c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency;
— Frederick Douglass
We do not have to know everything about something in order to understand it
—  too many facts are often as much of an obstacle to understanding as too few.
You have a faculty for defining the simplest in terms of the grandiose, so that a poor devil like me can't understand it.
— Malcolm Bradbury, Eating People is Wrong
He who becomes his most truthful self, becomes the leader for everyone else.
— Nikki Rowe
Shiva and Saleem, victor and victim; understand our rivalry, and you will gain understanding of the age in which you live. (The reverse of this statement is also true.)
— Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
How is it that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess
If you don’t want anyone to misunderstand you, go into yourself and thoroughly investigate and understand yourself. No one will ever misunderstand you ever again.
— Hong Curley, Freedom to Love: Radical Healing from Disease to Health, Anger to Peace, Fear to Love
In a world where it means so much to take a man by the hand and sit beside him, to look frankly into his eyes and feel his heart beating with red blood; in a world where a social cigar or a cup of tea together means more than legislative halls and magazine articles and speeches,—one can imagine the consequences of the almost utter absence of such social amenities between estranged races, whose separation extends even to parks and streetcars.
— W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.
— Paulo Coelho
To understand the journey you have to do the walking.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man. The gesture characteristic of his tribe consists in looking at the world with eyes wide open in wonder. Everything in the world is strange and marvelous to well-open eyes.
— José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses
Sometimes saying goodbye to the ones you love can be the most appropriate thing to do in order to help them understand there are consequences for each and every choice we make.
— Raphael Zernoff
Laugh and make the best of every situation. Understand that life is not perfect.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
[I]t's not enough to be right. I think you have to be generous. It's not enough to be logical. You have to be virtuous...[Y]our demeanor will carry your message, perhaps, even further than your words will...[P]eople don't just disagree with us. Many of them genuinely think that we are evil, and when people think you're evil, I don't think they listen very carefully to your words. They search your manner. They look for the slightest excuse to ignore all your impregnable arguments, all of your carefully-marshaled facts, and that's why we must never be mean-spirited or angry or petulant, or dismissive of the interest of others. I believe rudeness and arrogance, they would drive people away, that would only confirm their own prejudices. It's the excuse they're desperate for to walk away smug and happy and say 'these people are just small-minded angry bigots.' Our opponents don't recognize our good faith, but -and this is a hard thing- I think we must try our best to recognize their good faith...You can't expect them to recognize our good intentions unless we are willing to recognize theirs.
— Jared Taylor
Understand and challenge your personal narrative. Narratives become choices and actions — which become your life.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
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.
— David W. Earle
An intelligent person is never afraid or ashamed to find errors in his understanding of things.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
There is truth and knowledge beyond present understanding.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
A person at peace can immediately recognize a consciousness in crisis, whereas those in crisis cannot fully understand themselves or others.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
To understand a person it takes time but to find a person who understand you takes a life.
— Aditya Doke
What could anyone confess that would be worth anything or serve any useful purpose? What has happened to us has either happened to everyone or to us alone
—  if the former it has no novelty value and if the latter it will be incomprehensible.
There is truth and knowledge beyond understanding.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Sometimes the closer we got to a situation, the less clear it looked.
— Wally Lamb
Gratitude is the heart of humility, and humility is the path to peace, love, and understanding.
— Justin Young
If you love people, you have no desire to judge them.
— Steve Goodier
People say: 'Let the facts speak for themselves'
—  they forget that the speech of facts is real only if it is heard and understood.
There is the truth , the perception of truth, and versions that don't even come close; but it's the perception that creates the most conflict every time.
— Johnnie Dent Jr.
They never understood what Harry Potter was about. Or maybe they didn't want to understand.
— Asmara W.M
Never judge anyone as they have their own situation and different dimensions of looking at things and situations which you may not understand . . so Observe.
— Rishi Bakshi
You're elegance in a misunderstood form. Crystal quartz in a world of platinum. Oh, my dizzy boy, there's a fire in you that I use to warm my hands on chilly mornings.
— Taylor Rhodes, Sixteenth Notes: The Breaking of the Rose-Colored Glasses
It's a blindness thing, faith.
