Quotes About Understanding

Why, then, the reader may ask, add still another weighty tome to a useless overproduction?

I have tried to avoid moving against and negating any point of view, no matter how personally antipathetic to me, if it seems to have in it a core of truthfulness.

Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.)

never has there been an age in which so little knowledge is securely possessed, so little a part of the common understanding.

Perhaps Becker's greatest achievement has been to create a science of evil. He has given us a new way to understand how we create surplus evil—warfare, ethnic cleansing, genocide.

Even a mole may instruct a philosopher in the art of digging.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

I loved you when I saw you today and I loved you always but I never saw you before.

Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?

How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man to really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time.

I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

There isn't any me. I'm you. Don't make up a separate me.

Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

I don't feel any way,' the girl said. 'I just know things.

I don't want to be your friend, baby. I am your friend.

There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light.

Do not think about sin, he thought. There are enough problems now without sin. Also I have no understanding of it.

If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water

I am one of those who like to stay late at the cafe, the older waiter said. With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night. I want to go home and into bed. We are of two different kinds, the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. It is not only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night. I am reluctant to close up because there may be someone who needs the cafe.

I do not need to get used to your silence. I already know it. I quite possibly love all of it.

I know you're right. I'm just low, and when I'm low I talk like a fool.

When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling.

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.