Quotes About Understanding

Perhaps language was the key—it was hard to say. Certainly I was astonished to find how few Cypriots knew good English, and how few Englishmen the dozen words of Greek which cement friendships and lighten the burdens of everyday life.

When it comes to understanding others," I said, "we rarely tax our imaginations.

Particle physicists are way ahead of cosmologists. Cosmology has produced one totally mysterious quantity: the energy of empty space, about which we understand virtually nothing. However, particle physics has not understood many more quantities for far longer!

Whenever one asks "Why?" in science, one actually means "How?". "Why?" is not really a sensible question in science because it usually implies purpose and, as anyone who has been the parent of a small child knows, one can keep on asking "Why?" forever, no matter what the answer to the previous question. Ultimately, the only way to end the conversation seems to be to say "Because!

Our modern conception of the universe is so foreign to what even scientists generally believed a mere century ago that it is a tribute to the power of the scientific method and the creativity and persistence of humans who want to understand it.

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

When it comes to understanding how our universe evolves, religion and theology have been at best irrelevant.

God promised a blessing to those who read, hear, and keep the Word of God. This means he will help us understand it.

How vital then that we come to know God's Word as a familiar friend: Even the Holy Spirit cannot cause us to remember something we never learned!

an old Zen proverb: "When the master points at the Moon, many people never see it at all, they only look at the master.

Hatred is so much easier than reconciliation; no sacrifices or compromises are required.

Maintenant, je le sais bien. On ne partage pas les rêves.

Every so often they exchanged these quick, knowing glances, each making sure the other one was still there, still with her. I wondered how long their friendship would last, and I felt sorry for them, because they didn't know it wouldn't.

He thought of asking her, but for no reason he could name, the silence between them seemed too hard to break.

No one talked, but they all said plenty.

Ninety percent of asking questions is about listening to answers.

We both sat there mute, as if we were in a no-talking competition and serious about winning.

The most unbearable type of anger is a woman's—do anything to avoid it.

Reacher] knew people with houses. He had talked to them, with the same kind of detached interest he would talk to a person who kept snakes as pets or entered ballroom dancing competitions.

There's a difference between hearing and listening. And that's our problem. I doubt if Westwood even knows what he's got. He didn't listen, and his notes don't seem to mean much. It's going to be like picking a lock with spaghetti.

Details. Evidence gathering. Surveillance. It's the basis of everything. You've got to settle down and watch long enough and hard enough to get what you need.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in his shoes. Then when you start criticizing him, you're a mile away and he's got to run after you in his socks. - Jack Reacher

If I 'ad known zen what I know now.

Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in his shoes. Then when you start criticizing him, you're a mile away and he's got to run after you in his socks.