— Niall Williams, History of the Rain
Haven't you noticed that opinion without knowledge is always a poor thing? At the best it is blind—isn't anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding like a blind man on the right road?
— Plato, The Republic
Satan does not care what you know. He only fears what you understand and apply. In fact, his assignment is to hinder your understanding.
— Theophilus Ajadi, The Influence of the Holy Spirit on your Destiny
They never understood what Harry Potter what about. Or maybe they didn't want to understand.
— Asmara W.M
There’s a difference between being in love and thinking you’re in love. Real love is unconditional. If Eva truly loved me, she wouldn't try to make me love her. She would accept how I feel, without the catch.
— Nichole Beamer
Anyone who pretends to "understand" Latin America is a fool.
— Michael Hogan, Savage Capitalism and the Myth of Democracy: Latin America in the Third Millennium
A wise man hears one word and understands two.
— Anonymous
Dreams have always expanded our understanding of reality by challenging our boundaries of the real, the possible.
— Henry Reed, Collected Poems
There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.
— Bram Stoker, Dracula
[At the beginning of modern science], a light dawned on all those who study nature. They comprehended that reason has insight only into what it itself produces according to its own design; that it must take the lead with principles for its judgments according to constant laws and compel nature to answer its questions, rather than letting nature guide its movements by keeping reason, as it were, in leading-strings; for otherwise accidental observations, made according to no previously designed plan, can never connect up into a necessary law, which is yet what reason seeks and requires. Reason, in order to be taught by nature, must approach nature with its principles in one hand, according to which alone the agreement among appearances can count as laws, and, in the other hand, the experiments thought in accordance with these principles - yet in order to be instructed by nature not like a pupil, who has recited to him whatever the teacher wants to say, but like an appointed judge who compels witnesses to answer the questions he puts to them. Thus even physics owes the advantageous revolution in its way of thinking to the inspiration that what reason would not be able to know of itself and has to learn from nature, it has to seek in the latter (though not merely ascribe to it) in accordance with what reason itself puts into nature. This is how natural science was first brought to the secure course of a science after groping about for so many centuries.
— Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
Do you think things always have an explanation? "Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we're not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don't understand doesn't mean that the explanation doesn't exist.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
To love is easy and therefore common - but to understand - how rare it is!
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon
We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.
— Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath: Its Meaning for Modern Man
Yesterday, I got lost.You did too.So what?People get lost all the time.It's just a matter of finding yourself, and treasuring that.
— Maddie Hample
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.
— J.D. Stroube, Epiphany
Such is the strange situation in which modern philosophy finds itself. No former age was ever in such a favourable position with regard to the sources of our knowledge of human nature. Psychology, ethnology, anthropology, and history have amassed an astoundingly rich and constantly increasing body of facts. Our technical instruments for observation and experimentation have been immensely improved, and our analyses have become sharper and more penetrating. We appear, nonetheless, not yet to have found a method for the mastery and organization of this material. When compared with our own abundance the past may seem very poor. But our wealth of facts is not necessarily a wealth of thoughts. Unless we succeed in finding a clue of Ariadne to lead us out of this labyrinth, we can have no real insight into the general character of human culture; we shall remain lost in a mass of disconnected and disintegrated data which seem to lack all conceptual unity.
— Ernst Cassirer, An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture
Even the right is wrong from the other side.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
We don’t necessarily need to know each other’s name, age, profession, drug of choice, childhood trauma or recent tragedy to understand what pain feels like and offer comfort. We are strangers drawn together by a shared desire for lasting peace.
— Marta Mrotek, Miracle in Progress: A Handbook for Holistic Recovery
The only personal branding consultant who can ever hope to have a clear understanding of you and your value can be found in the mirror.
— Ryan Lilly, #Networking is people looking for people looking for people
Before any change for the better can take place, a level of understanding is always needed; because without understanding we tend to fall back on the automatic responses and reactions that we have built up over our lives.
— Gyalwa Dokhampa, The Restful Mind
They set down all their knowledge on bits of leather or waxed wood or tablets of stone and think that is wisdom. What good does it do a piece of stone to have knowledge?...know it is the understanding graven in the heart that makes men wise.
— Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Forest House
As soon as she says this, I realize she is just like everyone else, and wish I was back at home so that all the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.
— Claire Keegan
When I looked at myself through the prism of awareness, great tears came as I connected with how this wounded child felt.
— David W. Earle
2.05 TARGETAs the Hunter reached its side,And looked down with full pride,He exclaimed with joy begot,How well his target he had got.[14]	- 2The shot deer in throes of death,Moaned in his last few breaths,`Understand nature and eternity,Brother - Just once the target you be.’[15]	- 2
— Munindra Misra, Eddies of Life
3. War Peace & Action - 3B.02 LOVE & PEACEHatred goes not by hatred,Violence not by violence,Disappear hatred and violence,By love, understanding, non-violence.[241]	- 3B
— Munindra Misra, Eddies of Life
Pleasure and pain are immediate; knowledge, retrospective. A steel ball, suspended on a string, smacks into its brothers and nothing happens: no shock of recognition, no sudden epiphany. We go about our business, buttering the toast, choosing gray socks over brown. But here's the thing: just because we haven't understood something doesn't mean we haven't been shaped by it.
— Mark Slouka, Essays from the Nick of Time: Reflections and Refutations
The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the coming of the dusk.
— Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right
Knowledge is a matter of knowing facts. Wisdom is a matter of understanding and applying principles. A certain amount of knowledge is necessary for wisdom, and without wisdom, knowledge is not only useless, it's dangerous.
— Hilda van Stockum, The Winged Watchman
Curiosity leads to knowledge.Knowledge leads to understanding.Understanding leads to love.Love leads to harmony.Be curious.
— Sabina Nore
How is it that there are so many minds that are incapable of understanding mathematics? ... the skeleton of our understanding, ... and actually they are the majority. ... We have here a problem that is not easy of solution, but yet must engage the attention of all who wish to devote themselves to education.
— Henri Poincaré, Science and Method
If you don’t understand something clearly that you are being taught…speak up.If you feel something is confusing or you are unsure of exactly what to do…ask about it.If you need clarification or something repeated to make sure you got it…request it.If you feel lost, forgot something, or feel like you are falling behind…bring it up.Nodding your head, saying “yeah, yeah” and pretending to know things you don’t is right up there with one of the worst things you can do when you hire some one to help you and your career.
— Loren Weisman
We seldom make logical mistakes, but often have mistaken logics.
— Raheel Farooq
People must understand that science is inherently neither a potential for good nor for evil. It is a potential to be harnessed by man to do his bidding.
— Glenn T. Seaborg
nothing but a soul can feel what the heart says nothing but a soul can understand what the mind says.
— Sarah Pussell
Dining at the rare reasonTo get between the circumstanceAnd start milking the Caesars For what enters the earsAnd is for their eyes to air and advise.
— Initially NO, Beneath
The purpose of a spiritual discipline is to give us a way to stop the war, not by our force of will, but organically, through understanding an gradual training.
— Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life
It's harder to be afraid of something you understand
— Scott O'Connor, Untouchable
Yes, our goal as Christians should be to do away with the things in our world that keep people from knowing the love and freedom of Christ. Equally, and maybe more so, our goal should be noticing and doing away with the things on our own lives that keep people from understanding Christ as well. After all, don't the systematic injustices usually grow from the individual ones?
— Holly Sprink, Faith Postures: Cultivating Christian Mindfulness
You were...are...what I heard. Every note.
— Gina Marinello-Sweeney, I Thirst
Taking the one seat describes two related aspects of spiritual work. Outwardly, it means selecting one practice and teacher among all the possibilities, and inwardly, it means having the determination to stick with that practice through whatever difficulties and doubts arise until you have come to true clarity and understanding.
— Jack Kornfield
I guess he had listened to more beefs and more problems from more people than any of us. A guy that'll really listen to you, listen and care about what you're saying, is something rare.
— S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
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.
— Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin
Sometimes an outside perspective is the clearer perspective.
— Shannon A. Thompson, Seconds Before Sunrise
Still, the time I spent with her was more precious than anything. She helped me forget the undertone of loneliness in my life. She expanded the outer edges of my world, helped me draw a deep, soothing breath. Only Sumire could do that for me.
