Quotes About Understanding

When we are customarily annoyed by what we see as the failings of others, we are judging them by a ludicrous standard: we are assuming that they fully understand our desires, quite possibly better than we do, and that they have nothing to do but arrange things to fall seamlessly into place around our probably ill-communicated wishes.

The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.

If you're comfortable with who you are, however, it becomes no problem to let others be their own selves around you: you have faith that whoever they are and whatever they do, you will be able to respond appropriately.

a woman smart and persistent enough that even a PhD in psychology hasn't clouded her insight into how people think and act.

Like the layers of an onion, under the first lie is another, and under that another, and they all make you cry.

So many indigenous people have said to me that the fundamental difference between Western and indigenous ways of being is that even the most open-minded westerners generally view listening to the natural world as a metaphor, as opposed to the way the world really is. Trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us.

I]t seems to be just as foolish to say, 'I imagine, in order to understand more clearly what I am,' as to say, 'I am now clearly awake and I see something true, but because I do not yet see it clearly enough I shall fall asleep so that my dreams will represent it to me more truly and clearly.

Quo enim melius rem aliquam concipimus, eo magis determinati sumus ad eam unico modo exprimendam.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

A belief in the validity of the acquisition of knowledge and a scientific understanding of the world we live in, the creation and appreciation of aesthetic phenomena in all their many forms, and the broadening and deepening of our range of experiences in day-to-day living, is rapidly becoming the 'religion' of our time.

My father used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument."

God's love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.

Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about.

Don't raise your voice, improve your argument." [ Address at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa , 23 November 2004]

My father always used to say, "Don't raise your voice. Improve your argument." Good sense does not always lie with the loudest shouters, nor can we say that a large, unruly crowd is always the best arbiter of what is right.

Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.

We must be ready to learn from one another, not claiming that we alone possess all truth and that somehow we have a corner on God.

Unlike Greek narratives, where achievement is celebrated, and biblical narratives, where submission and discipline are celebrated, in Indic thought understanding is celebrated.

We are not rational creatures who feel; we are emotional creatures who rationalize.