Understanding Quotes

The true measure of a best friend is where they are when you “make” the biggest decision of your life, not where they were during the decision process.

It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander. It is tempting to say that a Nazi murderer is beyond the pale of understanding. ...Yet to deny a human being his human character is to render ethics impossible.To yield to this temptation, to find other people inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.

People are always trying to understand.There is only one way to do that.It is to discover < + i + >why< + i + > you want to understand.

Curiosity—asking questions—isn’t just a way of understanding the world. It’s a way of changing it.

To truly understand a man, you must look at his enemies.

As I turned to leave, I looked down. Beside my foot, a sprout of greenery was clawing its way through the pristine nothingness to begin anew. It was later that I realized my haven had sent me a message, and it had shown me that nothing is ever completely lost, unless you cease searching.

Understanding breeds empathy.

Many people have failing relationships because they have not really fallen in love with each other, but they have fallen for the mental images they have created of one another. We assume we know our partner, we think about them nonstop, creating many different ideas of who they are, what they like, and how we will be together, then as soon as our partner does something that doesn’t fit with our mental image of them, we become sad, upset, confused, or heart broken. Our partner did not cause our suffering; we caused it, through our false perceptions and mental images.

Never overestimate the strength of the torchbearer's arm, for even the strongest arms grow weary.

I would like to believe he's sick rather than just mean and evil.

For every shrill and violent voice that throws itself in front of microphones and cameras in the name of God, there are countless lives of gentleness and good works who will not. We need to see and hear them, as well, to understand the whole story of religion in our world.

I don't trust anybody who isn't a little bit neurotic

Men were not supposed to be mushy, but one thing his mother taught him was that it was better to understand your feelings than hide from them

To ask the 'right' question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem.

Far too many people allow broken egos and wounded prides to convince them to seek justice before they seek understanding.

[Scientific humanism is] the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature.

When we practice self-compassion in our lives, we are compelled to be more understanding and accepting toward ourselves.

Any man filled with empathy is capable of gaining valuable insights on the human condition through the suffering of others. You do not need to suffer to know suffering, but you need empathy first to identify and feel the suffering of others around you.

I think that’s what Toni Morrison and Alice Walker understand, the secret language of women. That it’s not a secret at all; men just don’t know how to listen.

She sniffed, and smiled a bit, but not too much because if there is one thing worse than someone who doesn't understand you it's someone who understands perfectly, before you've had a chance to have a good pout about not being understood.

...that breath of relief that there is someone in the world, finally, who understands what hurts you.

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

That was the thing about her. When you told her about an incident where you so badly screwed up, half expecting her to laugh at you in amusement, half anticipating a smirk of disgust, she would hardly express her pity or maybe she did express what she felt, for she would just nod her head, gesturing you to go on... As if it's normal... As if you're normal.

Understanding divine order is to establish the kingdom of love

Love is when you can understand each other's silences.

Those who wish to seek out the cause of miracles and to understand the things of nature as philosophers, and not to stare at them in astonishment like fools, are soon considered heretical and impious, and proclaimed as such by those whom the mob adores as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For these men know that, once ignorance is put aside, that wonderment would be taken away, which is the only means by which their authority is preserved.

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation but as a question.[A caution he gives his students, to be wary of dogmatism.]

Whenever you possess something, but lack the understanding of its value, there are some consequences you suffer.

Laugh and make the best of every situation. Understand that life is not perfect.

When one person attempts to “fix it” for the other person, the connection of acceptance is snapped and the sender and receiver miss an opportunity for understanding.

God is up to something, but you will never know unless you figure out the difference between who is the messenger carrying your future and who is the person holding you back.

It is the nature of physics to hear the loudest of mouths over the most comprehensive ones.

It is absolutely okay with me if you need to keep some secrets. I've been thinking about this and I decided that a best friend is someone who, when they don't understand, they still understand.

Love is not merely need alone, & what is more important is loving you, & making my true nature comprehensible to you.

The problem is not the misunderstanding we have, but the understanding we have missed. We must come to a certain understanding; to understand understanding, we need to understand understanding and we must understand with understanding.

There is hardly a limit to the knowledge and sympathy a man may have in respect of the finest things, and yet be a fool. Sympathy is not harmony. A man may be a poet even, and speak with the tongue of an angel, and yet be a very bad fool.

Hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at that moment, hearing not simply his words, but him, and when I let him know that I have heard his own private personal meanings, many things happen. There is first of all a grateful look. He feels released. He wants to tell me more about his world. He surges forth in a new sense of freedom. He becomes more open to the process of change. I have often noticed that the more deeply I hear the meanings of the person, the more there is that happens. Almost always, when a person realize he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, "Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me.

I kept reaching for my muses,my wandering muses, floatingon clouds filled with their passions.”(Muses of Wandering Passions, p. 64)

We're fascinated by the words--but where we meet is in the silence behind them.

You were...are...what I heard. Every note.

Faith keeps our ships moving, while empathy and the memories of our experiences lead to wisdom.

We have reduced the understanding of prayers to incantations.

Everyone's afraid of what they don't understand," Ringil said quietly.

You need to invest time in understanding and discovering yourself

You couldn't stand to see what terrifies warlords.

I wanted to call a time out, to demand that everybody just STOP until I could understand everything.

Knowledge is strength, understanding is mastery, and wisdom is power.

Max Weber was right in subscribing to the view that one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar. But there is a temptation for us theoretical sociologists to act sometimes as though it is not necessary even to study Caesar in order to understand him. Yet we know that the interplay of theory and research makes both for understanding of the specific case and expansion of the general rule.

Thank you, Tempest, for loving me when understanding was too hard. Thank you for understanding when loving me is impossible.

If you’re treating people poorly then you're not emulating God’s love. God always resides with the broken hearted.

Understanding requires a person’s ability to grasp or comprehend information.

I barely registered moving into the long gallery, one hand absentmindedly wrapping around my throat as I looked up at the paintings.So many, so different, yet all arranged to flow together seamlessly... Such different views and snippets and angles of the world. Pastorals, portraits, still lifes . . . each a story and an experience, each a voice shouting or whispering or singing about what that moment, that feeling, had been like, each a cry into the void of time that they had been here, had existed. Some had been painted through eyes like mine, artists who saw in colors and shapes I understood. Some showcased colors I had not considered; these had a bend to the world that told me a different set of eyes had painted them. A portal into the mind of a creature so unlike me, and yet . . . and yet I looked at its work and understood, and felt, and cared.

Understanding moulds the life of a man and governs it.

We must make haste then, not only because we are daily nearer to death, but also because the conception of things and the understanding of them cease first.

Sometimes you come to realize you understand something but you can’t explain it to anyone, not even yourself. This is perhaps the most sacred kind of understanding.

For days and weeks on end one racks one's brains to no avail, and, if asked, one could not say whether one goes on writing purely out of habit, or a craving for admiration, or because one knows not how to do anything other, or out of sheer wonderment, despair or outrage, any more than one could say whether writing renders one more perceptive or more insane. Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life?

I was to discover that the quest for human understanding is a lifetime one that has no end in sight.

One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people.

When perception, thoughtfulness and understanding do meet, we can fashion a range of viable expectations and craft a world of togetherness. ("Morning after")

People think "monsters" are born without origin. But it is the monsters that have the greatest stories to tell...