invalid. A happy childhood means above all a loved child. Because Thérèse was a happy child, her beginnings could contain perfection. Because she was a loved child, she received from the beginning the knowledge that others must struggle towards so consciously, with such difficulty, by painfully strenuous detours: the simple truth that to so many of us seems the most incredible and amazing lesson of religion: that we can be loved without having deserved it: that grace comes first.. It is bliss simply to be someone's child, a child of a father, of a mother, living, moving and having its being in a love which is unmerited, unmeritable, anticipatory, unconditional and immutable. On this basic mystery and reality Thérèse's childhood was built. This was the source of her subsequent doctrine of the way of spiritual childhood.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

The Hidden Face p. 48-49.

Love , Truth , World , Religion

“I could have been a serious athlete, only to have my promise cut short when I discovered Woodbines and women. Thankfully I have long since given up the former, and the latter have long since given up on me—except, of course, for the lovely Lady Stratford, who for reasons beyond my comprehension still tolerates my presence.”

Tony Banks (1942–2006) British politician

maiden speech to the House of Lords http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldhansrd/vo050720/text/50720-23.htm, 20 July 2005; quoted by United Kingdom Parliament World Wide Web Service.

Love , Women

“Theology seeks to explain the meaning of Christian assertions in a language comprehensible to any given age.”

Roger Haight (1936) American theologian

Source: Dynamics Of Theology, Chapter Ten, Method in theology, p. 192

Age

“First and foremost, yoga made its contribution to my quest to understand consciously the mechanics of violin playing, a quest which by 1951 had long been one of the themes of my life. All influences pointed to less tension, more effective application of energy, the breaking down of resistance in every joint, the coordination of all motions into one motion; and illustrated the profound truth that strength comes not from strength but from the subtle comprehension of process, proportion and balance.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: The Dawn of Indian Music in the West http://books.google.co.in/books?id=OSZKCXtx-wEC&pg=PA46, A&C Black, 24 April 2006, p. 46

Life , Truth , Understanding

“The BBC is almost certainly the best news organisation in the world – the most serious, comprehensive, ethical, accurate, international, wide-ranging, fair and impartial.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Source: 2010s, Does journalism exist? (2010), p. 5. Partly cited in: Bob Franklin (2013) The future of journalism. p. 1968.

World

“Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon foi, believes itself right. Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (2 February 1816)
1810s

Soul , Thinking , Sincerity

“I refer to the misunderstanding of Soviet Russia as an aggressive power, militaristically and ideologically bent upon world domination—'seeing', to quote a recent speech of the British Prime Minister, 'the rest of the world as its rightful fiefdom.' How any rational person, viewing objectively the history of the last thirty-five years, could entertain this 'international misunderstanding' challenges, if it does not defeat, comprehension. The notion has no basis in fact… If Russia is bent on world conquest, she has been remarkably slothful and remarkably unsuccessful.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech at Torquay (7 October 1983), from George R. Urban, Diplomacy and Disillusion at the Court of Margaret Thatcher. An Insider's View (I.B. Tauris, 1996), p. 60.
1980s

World , Quotes , History , Personality

“I have been consistent and committed to comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. I think our best chance was in 2007, when Ted Kennedy led the charge on comprehensive immigration reform. We have Republican support. We had a president willing to sign it. I voted for that bill. Senator Sanders voted against it. Just think, imagine where we would be today is we had achieved comprehensive immigration reform nine years ago. Imagine how much more secure families would be in our country, no longer fearing the deportation of a loved one; no longer fearing that they would be found out. … In 2006, when Senator Sanders was running for the Senate from Vermont, he voted in the House with hard-line Republicans for indefinite detention for undocumented immigrants, and then he sided with those Republicans to stand with vigilantes known as Minute Men who were taking up outposts along the border to hunt down immigrants. So I think when you were running for the Senate, you made it clear by your vote, Senator, that you were going to stand with the Republicans. When you got to the Senate in 2007, one of the first things you did was vote against Ted Kennedy’s immigration reform which he’d been working on for years before you ever arrived.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Love , Men , Fear , Family

“At any one time there is a natural tendency among physicists to believe that we already know the essential ingredients of a comprehensive theory. But each time a new frontier of observation is broached we inevitably discover new phenomena which force us to modify substantially our previous conceptions. I believe this process to be unending, that the delights and challenges of unexpected discovery will continue always.”

Val Logsdon Fitch (1923–2015) American physicist

Nobel Prize Autobiography (1981).

Nature , Time

“[The Conservatives' Industry Act contains] the most comprehensive armoury of government control that has ever been assembled for use over private industry, far exceeding all the powers thought necessary by the last Labour government…Heath has performed a very important historical role in preparing for the fundamental and irreversible transfer in the balance of power and wealth which has to take place…The whole nature of the mixed economy operating on market forces has been transformed by this quiet revolution in a way that is not yet fully appreciated.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

'Heath's spadework for socialism', The Sunday Times (25 March 1973), p. 61
1970s

Way , Nature , Wealth

“More comprehensive process than those of the conscious mind control human destiny.”

Lancelot Law Whyte (1896–1972) Scottish industrial engineer

Source: The Next Development in Man (1948), p. 151

“Intellectual honesty requires that one reflect on the contribution one’s theory makes to the class struggle, and acknowledge it openly. One does not have to accept the specific claim that there are two, and only two, mutually exclusive worldviews, to one of which any theory must commit itself, to accept the general claim that entertaining, developing and propounding a theory are actions, and as such they represent ways of taking a position in the world. This means that any kind of comprehensive understanding of politics will also have to treat the politics of theorization, including the politics of whatever theory is itself at the given time being presented for scrutiny, as a candidate for acceptance.”