— Haruki Murakami
I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man. I long to speak, to read, to wield a hammer in a great factory, to keep watch at sea, to plow. I want to be walking along the Nevsky Prospect, or in the open fields, or on the ocean — wherever my imagination ranges.
— Anton Chekhov
I've found out so much about electricity that I've reached the point where I understand nothing and can explain no
— Pieter van Musschenbroek
A blind man knows he cannot see, and is glad to be led, though it be by a dog; but he that is blind in his understanding, which is the worst blindness of all, believes he sees as the best, and scorns a guide.
— Samuel Butler
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
— Vannevar Bush, Endless Horizons
Knowing it without understanding it is enough for one to be qualified a fool;Understanding without relative adherence, masters one in foolishness.
— Caleb Ricketts
Feeling very surprised too at myself. I knew what was happening, O my brothers. I was like growing up.
— Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, but can enjoy and participate in many scientific discoveries which as constantly made. Such participation was quite common in the 19th century, but has unhappily declined. Literacy in science will enrich a person's life.
— Hans Bethe
Unfortunately most people do not listen with the intent to understand
—  they listen with the intent to reply.
You don’t have to be involved with my parents. Not if you don’t want to be. Yes, you’re the father,but you aren’t my boyfriend or husband. My family is my problem.”“I do,” he said, before he even realized what he was saying. “I do want to be involved. With all of it.We’re talking about really making this work, about making a . . . I don’t know if we’re talking about afamily, not in the traditional sense, but we’re in this together, right?”“I guess.”“That means I get to help you with parent things, and other unpleasantness. And you have to knowmy brother.
— Maisey Yates, Unexpected
What is not worth understanding is not knowing.
— Caleb Ricketts
No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.
— Matt Haig, The Humans
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reasoning.
— Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient.
— William Godwin, Life of Geoffrey Chaucer; The Early English Poet: Including Memoirs of His Near Friend and Kinsman, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster: With Sketches of the Manners, Opinions, Arts and Literature of England in the Fourteenth Century Volume 1
Fifty years from now if an understanding of man's origins, his evolution, his history, his progress is not in the common place of the school books we shall not exist.
— Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
Every Profound thinker is more afraid of being understood than of being misunderstood
— Friedrich Nietzsche
It is only when we are in the habit of recognizing our opinions as a partial experience seen through our stereotypes that we become truly tolerant of an opponent.
— Walter Lippman
In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
The human mind is itself a miraculous machine. I am writing right now, but I have no idea how this is happening. I know that my brain is composed of a cerebrum, a cerebellum, and a medulla oblongata, but these are just words. I know that electrical impulses are involved somehow, but that is about the extent of my understanding of the mechanics. And while I at least have an intuition as to how an airplane works, I really have none with respect to my brain. Frankly, lots of what appears on my computer screen is as much a surprise to me as it is to you. I certainly never expected over my oatmeal and English muffin this morning to be writing about Bernoulli's principle today. For that matter, I have no idea why I like English muffins. But I do.
— Evan Mandery, Q
Nature is never so admired as when she is understood.
— Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
It is almost as if ideas set in mathematical form melt and become liquid and just as rivers can, from the most humble beginnings, flow for thousands of miles, through the most varied topography bringing nourishment and life with them wherever they go, so too can ideas cast in mathematical form flow far from their original sources, along well-defined paths, electrifying and dramatically affecting much of what they touch. pp. xii - xiii.
— G. Arnell Williams, How Math Works: A Guide to Grade School Arithmetic for Parents and Teachers
A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.
— Max Gluckman, Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society
If there really is a definable 6th sense, it would be the natural connection and the ability of communication between man and animal
— Justin Southwick
Alice leaned first one way and then the other, down the line of children. She said, Is everybody understanding this?"One child said, "The misuse of power is the root of all evil?"Alice said, "Well...."Another child said, "There is no justice on the earth?"Alice said, "Well..."Another child said, "We are all alone in the world?"Alice said, "Well..."Another child said, "The greatest depth of our loss is the beginning of true freedom?"Alice said, "Well..."Another child said, "The disposal of human waste is the responsibility of the brokenhearted?"These were all phrases Alice had put on the chalkboard after other field trips. It occurred to Alice, hearing these phrases now, that she might have attempted to do too much with a class of fourth graders. She was willing to admit to some excesses.Alice said, "Just listen.
