Quotes About Understanding

When a diplomat says 'yes' he means 'maybe.' When a diplomat says 'maybe' he means 'no.' But if a diplomat says 'no' he's no diplomat.

He'd grown up an untroubled believer, but the war had put an end to that. What God could permit such misery and slaughter? But, in time, he had found consolation in a God beyond understanding, and prayed for those he'd lost, for those he loved, and an end to evil in the world.

You've got to empathize, not sympathize. Take that loose thread. Start to pull. Let the whole thing unravel. Let's start making something stronger. More beautiful.

How do you explain to someone else why a thing matters to you if it doesn't matter to them? How can you put into words how a book slips inside of you and becomes a part of you so much that your life feels empty without it?

But, all things considered, I believe that most people read quickly because they want not to read but to have read. But why do they want to have read? Because, I think, they conceive of reading simply as a means of uploading information to their brains.

He who understands all but lacks Self Knowledge lacks all.

When there is so much to be known, when there are so many fields of knowledge in which the same words are used with different meanings, when everyone knows a little about a great many things, it becomes increasingly difficult for anyone to know whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

There can be more genuine fellowship among those who share the same disposition than among those who share the same beliefs, especially if that disposition is toward kindness and generosity.

I know what it's like to make common cause with people who are in some ways alien to me; I know how such experiences can expand my understanding of the world; I know how they can force me to confront the narrowness of my vision and my tendency to simplistic thinking—sometimes to not thinking at all.

All books want our attention, but not all of them want the same kind of attention, and good readers know this and make the necessary adjustments.

Words. Empty words. Sometimes I hate words. Sometimes they fail human experience. Sometimes words are a way to avoid the truth.

Yet the time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.

Scientists are buffoons, not because they are rational but because the cosmos is irrational. Or perhaps it is not because the cosmos is irrational but because they are rational. Who

n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là" ("I have no need for that assumption

But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you. I love you. With all my heart, I love you.

Real life is messy, inconsistent, and it's seldom when anything ever really gets resolved. It's taken me a long time to realize that.

How can two people hate so much without knowing each other?

Language comes first. It's not that language grows out of consciousness, if you haven't got language, you can't be conscious.

I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way.

Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society, saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together...he saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection of it, a parody of it. No one else saw the joke. That's why he was lonely.

You must understand that knowledge is not all your heritage. I includes also courage and belief, like hers that we commemorate herein...and romance. Always, always romance.

Affected most, they understand the least...

As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.

Benny Anger: What's up, doc? Doc Manhattan: Up is a relative concept; it has no intrinsic value.