Raymond Geuss book Philosophy and Real Politics

Philosophy and Real Politics (2008).
Philosophy and Real Politics (2008)

World , Way , Understanding , Time

“We are honored for research which is today referred to as the "Two Neutrino Experiment". How does one make this research comprehensible to ordinary people? In fact "The Two Neutrinos" sounds like an Italian dance team. How can we have our colleagues in chemistry, medicine, and especially in literature share with us, not the cleverness of our research, but the beauty of the intellectual edifice, of which our experiment is but one brick? This is a dilemma and an anguish for all scientists because the public understanding of science is no longer a luxury of cultural engagement, but it is an essential requirement for survival in our increasingly technological age: In this context, I believe this Nobel Ceremony with its awesome tradition and pomp has as one of its most important benefits; the public attention it draws to science and its practitioners.”

Leon M. Lederman (1922–2018) American mathematician and physicist

Lederman's speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1988 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1988/lederman-speech.html (URL accessed on October 20, 2008)

People , Age , Beauty , Literature

“The Congress for some time remained as a respectable residue. But a comprehensive party cannot survive too long as a residue. It may be small in size at a given time, but its composition should still remain comprehensive. This could be termed as the widest connotation of secularism. The Congress, therefore, is the most secular party in the real sense.”

P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004) Indian politician

While nobody was opening their mouths in other parties, mouths were wide open in the Congress

Sense , Time

“There is no. man, there is no people, without a God. That God may be a visible idol, carved of wood or stone, to which sacrifice is offered in the forest, in the temple, or in the market-place; or it may be an invisible idol, fashioned in a man's own image and worshipped ardently at his own personal shrine. Somewhere in the universe there is that in which each individual has firm faith, and on which he places steady reliance. The fool who says in his heart "There is no God" really means there is no God but himself. His supreme egotism, his colossal vanity, have placed him at the center of the universe which is thereafter to be measured and dealt with in terms of his personal satisfactions. So it has come to pass that after nearly two thousand years much of the world resembles the Athens of St. Paul's time, in that it is wholly given to idolatry; but in the modern case there are as many idols as idol worshippers, and every such idol worshipper finds his idol in the looking-glass. The time has come once again to repeat and to expound in thunderous tones the noble sermon of St. Paul on Mars Hill, and to declare to these modern idolaters "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
There can be no cure for the world's ills and no abatement of the world's discontents until faith and the rule of everlasting principle are again restored and made supreme in the life of men and of nations. These millions of man-made gods, these myriads of personal idols, must be broken up and destroyed, and the heart and mind of man brought back to a comprehension of the real meaning of faith and its place in life. This cannot be done by exhortation or by preaching alone. It must be done also by teaching; careful, systematic, rational teaching, that will show in a simple language which the uninstructed can understand what are the essentials of a permanent and lofty morality, of a stable and just social order, and of a secure and sublime religious faith.
Here we come upon the whole great problem of national education, its successes and its disappointments, its achievements and its problems yet unsolved. Education is not merely instruction far from it. It is the leading of the youth out into a comprehension of his environment, that, comprehending, he may so act and so conduct himself as to leave the world better and happier for his having lived in it. This environment is not by any means a material thing alone. It is material of course, but, in addition, it is intellectual, it is spiritual. The youth who is led to an understanding of nature and of economics and left blind and deaf to the appeals of literature, of art, of morals and of religion, has been shown but a part of that great environment which is his inheritance as a human being. The school and the college do much, but the school and the college cannot do all. Since Protestantism broke up the solidarity of the ecclesiastical organization in the western world, and since democracy made intermingling of state and church impossible, it has been necessary, if religion is to be saved for men, that the family and the church do their vital cooperative part in a national organization of educational effort. The school, the family and the church are three cooperating educational agencies, each of which has its weight of responsibility to bear. If the family be weakened in respect of its moral and spiritual basis, or if the church be neglectful of its obligation to offer systematic, continuous and convincing religious instruction to the young who are within its sphere of influence, there can be no hope for a Christian education or for the powerful perpetuation of the Christian faith in the minds and lives of the next generation and those immediately to follow. We are trustees of a great inheritance. If we abuse or neglect that trust we are responsible before Almighty God for the infinite damage that will be done in the life of individuals and of nations…. Clear thinking will distinguish between men's different associations, and it will be able to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to render unto God the things which are God's.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Making liberal men and women : public criticism of present-day education, the new paganism, the university, politics and religion https://archive.org/stream/makingliberalmen00butluoft/makingliberalmen00butluoft_djvu.txt (1921)

Life , Men , God , People

“Compulsion means force; there must be a policeman to see that the individual does not follow his own inclinations. But policemen must live. Since they do not produce a thing by which they can live, others must support them. Hence, the planners must have the means of getting at the production of the very people who are to be improved by the policeman. That means taxes, and the more taxes the greater the number of enforcement agents, and therefore the more comprehensive the plan. No plan can be bigger than its bureaucracy. The income tax is the ideal instrument for the planner.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 54