— Lewis Nordan, Wolf Whistle
It is through our extended family that we first learn to compromise and come to an understanding that even if we don't always agree about things we can still love and look out for each other.
— Sara Sheridan
The music is everywhere, pressing in on them both, so much that she can almost see it floating in the air around them. It’s like wind, but also not, gracing over her skin as light as air, and she can hear it, more than hear it, both in her head and outside of it. It’s like Callum is shocking her, except the transfer is music, rather than electricity, and it goes on nearly forever. She can feel it weaving itself into her head, wrapping around and entangling with her thoughts in little, fragile, insistent tendrils. “It just amazes me,” Callum whispers, voice blending perfectly with the music. “How something can be so soft and so loud at the same time. It’s almost like it isn’t there at all, isn’t it?” The song ends. And in this moment, as the sun sets outside, and the room begins to go dark, she can feel him thinking. She can hear their breath mingling in the silence. She can hear every emotion he’s ever had, and she realizes that, though she has this, this thing that nobody else has, she understands perhaps the least about it of anyone. And he makes her want to. He makes her want to understand more.
— Genevieve Scott
Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it: but the instruction of fools is folly.
— Anonymous
A key ingredient in appreciating what mathematics is about is to realize that it is concerned with ideas, understanding, and communication more than it is with any specific brand of symbols....It is almost as if ideas set in mathematical form melt and become liquid and just as rivers can, from the most humble beginnings, flow for thousands of miles, through the most varied topography bringing nourishment and life with them wherever they go, so too can ideas cast in mathematical form flow far from their original sources, along well-defined paths, electrifying and dramatically affecting much of what they touch. pp. xii - xiii.
— G. Arnell Williams, How Math Works: A Guide to Grade School Arithmetic for Parents and Teachers
Everyone loves to walk in the footprints of successful people, even without understanding whom footprints they walk in
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.
— Haruki Murakami, After Dark
And yet, will we ever come to an end of discussion and talk if we think we must always reply to replies? For replies come from those who either cannot understand what is said to them, or are so stubborn and contentious that they refuse to give in even if they do understand.
— Augustine of Hippo, City of God
If I thought I could never love you more, I didn't understand you well enough.
— Julie Berry, All the Truth That's in Me
Live, share and learn the art of true deep listening. The main keys are honesty and humility.Cultivate good filters in the mind. Conquer and tame the ego. If words and actions pass from your lips, sights and tapping words in the keyboard, don't forget to ask first, "Is it true, necessary and kind?
— Angelica Hopes
Have patience with the quarrelsomeness of the stupid. It is not easy to comprehend that one does not comprehend.
— Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Aphorisms
None of us can study anything properly unless we do it with our whole being.
— Mary Midgley, Wisdom, Information and Wonder: What Is Knowledge For?
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
I implore the atheist not to judge the religious and I implore the religious to not find fault with the atheist. Be a good religious person, or be a good atheist person. How? By putting an end to faultfinding. All do what they believe in their best interest to do and with a little insight and understanding, all can see that the only way anyone can do any good service to the world, is by being thankful for what is been given him, by looking inwards to correct his own faults instead of the perceived faults of others, and by keeping his eye upon his own horizon; not upon the perceived horizons of anybody else.
— C. JoyBell C.
I don't think it has anything to do with truth, Olhado. It's just cause and effect. We never can sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except first cause-knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.
— Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead
The right thing to do is doing whatever you think is the right. Because everything you do, people will not consider them right unless it is according to their benefits. So the right thing for you is to decide doing things they are right, whether they are told to be right, or not right.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Science contributes to our culture in many ways, as a creative intellectual activity in its own right, as the light which has served to illuminate man's place in the universe, and as the source of understanding of man's own nature.
— John F. Kennedy
Today I speak the truth as I know it to be, tomorrow I may know better.
— T Jay Taylor
I long to embrace, to include in my own short life, all that is accessible to man.
— Anton Chekhov
Many or few alternatives can be at hand. A wise and skilful choice acts from a sincere effort. Solutions and results come from cooperation, hard work and efficiency. With high intention matched with a flexible, patient heart and proficient action gets best quality and value. As for the restless grumbles raving from unconsciousness of complexity of matters, best be brushed off ducking out wisely from discourtesies.
— Angelica Hopes
What I have sought is to understand what has been said.
— Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Must not understanding lie open unto wisdom as the pyramids lie open to the stars? (6:2)
— Aleister Crowley, Visions & Voices: Aleister Crowley's Enochian Visions with Astrological & Qabalistic Commentary
[About describing atomic models in the language of classical physics:]We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
— Niels Bohr
The young specialist in English Lit, having quoted me, went on to lecture me severely on the fact that in every century people have thought they understood the Universe at last, and in every century they were proved to be wrong. It follows that the one thing we can say about our modern 'knowledge' is that it is wrong.The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. 'If I am the wisest man,' said Socrates, 'it is because I alone know that I know nothing.' The implication was that I was very foolish because I was under the impression I knew a great deal.Alas, none of this was new to me. (There is very little that is new to me; I wish my correspondents would realize this.) This particular theme was addressed to me a quarter of a century ago by John Campbell, who specialized in irritating me. He also told me that all theories are proven wrong in time.My answer to him was, 'John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
— Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong
If a single cell, under appropriate conditions, becomes a man in the space of a few years, there can surely be no difficulty in understanding how, under appropriate conditions, a cell may, in the course of untold millions of years, give origin to the human race.
— Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, Vol 1
It makes me sad that so many people feel they're only allowed to show their best face, while their humanity and vulnerabilities are forbidden and hidden. How else do we connect, but by commonality, by mutual understanding and truth in life's experiences? Whether it makes you smile or cringe, a truth spoken is a healing thing.
— Jennifer DeLucy
Physics is becoming so unbelievably complex that it is taking longer and longer to train a physicist. It is taking so long, in fact, to train a physicist to the place where he understands the nature of physical problems that he is already too old to solve them.
— Eugene Paul Wigner
Asked in 1919 whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the theory of general relativity, [Eddington] allegedly replied: 'Who's the third?
— Arthur Stanley Eddington
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.]
— Niels Bohr
The great age of the earth will appear greater to man when he understands the origin of living organisms and the reasons for the gradual development and improvement of their organization. This antiquity will appear even greater when he realizes the length of time and the particular conditions which were necessary to bring all the living species into existence. This is particularly true since man is the latest result and present climax of this development, the ultimate limit of which, if it is ever reached, cannot be known.
— Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding.
— Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts
A favor is a friendly, gracious, kind, generous or obliging act that is freely granted. It is offered and not solicited.A promise is a declaration assuring that one will or will not do something. It is a vow to commit oneself by a promise to do or give. It is a pledge: to make a declaration assuring that something will or will not be done.When you assume and mistook favor for a promise, then misunderstanding comes in. Learn to distinguish clearly between a favor and a promise to avoid false expectations, blind hopes and deep disappointments.Never demand on favours given.Never impose on mistaken promises.Never put under pressure the people who have given you favor.Have a humble and grateful heart for both favors and promises fulfilled.
— Angelica Hopes
It's a real lightning bolt, this Science of Phrenology. I've found out more in the last three days than I knew in my whole life before. Mrs. Guilbert has always been a nasty one, but now I know that she can't help it—she's got a big pit in her Benevolence spot. She fell in the quarry when she was a girl, and my guess is she cracked her Benevolence and was never the same since.
— Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Will Human Nature destroy Nature and Humans?
— Drats, Humans Need Three Hands: Will Human Nature Destroy Nature and Humans?
Increasing knowledge lessens the sphere of the supernatural.
— Edvard Westermarck, The Origin And Development Of The Moral Ideas
Quand celui à qui l'on parle ne comprend pas et celui qui parle ne se comprend pas, c'est de la métaphysiqueWhen he to whom a person speaks does not understand, and he who speaks does not understand himself, that is metaphysics.
— Voltaire
Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman, while keeping high scientific standards, has always been considered a treacherous navigation between the Scylla of professional contempt and the Charybdis of public misunderstanding.