People , Support

“There is no coherent knowledge, i. e. no uniform comprehensive account of the world and the events in it. There is no comprehensive truth that goes beyond an enumeration of details, but there are many pieces of information, obtained in different ways from different sources and collected for the benefit of the curious. The best way of presenting such knowledge is the list - and the oldest scientific works were indeed lists of facts, parts, coincidences, problems in several specialized domains.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 98, italics are feyerabends.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

Truth , World , Way , Knowledge

“The story begins with a somewhat disgruntled hero, who perceived of the world as populated with stupid people, everywhere committing the environmental fallacy. The fallacy was a case not merely of the “mind’s falling into error,” but rather of the mind leading all of us into incredible dangers as it first builds crisis and then attacks crisis.
Like all heroes, this one looked about for resources, for aids that would help in a dangerous battle, and he found plenty of support – in both the past and the present. It won’t hurt to summarize the story thus far. If the intellect is to engage in the heroic adventure of securing improvement in the human condition, it cannot rely on “approaches,” like politics and morality, which attempt to tackle problems head-on, within the narrow scope. Attempts to address problems in such a manner simply lead to other problems, to an amplification of difficulty away from real improvement. Thus the key to success in the hero’s attempt seems to be comprehensiveness. Never allow the temptation to be clear, or to use reliable data, or to “come up to the standards of excellence,” divert you from the relevant, even though the relevant may be elusive, weakly supported by data, and requiring loose methods.
Thus the academic world of Western twentieth century society is a fearsome enemy of the systems approach, using as it does a politics to concentrate the scholars’ attention on matters that are scholastically respectable but disreputable from a systems-planning point of view.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (1979), p. 145; cited in C. WEST CHURCHMAN: CHAMPION OF THE SYSTEMS APPROACH http://filer.case.edu/nxb41/churchman.html, 2004-2007 Case Western Reserve University

People , Stupidity , World , Error

“Immigration is not a simple issue. There are at least three major parts of it: there’s border security, legal immigration, and the status of the 11 million, 15 million, 30 million … pick a number – it’s the status of the folks who are here illegally. People say, ‘oh, comprehensive reform is a bad idea.’ Ok? But, unless you deal with all three of those you haven’t dealt with immigration. There are jobs that American citizens will not do. There are jobs that American citizens will not do. We can talk about why that is. We can talk about how our welfare state is broken, how we encourage people not to work, but that doesn’t help the farmer pick his peaches this summer. We have businesses that rely on migrant – legal – migrant workers, and a lot of them are in this state”

Mick Mulvaney (1967) Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Mick Mulvaney's Summer Of Apostasy http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2014/06/08/mick-mulvaneys-summer-of-apostasy/ (June 2014)

People , Idea , Business , Help

“For all the classic social theorists, the effort to state a comprehensive view of men and society was inseparable from an interest in understanding the condition and prospects of their age. In this they simply repeated the eternal lesson that all deep thought begins and ends in the attempt to grasp whatever touches one most immediately.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Law in Modern Societyː Toward a Criticism of Social Theory (1976), p. 38

Men , Age , Understanding , Effort

“Truth be told, within the chapters that make up this dreadful story, the children will face snapping crabs, strict punishments, dripping fungus, comprehensive exams, violin recitals, S. O. R. E., and the metric system.”

Daniel Handler book The Austere Academy

The Austere Academy (2000)

Children , Truth

“And now, Mr. President, instead of speaking of the possibility or utility of secession, instead of dwelling in these caverns of darkness, instead of groping with those ideas so full of all that is horrid and horrible, let us come out into the light of day; let us enjoy the fresh airs of Liberty and Union; let us cherish those hopes which belong to us; let us devote ourselves to those great objects that are fit for our consideration and our action; let us raise our conceptions to the magnitude and the importance of the duties that devolve upon us; let our comprehension be as broad as the country for which we act, our aspirations as high as its certain destiny; let us not be pygmies in a case that calls for men. Never did there devolve on any generation of men higher trusts than now devolve upon us for the preservation of this constitution, and the harmony and peace of all who are destined to live under it. Let us make our generation one of the strongest and the brightest links in that golden chain which is destined, I fondly believe, to grapple the people of all the states to this constitution, for ages to come.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

Speech to the Senate In reference to the Slavery Compromise (7 March 1850)

Men , People , Age , Peace

“See, the bliss and the joy which this Bridegroom brings in His coming are fathomless and incommensurable, for He Himself is that bliss and joy. And therefore, the eyes with which the spirit contemplates and gazes upon its Bridegroom are so widely dilated that they will never again be closed. For the gazing and contemplation of the spirit remain eternally fixed on the hidden revelation of God, and the comprehension of the spirit is so widely dilated for the coming of the Bridegroom that the spirit itself has become the wideness which it apprehends. And so God is apprehended and seen with God; in this all our blessedness resides.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

Wim van den Dungen, The Spiritual Espousals, Book 3, The Third Life: the contemplative life (2013)
The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)

God , Joy

“It seems to me that the comprehension and enjoyment of the reader, as opposed to the viewer, is best served in printing this version rather than a slavish definitive transcription. Besides, what film is truly definitive? By the time you see the film it may very well be sub-titled, re-edited, shortened, even censored, and every film is viewed at the discretion of the projectionist, the cinema manager, the architect of the cinema, the comfort of your seat and the attention of your neighbour.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the Author's Note to the published script.
A Zed and Two Noughts

Time

“Alexander Bain was probably the first modern thinker whose primary concern was with psychology itself He has been credited with writing the first 'comprehensive treatise having psychology as its sole purpose'. His two-volume systematic work, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859), was the standard British text for almost half a century, until Stout's replaced it. He also founded Mind (1876-), the first psychological journal in any country. His work requires close attention, because it is the meeting-point of experimental sensory-motor physiology and the association psychology. His influence on the conceptions of later workers was direct and extremely important. Ferrier studied classics and philosophy under Bain at Aberdeen (first class honours, 1863). When he and Jackson acknowledge their intellectual debts or make references to psychology, the names most often mentioned are Bain and Spencer-the figures whose work was the culmination of the association psychology in its traditional form.”

Robert Maxwell Young (1935–2019) American medical historian

Mind, Brain, and Adaptation in the Nineteenth Century, 1970. p. 101

Sense , Study , Country

“The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Adams (5 July 1814). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 397–398
1810s

Understanding , Christ

“The validity of g is most conspicuous in scholastic performance, not because g-loaded tests measure specifically what is taught in school, but because g is intrinsic to learning novel material, grasping concepts, distinctions, and meanings… The most critical tool for scholastic learning beyond the primary grades— reading comprehension—is probably the most highly g-loaded attainment in the course of elementary education.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

Source: The g factor: The science of mental ability (1998), p. 270; As cited in: Melissa A. Bray, Thomas J. Kehle (2011) The Oxford Handbook of School Psychology. p. 65

Education , School , Learning , Reading

“There is no study more difficult than that of physic: it exceeds, as a science, the comprehension of the human mind: and those who blunder onwards, without attempting to understand what they see, are often very nearly on a level with those, who depend too much on imperfect generalisations, applied to facts, which can scarcely be subjected to any well marked analogy. Hence it may happen, that talents and labour may become useless for want of a proper direction… To assist in furnishing the student with a sufficient direction… is the principal object of this work.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Source: An Introduction to Medical Literature, Including a System of Practical Nosology (1823), p. 2

Understanding , Study , Science , Dependency

“We must confine ourselves to what we may term the great highways of the science; and… we must wholly pass by many outlying researches of great interest and importance, as we propose rather to exhibit in a clear light the most fundamental and indispensable theories, than to embarrass the treatment of a subject, already sufficiently complex, with a multitude of details, which, however important in themselves, are not essential to the comprehension of the whole.”

Henry John Stephen Smith (1826–1883) mathematician

Report on the Theory of Numbers (1859) Part I, p. 39.
The Collected Mathematical Papers of Henry John Stephen Smith (1894) Vol. 1

Light , Science

“Our program was a scientific one it must be constantly changed at minor points to meet the continuous advance of science. And I maintain that no man – Marx, in spite of his comprehensive and deep intellect, as little as any other – can bring science to final perfection; and this position is for everyone who understands the nature of science a foregone conclusion. No socialist, therefore, has the right to condemn attacks on the theoretical ideas of the Marxian teachings or to excommunicate any one from the party because of such attacks. But it is wholly different when such attacks imply a complete overturning of our whole conception of society, as, for example, is the case with Bernstein. Then vigorous defense is in order. Far more dangerous than theoretical assaults are practical disavowals of our principles. Theoretical discussions interest only a comparatively small portion of our membership; whereas practical disavowal of principles and tactical offenses against the party program touch every party comrade and arouse the attention of every party comrade; and when they are not quickly checked and corrected they bring confusion into the whole party.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Idea , Understanding , Nature , Science

“Other sages have spoken to me of God. But from whom could I have learned the essence of Divine perfection, as from Him, who was in a peculiar sense the Son, representative, and image of God — who was especially an incarnation of the unbounded love of the Father? And from what other teacher could I have learned to approach the Supreme Being with that filial spirit, which forms the happiness of my fellowship with Him? From other seers I might have heard of heaven; but when I behold in Jesus the spirit of heaven, dwelling actually on earth, what a new comprehension have I of that better world!”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 62

Love , God , World , Sense

“The breakup of the former Yugoslavia--like the breakup of the former Soviet Union--presents challenges, some of which (such as developing tranquil relations among peoples of varying and often hostile ethnic and religious orientations) may, indeed, earn the label 'complicated.' But with the Bosnian war now in its third year, it is worth asking whether Washington has for too long outthought itself on this issue. Does the Bosnian crisis not hold some fundamental truths? Most certainly, it does. And if these truths could be agreed upon in a bipartisan fashion, might they not lay the foundation for the development of a comprehensive American policy that could assist in the deterrence of aggression and ultimately an assurance of peace in the region? The answer again is yes.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"How to Save Bosnia," The World and I, July 1994, by Michael Johns: Seeking Bipartisan Consensus to 'Save Bosnia'

Hostility , War , People , Truth

“The Greek world cherished no such national religious hope as the prophets had ingrained in Jewish thought; on the other hand it was intensely interested in the future life for the individual, and in the ascetic triumph over flesh and matter. Thus the idea which had been the centre of Christ's thought was not at all the centre of the Church's thought, and even the comprehension of his meaning was lost and overlaid.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 55

Life , World , Hope , Idea

“The story of a theory's failure often strikes readers as sad and unsatisfying. Since science thrives on self-correction, we who practice this most challenging of human arts do not share such a feeling. We may be unhappy if a favored hypothesis loses or chagrined if theories that we proposed prove inadequate. But refutation almost always contains positive lessons that overwhelm disappointment, even when […] no new and comprehensive theory has yet filled the void.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"The Face of Miranda", p. 496
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Sadness , Art , Disappointment , Feeling