— Gian-Carlo Rota
However high we climb in the pursuit of knowledge we shall still see heights above us, and the more we extend our view, the more conscious we shall be of the immensity which lies beyond.
— William George Armstrong
What," "how," "when," etc are all questions more or less common to religion and philosophy. But to ask "why" is a transgression in religion, and this inquiry has undoubtedly taken the heaviest tolls on intellect.
— Raheel Farooq
Even fairly good students, when they have obtained the solution of the problem and written down neatly the argument, shut their books and look for something else. Doing so, they miss an important and instructive phase of the work. ... A good teacher should understand and impress on his students the view that no problem whatever is completely exhausted.
— George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
Not by discussions nor by argument, but by lifting up Christ shall we draw men unto Him.
— James Hudson Taylor
If God wants something from me, he would tell me. He wouldn't leave someone else to do this, as if an infinite being were short on time. And he would certainly not leave fallible, sinful humans to deliver an endless plethora of confused and contradictory messages. God would deliver the message himself, directly, to each and every one of us, and with such clarity as the most brilliant being in the universe could accomplish. We would all hear him out and shout "Eureka!" So obvious and well-demonstrated would his message be. It would be spoken to each of us in exactly those terms we would understand. And we would all agree on what that message was.
— Richard C. Carrier, Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith
I have tried to read philosophers of all ages and have found many illuminating ideas but no steady progress toward deeper knowledge and understanding. Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics.
— Max Born
The less people know, the more they talk. The less people understand, the more they try to explain.
— Vironika Tugaleva, The Love Mindset: An Unconventional Guide to Healing and Happiness
Oh Christ, he understood more than he wanted to right now. Give me a chance, Louis thought, and I’llunderstand myself right into the nearest mental asylum.
— Stephen King, Pet Sematary
My father nodded. His nod was for me. Different. But not different at all. My father understood. Maybe he had known. Maybe he hadn't. It didn't matter anymore. He understood. I knew he understood, just from his nod, just from his eyes on mine, making his eyes kind for me, and the wave of pain went away for a moment.
— Adam Berlin Belmondo Style
...his jaw tightening and his eyes closed on the tears. “I believe you. It’s okay because I understand and I believe you.
— John Knowles, A Separate Peace
The fact that he and she understood each other without a word seemed to bring them nearer than any explanation would have done.
— Edith Wharton
Scientists still do not appear to understand sufficiently that all earth sciences must contribute evidence toward unveiling the state of our planet in earlier times, and that the truth of the matter can only be reached by combing all this evidence. ... It is only by combing the information furnished by all the earth sciences that we can hope to determine 'truth' here, that is to say, to find the picture that sets out all the known facts in the best arrangement and that therefore has the highest degree of probability. Further, we have to be prepared always for the possibility that each new discovery, no matter what science furnishes it, may modify the conclusions we draw.
— Alfred Wegener, The Origin of Continents and Oceans
One increasingly hears rumors of a reconciliation between science and religion. In major news magazines as well as at academic conferences, the claim is made that that belief in the success of science in describing the workings of the world is no longer thought to be in conflict with faith in God. I would like to argue against this trend, in favor of a more old-fashioned point of view that is still more characteristic of most scientists, who tend to disbelieve in any religious component to the workings of the universe.
— Sean Carroll
Nothing can be more perfect in my world than the imperfection it must match.
— Leot Felton, The After
Sometimes to comprehend one's message you have to use mirror or a water.
— umar inuwa sa'eed kibiya
I know everything I need to about a person by their hands. Eyes may be the window to ones soul but hands disclose the being.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
Is the purpose of theoretical physics to be no more than a cataloging of all the things that can happen when particles interact with each other and separate? Or is it to be an understanding at a deeper level in which there are things that are not directly observable (as the underlying quantized fields are) but in terms of which we shall have a more fundamental understanding?
— Julian Schwinger, Quantum Mechanics: Symbolism of Atomic Measurements
When we have learnt to call storms, storms, and death, death, and birth, birth, when we have mastered the sailor's horn-book and Mr Piddington's law of cyclones, Ellis's anatomy and Lewer's midwifery, we have already made ourself half blind. We have become hypnotized by words and names. We think in words and names, not in ideas; the commonplace has triumphed, the true intellect is half crushed.