“Half the time I read Hayek's The Sensory Order with amazement at the extent of his reading and comprehension … he is right … most of the time.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Edwin Boring, "Elementist Going Up", The Scientific Monthly (March 1953), p. 183

Time , Reading

“We will bring a comprehensive plan to the government to assist you in every way. There is no room for racism and discrimination in our society, none… We will turn racism into something contemptible and despicable.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

As quoted in "Israel failed Ethiopian community, president says at memorial" http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-failed-ethiopian-community-president-says-at-memorial (17 May 2015), by Judah Ari Gross, The Times of Israel.
2010s, 2015

Way

“I observe there is in Mr. Hooker no affected language; but a grave, comprehensive, clear manifestation of reason, and that backed with the authority of the Scriptures, the fathers and schoolmen, and with all law both sacred and civil.”

Richard Hooker (1554–1600) English bishop and Anglican Divine

Izaac Walton, The Life of Mr Rich. Hooker. In Walton's Lives, George Saintsbury, ed., reprinted in Oxford World's Classics (1927).
About

Law

“Life is immense, comprehensive and dynamic. It includes spirit and matter and idealism and pragmatism and rotates round the axis of the noble and the ignoble. Life strives for higher ends. It is a mission, a service, and finally worship.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

Source: Uniqueness of Zakir Husain and His Contributions (1997), p. 22.

Life

“'What's my philosophy? In a word, integral. And what on earth — or in heaven — do I mean by "integral"? The dictionary meaning is fairly simple: "comprehensive, balanced, inclusive, essential for completeness."”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

Short definition, tall order.
An Integral Spirituality

“Simply stated, this is one of the thumbnail passages that explain Seth's concept of God: "He is not human in your terms, though he passed through human stages; and here the Buddhist myth comes closest to approximating reality. He is not one individual, but an energy gestalt. If you remember what I said about the way in which the universe expands, that it has nothing to do with space, then you may perhaps dimly perceive the existence of a psychic pyramid of interrelated, ever-expanding consciousness that creates, simultaneously and instantaneously, universes and individuals that are given -- through the gifts of personal perspective -- duration, psychic comprehension, intelligence, and eternal validity.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The Seth Material (1970), p. 261

God , Way , Intelligence , Reality

“I may say Christianity itself divided into its thousands also, who are disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

.
Letter to George Logan (12 November 1816). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, pp. 43
1810s

Law , Understanding

““You ask a question that cannot be answered without knowing the nature of the primal chaos from which being arose. Is Spiral Castle like a crystal, once shattered, forever destroyed? That is what I prefer to believe. Or is it like a still pond, whose mirrored surface may be shattered and churned, but which will inevitably restore itself as the waves die down? You may believe this if you choose. You can even believe—why not?—that the restored universe will be an improvement on the old. For me, so long as I have my vengeance I care not what comes after.”
“And us?”
“We die.” An involuntary rise in the dragon’s voice, a slight quickening of cadence, told her that she had touched upon some unclean hunger akin to but less seemly than battle-lust. “We die beyond any chance of rebirth. You and I and all we have known will cease to be. The worlds that gave us birth, the creatures that shaped us—all will be unmade. So comprehensive will be their destruction that even their pasts will die with them. It is an extinction beyond death that we court. Though the ages stretch empty and desolate into infinity and beyond, there will be none to remember us, nor any to mourn. Our joys, sorrows, struggles, will never have been.
“And even if there is a universe to come, it will know naught of us.””

Michael Swanwick book The Iron Dragon's Daughter

Source: The Iron Dragon's Daughter (1993), Chapter 19 (pp. 340-341)

Death , Hunger , Age , World

“Removal of the housing shortage through comprehensive new housing buildings throughout the Reich by means of the new non-profit Construction and Economic Bank to be created according to Art. 21.”

Gottfried Feder (1883–1941) German economist and politician

Source: The German State on a National and Socialist Foundation (1923), p. 55

Art , Housing

“I don’t set out to speak a comprehensible language. But my language is authentic.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

“Let us suppose there was a teacher of whom an historical record (or, at least, a widespread belief which is not basically disputable) reports that he was the first to expound publicly a pure and searching religion, comprehensible to the whole world. … Suppose that all he did was done even in the face of a dominant ecclesiastical faith which was onerous and not conducive to moral ends (a faith whose perfunctory worship can serve as a type of all the other faiths, at bottom merely statutory, which were current in the world at the time). Suppose, further, we find that he had made this universal religion of reason the highest and indispensable condition of every religious faith whatsoever … and this without further adding to this faith burdensome new ordinances or wishing to transform acts which he had initiated into peculiar holy practices, required in themselves as being constituent elements of religion. After this description one will not fail to recognize the person who can be referenced, not indeed as the founder of the religion which, free from every dogma, is engraved in all men’s hearts (for it does not have its origin in an arbitrary will), but as the founder of the first true church.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, “The Christian religion as a natural religion”
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

Men , World , Faith , Religion

“There is a fraternity more comprehensive and more universal than the “brotherhood of man.” Let us think and speak of the “brotherhood of being.” Let us see in the ox a patient, industrious kinsman, worthy of respect. Let us see and recognize in the sheep a meek and docile fellow creature appealing to us for protection and admiration.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: The Living Temple, pp. 189-190

Thinking , Universe

“We had doubts about the Kyoto Protocol, we wanted reasoning from our partners in the European Union, in the IPCC. Formal requests had been sent to these organizations. But we have not received responses yet, which suggests that no coherent answers can be offered. What we hear is 'it is not comprehensive responses that matter, we will not give them anyway; what is important is whether you believe us or not”

Andrey Illarionov (1961) Russian politician

"Q&A: Putin's Critical Adviser," 2005

“Each word is pumped up with consonant cholesterol. It's full of fat words. The pages cream with subcutaneous fat. New letters are gilded like showy teeth, making comprehension constipated and exorbitantly metalled.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From the fifth book, "The Book of the Exhibitionist"
The Pillow Book

“Panini was a Sanskrit grammarian who gave a comprehensive and scientific theory of phonetics, phonology, and morphology. Sanskrit was the classical literary language of the Indian Hindus and Panini is considered the founder of the language and literature. It is interesting to note that the word "Sanskrit" means "complete" or "perfect" and it was thought of as the divine language, or language of the gods.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

An Analytical Study of 'Sanskrit' and 'Panini' as Foundation of Speech Communication in India and the World

God , Literature , Perfection

“That which enables man to have a real relation to truth and which removes his temptation to lie, must be something independent of all time, something absolutely unchangeable, which as faithfully reproduces the old as if it were new, because it is permanent itself; it can only be that source in which all discrete experiences unite and which creates from the first a continuous existence. It is what produces the feeling of responsibility which oppresses all men, young and old, as to their actions, which makes them know that they are responsible, which leads to the phenomena of repentance and consciousness of sin, which calls to account before an eternal and ever present self things that are long past, its judgment being subtler and more comprehensive than that of any court of law or of the laws of society, and which is exerted by the individual himself quite independently of all social codes”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

so condemning the moral psychology which would derive morality from the social life of man
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 151.

Life , Men , Truth , Lie

“What the probe had found was a star with reasonable possibilities for encouraging life; a belt of debris, including particles, planetoids, irregular chunks somewhat under planet size with interesting implications for systemic formation, and a planetary companion with its own system of debris and moons…A planet desolate, baked, forbidding. It was no Eden, no second Earth, no better than what existed in the sun’s own system, and it was a far journey to have gone to find that out. The press grappled with questions it could not easily grasp itself, sought after something to give the viewers, lost interest quickly. If anything, there were questions raised about cost, vague and desperate comparisons offered to Columbus, and the press hared off quickly onto a political crisis in the Mediterranean, much more comprehensible and far bloodier.”

C. J. Cherryh book Downbelow Station

Book 1, Chapter 1 (pp. 7-8)
Downbelow Station (1981)

Life , Star , Question , Sun

“What is a Poet?…He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Preface.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Life , Men , Soul , Nature

“We tried. It was not easy. At first, because of the language; language failed us. We would have to invent a new vocabulary, for our own words were inadequate, anemic. And then too, the people around us refused to listen; and even those who listened refused to believe; and even those who believed could not comprehend. Of course they could not. Nobody could. The experience of the camps defies comprehension.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)

People

“Our school systems are all nonsynergetic. We take the whole child and fractionate the scope of his or her comprehending coordination by putting the children in elementary schools—to become preoccupied with elements or isolated facts only. Thereafter we force them to choose some specialization, forcing them to forget the whole. … We may well ask how it happened that the entire scheme of advanced education is devoted exclusively to ever narrower specialization. We find that the historical beginnings of schools and tutoring were established, and economically supported by illiterate and vastly ambitious warlords who required a wide variety of brain slaves with which to logistically and ballistically overwhelm those who opposed their expansion of physical conquest. They also simultaneously DIVIDED and CONQUERED any and all "bright ones" who might otherwise rise within their realms to threaten their supremacy. The warlord vitiated their threat by making them all specialists and reserving to himself exclusively the right to think about and act comprehensively. The warlord made all those about him differentiators and reserved the function of integration to himself.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

Source: 1960s, Presentation to U.S. Congressional Sub-Committee on World Game (1969), p. 15

Children , Education , School , Support

“Guruji did not teach me more than four Ragas. He often drew an analogy between swaras and money and said that one must spend only as much as is required of both. My practice would follow this method. I was given a certain palta and would have to keep repeating it for days on end. It seemed boring and monotonous then, but later I thanked him for this rigorous training. The entire relationship with a guru was different in those days. Our respect for him was so great that there was no question of us asking him to teach us something particular, not because of our blind devotion, but because of our innate belief that he knew what was best for us. I remember getting caught by him invariably, whenever I tried something new. For instance, on radio, I sang Raga Bhinbhas, working it out on my own, quite confident that guruji would not hear me, as there was no electricity in Kundgol. But as luck would have it, he happened to be in Belgaum that evening. I was subsequently taken to task for using a komal dhaivat in Bibhas. This was followed by comprehensive training of the Raga. There are so many Ragas with which I associate a strange incident with guruji--Suha, Marwa … the list is endless.”

Gangubai Hangal (1913–2009) Indian singer

In "On Gangubai Hangal by Sabina Sehgal Computer Science & Engineering - University of Washington".