— Henry de Vere Stacpoole, The Blue Lagoon
Every human in this world is greedy.
— Md. Mujib Ullah
Thus the feeling I sometimes have - which all of us who work closely with aphasiacs have - that one cannot lie to an aphasiac. He cannot grasp your words, and cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, the total, spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, too easily.
— Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
Darwin, with his Origin of Species, his theories about Natural Selection, the Survival of the Fittest, and the influence of environment, shed a flood of light upon the great problems of plant and animal life.These things had been guessed, prophesied, asserted, hinted by many others, but Darwin, with infinite patience, with perfect care and candor, found the facts, fulfilled the prophecies, and demonstrated the truth of the guesses, hints and assertions. He was, in my judgment, the keenest observer, the best judge of the meaning and value of a fact, the greatest Naturalist the world has produced.The theological view began to look small and mean.Spencer gave his theory of evolution and sustained it by countless facts. He stood at a great height, and with the eyes of a philosopher, a profound thinker, surveyed the world. He has influenced the thought of the wisest.Theology looked more absurd than ever.Huxley entered the lists for Darwin. No man ever had a sharper sword -- a better shield. He challenged the world. The great theologians and the small scientists -- those who had more courage than sense, accepted the challenge. Their poor bodies were carried away by their friends.Huxley had intelligence, industry, genius, and the courage to express his thought. He was absolutely loyal to what he thought was truth. Without prejudice and without fear, he followed the footsteps of life from the lowest to the highest forms.Theology looked smaller still.Haeckel began at the simplest cell, went from change to change -- from form to form -- followed the line of development, the path of life, until he reached the human race. It was all natural. There had been no interference from without.I read the works of these great men -- of many others – and became convinced that they were right, and that all the theologians -- all the believers in "special creation" were absolutely wrong.The Garden of Eden faded away, Adam and Eve fell back to dust, the snake crawled into the grass, and Jehovah became a miserable myth.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
First, come to the point where you realize you are alone, completely and utterly alone in the vastness of the universe and all of time.Then realize you are not alone. Look back on your life and see the people who stood by you. There were some. Realize the God of your understanding cares.
— Christopher Hawke
He felt the journal in his pocket. It was like a pair of glasses that he had worn for a time, enabling him to see a world he didn't even know existed.
— Rebecca Rash, A Handful of Flowers: a short story collection
People expect that they should be understood by you but seldom put in an effort to understand you.
— Amit Abraham
Just as we will never grasp the full meaning of God, we will also never grasp the full meaning of love.
— Thomas Jay Oord, The Nature of Love: A Theology
I am sorry for when I do it hopefully one day you'll realise why. Please do not be angry
—  just understand that today I tried.
[Scientific humanism is] the only worldview compatible with science's growing knowledge of the real world and the laws of nature.
— Edward O. Wilson
Silence often speaks louder than words. To be heard is nice to be understood is divine.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
...as no one can be just without love, so no one can truly report without understanding.
— George MacDonald
A high self-esteem having artist works hard to be understood. A low self-esteem having artist works hard to be agreed with.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
If you don’t know history,you don’t know anything.”Edward Johnston
— Richard Puz, The Carolinian
I must have confessed that the feelings, emotions and sentiments in my words are beyond my understanding.
— M.F. Moonzajer, A moment with God ; Poetry
I like to say, but saying is too much." We understand not the same.
— Gilbert Alexandre
Not always majority are correct sometimes it goes with a lack of understanding
— Chief Justice Moalusi Tlotlo
By the time I had complete my 22nd year, I was a new man - an atheist.
— Béla Bartók
Things always appear clear and simple from behind glass. It is in the thick of tribulations that blurring details arise, complicating my life. You can't rightly judge me, nor can you assist, from a shielded viewpoint.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Understanding did not provide solace or make the pain go away; in many ways, understanding was just more salt in the emotional wound. Ignorance allowed one to fight back with unfettered cruelty. Understanding inspired empathy, which led to guilt, as well as suffering.She looked at Gavin, supine, unconcerned, contented, and thought that perhaps there was something to being a sociopath. If you didn't have a heart, it couldn't be broken.
— Nenia Campbell, Terrorscape