Money , Confidence , Question , Training

“Take the case of a famous problem which plays a great part in the history of Greek geometry, the doubling of the cube, or its equivalent, the finding of two mean proportionals in continued proportion between two given straight lines. …if all the recorded solutions are collected together, it is much easier to see the relations, amounting in some cases to substantial identity, between them, and to get a comprehensive view of the history of the problem. I have therefore dealt with this problem in a separate section of the chapter devoted to 'Special Problems,' and I have followed the same course with the other famous problems of squaring the circle and trisecting any angle.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

A History of Greek Mathematics (1921) Vol. 1. From Thales to Euclid

History , Problem , Parting

“The view I have just sketched of the relationships between the most general types—the forms of social life—and human nature is based upon two key ideas that might appear contradictory. The first notion holds that there exists a limited fund of problems and possibilities of human association. Each form of social life is defined by the way it responds to the problems and pursues the possibilities. The fact that the fund is limited makes comprehensive theory and universal comparison possible. This principle, however, seems incompatible with the other half of my thesisː that the forms of social life are constituents and re-creators, rather than just examples, of human nature. ¶ The way to reconcile these two equally important ideas is to conceive of human nature as an entity embodied in particular forms of social life, though never exhausted by them. Consequently, humanity can always transcend any one of the kinds of society that develop it in a certain direction. Nonetheless, human nature is known, indeed it exists, only through the historical types of social life.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: Law in Modern Societyː Toward a Criticism of Social Theory (1976), p. 260

Life , Way , Idea , Nature

“Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i. e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What is Art? (1897)

Life , Pleasure , Beauty , Art

“In spite of all humans' innate interest in the interrelatedness of all experience, long ago these world-power-structure builders learned to shunt all the bright intellectuals and the physically creative into specialist careers. The powerful reserved for themselves the far easier, because innate, comprehensive functioning. All one needs to do is to discover how self-perpetuating is this disease of specialization is to witness the inter-departmental battling for educational funds and the concomitant jealous guarding of the various specializations assigned to a department's salaried experts on each subject in any university.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Cosmography (1992)

World , Education , Disease , Learning

“Let's worship Divinity, but understand the divinity we worship is beyond our comprehension.”

John Marks Templeton (1912–2008) stock investor, businessman and philanthropist

The Quotable Sir John

Understanding

“I’m not actually against, for example, people going into rehabilitation, provided it is understood that this is not really a medical procedure. Often what happens is that people who are addicted to a substance — alcohol or opiates — have comprehensively messed up their lives, and since life is biography and not just a series of unconnected moments, it may be that they require some assistance in getting their lives together. But I don’t regard that as really a medical procedure.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

C-SPAN: Romancing Opiates https://www.c-span.org/video/?191384-1/romancing-opiates (May 30, 2006)

Life , People , Alcohol

“The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material, prepared for it by physics out of experience, at the point to which physics has brought it, and again transforms it, without basing it ultimately on the authority of experience. Physics therefore must work into the hands of philosophy, so that the latter may translate into a true comprehension (Begriff) the abstract universal transmitted to it, showing how it issues from that comprehension as an intrinsically necessary whole.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1816)

Nature , Universe

“Global rationality, the rationality of neoclassical theory, assumes that the decision maker has a comprehensive, consistent utility function, knows all the alternatives that are available for choice, can compute the expected value of utility associated with each alternative, and chooses the alternative that maximizes expected utility. Bounded rationality, a rationality that is consistent with our knowledge of actual human choice behavior, assumes that the decision maker must search for alternatives, has egregiously incomplete and inaccurate knowledge about the consequences of actions, and chooses actions that are expected to be satisfactory”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

attain targets while satisfying constraints
Simon (1997, p. 17); As cited in: Gustavo Barros (2010, p. 460).
1980s and later

Behavior , Search , Knowledge , Decision

“In your town, in mine, in Wolverhampton, in Smethwick, in Birmingham, people see with their own eyes what they dread, the transformation during their own lifetime or, if they are already old, during their children's, of towns, cities and areas that they know into alien territory…Of the great multitude, numbering already two million, of West Indians and Asians in England, it is no more true to say that England is their country than it would be to say that the West Indies, or Pakistan, or India are our country. In these great numbers they are, and remain, alien here as we would be in Kingston or in Delhi; indeed, with the growth of concentrated numbers, the alienness grows, not by choice but by necessity. It is a human fact which good will, tolerance, comprehension and all the social virtues do not touch. The process is that of an invasion, not, of course, with the connotation either of violence or a premeditated campaign but in the sense that a people find themselves displaced in the only country that is theirs, by those who do have another country and whose home will continue to be elsewhere for successive generations.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech to the Conservative Supper Club in Smethwick (8 September 1971), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 189-190

Children , People , Home , Sense

“What excited me was the recognition that this was simply another version of the problem that had obsessed me all of my life -- the problem of those moments when life seems entirely delightful, when we experience a sensation of what G. K. Chesterton called "absurd good news." Life normally strikes most of us as hard, dull and unsatisfying; but in these moments, consciousness seems to glow and expand, and all the contradictions seem to be resolved. Which of the two visions is true? My own reflections had led me to conclude that the vision of "absurd good news" is somehow broader and more comprehensive than the feeling that life is dull, boring and meaningless. Boredom is basically a feeling of narrowness, and surely a narrow vision is bound to be less true than a broad one?”

Colin Wilson book The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders

Source: The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988), p. 16

Life , Feeling , Problem

“When we look over the rest of the world, in spite of all its devastation there is encouragement to believe it is on a firmer moral foundation than it was in 1914. Much of the old despotism has been swept away, While some of it comes creeping back disguised under new names, no one can doubt that the general admission of the right of the people to self-government has made tremendous progress in nearly every quarter of the globe. In spite of the staggering losses and the grievous burden of taxation, there is a new note of hope for the individual to be more secure in his rights, which is unmistakably clearer than ever before. With all the troubles that beset the Old World, the former cloud of fear is evidently not now so appalling. It is impossible to believe that any nation now feels that it could better itself by war, and it is apparent to me that there has been a very distinct advance in the policy of peaceful and honorable adjustment of international differences. War has become less probable; peace has become more secure. The price which has been paid to bring about this new condition is utterly beyond comprehension. We can not see why it should not have come in orderly and peaceful methods without the attendant shock of fire and sword and carnage. We only know that it is here. We believe that on the ruins of the old order a better civilization is being constructed.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

War , People , World , Fear

“The administration of the great system of the universe, however, the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension; the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country: that he is occupied in contemplating the more sublime, can never be an excuse for his neglecting the more humble department.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section II, Chap. III.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part VI

God , Family , Business , Universe

“The centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension that no one I know of has been able to imagine their nature.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

As quoted in Genius Talk : Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries (1995) by Denis Brian ISBN 0306450895

Imagination , Nature

“The future of great business lies in man’s comprehension of the principle of Balance in Natural Law and his determination to work WITH it instead of against it.”

Walter Russell (1871–1963) American philosopher

The Man who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe

Law , Business , Nature , Future

“Critical evaluation was transformed into understanding, and criticism became not an act of judgment but of comprehension.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

Understanding

“I seek through comprehensive anticipatory design science and its reductions to physical practices to reform the environment instead of trying to reform humans, being intent thereby to accomplish prototyped capabilities of doing more with less…”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1947
Earth, Inc. (1973) ISBN 0-385-01825-8 This is just part of a very long sentence that covers the whole first page, but in this part of the quote, the intention of the entire book is stated.
1970s

Science

“There is a pressing need to understand our technological destiny from principles more comprehensive than its own. This need lifts us up to ask about the great western experiment in a more than piecemeal way. It pushes us to try to understand its meaning in terms of some openness to the whole which is not simply sustenance for the further realisation of that experiment. But the exigency of our need for understanding must not blind us to the tightening circle in which we find ourselves. We are called to understand technological civilisation just when its very realisation has radically put in question the possibility that there could be any such understanding.”

George Grant (1918–1988) Canadian philosopher

Technology and Justice (Notre Dame: 1986), p. 34

Way , Understanding , Question

“How do the receptive perceive truth, whereas the unreceptive "seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand"? The ultimate truths of heaven and the kingdom of God, the reality that lies behind sensory perception and beyond the cogitations of the rationalizing mind, can only be grasped by intuition — awakening the intuitive knowing, the pure comprehension, of the soul.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004) by Yogananda

God , Truth , Soul , Understanding

“The big banks are the "state apparatus" which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready-made from capitalism' our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. Quantity will be transformed into quality. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big, with branches in every rural district, in every factory, will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

"Can the Bolsheviks Retain State Power?", (1917), The Lenin Anthology
1910s

“Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something suspiciously bovine about them.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

"The Dark Hours", in Too Many People, and Other Reflections http://books.google.com/books?id=WXRMy9eD_GkC&q="Those+no+sooner+have+I+touched+the+pillow+people+are+past+my+comprehension+There+is+something+suspiciously+bovine+about+them"&pg=PA80#v=onepage (1928).

People , Past

“In eight simple ways, my Bill seeks to provide a framework for giving pensioners a decent living standard. First, it would fix old-age pensions for couples at half average industrial earnings, and for single people it would be a third…Secondly, my Bill would require central Government to appoint a Minister responsible for the co-ordination of policy on pensioners. Thirdly, it would require local authorities to produce a comprehensive annual report about their policies on pensioners and on the conditions of pensioners in their communities. Fourthly, every health authority would also be asked to do that. Fifthly, the present anomalous system means that in some parts of the country where there are foresighted Labour local authorities there are concessionary transport schemes — free bus passes. They do not exist in some parts of Britain and the Bill would make them a national responsibility and they would be paid for nationally…My sixth point is one of the most important. It is about the introduction of a flat-rate winter heating allowance instead of the nonsensical system of waiting for the cold to run from Monday to Sunday, and then if it is sufficiently cold a rebate is paid in arrears. Last winter that resulted in many old people living in homes that were too cold because they could not afford to heat them. If they did get any aid, it was far too late. My seventh point concerns the abolition of standing charges on gas, electricity and telephones for elderly people. They are paying about £250 million a year towards the profits of the gas industry and those profits will be about £1.5 billion. Standing charges should be cancelled, unit prices maintained and the cost of the standing charge should be taken from the profits of the gas board or the electricity board — if it ends up being privatised. They could well afford to pay for that rather than forcing old people to live in cold and misery throughout the winter. Finally, the Bill would prohibit the cutting off of gas and electricity in any pensioner household.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/dec/01/elimination-of-poverty-in-old-age-etc in the House of Commons (1 December 1987).
1980s

People , Health , Age , Way

“If you have standards, moral standards, you have to want to make them prevail, and at the very least you have to argue in their favor. Now, show me where libertarians have argued in some comprehensive way for a set of moral standards. … I don't think morality can be decided on the private level. I think you need public guidance and public support for a moral consensus. The average person has to know instinctively, without thinking too much about it, how he should raise his children.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Essay in the Wall Street Journal (1978).
1970s

Children , Way , Support , Thinking

Quotes about comprehension page 2

Quotes about comprehension
page 2