Quotes About Understanding

Consider the example of trans. There was a reason to linger over the difficult and poorly discussed issue of people who are born intersex. It was not for prurience but to make a point. As Eric Weinstein has observed, anyone genuinely interested in addressing the stigmatization and unhappiness felt by people who are in the wrong bodies would have started addressing the question of intersex first.

On that occasion Lilla provided an insight into one of the other central conundrums of our time. He said, 'You cannot tell people simultaneously "You must understand me" and "You cannot understand me".' Evidently a whole lot of people can make those demands simultaneously. But they shouldn't, and if they do then they should realize that their contradictory demands cannot be granted.

we still don't have much or any idea as to why some people are gay.

What if – Sarah asked her daughter – after choosing to transition she then felt the need to de-transition? What if having made this change she decided she didn't want it? Her daughter's response was, 'So. I'll kill myself.' While no parent should ever take such a threat lightly there does seem to be a pattern to it, as Germaine Greer had claimed much earlier.

Which leads to a question that everybody in genuinely diverse and pluralistic societies must at some point ask: 'Do we take other people at face value, or do we try to read behind their words and actions, claim to see into their hearts and there divine the true motives which their speech and actions have not yet revealed?

You cannot tell people simultaneously "You must understand me" and "You cannot understand me".' Evidently a whole lot of people can make those demands simultaneously. But they shouldn't, and if they do then they should realize that their contradictory demands cannot be granted.

Dr Johanna Olson-Kennedy.

My dear Vincent

I have often found it true that the louder a person speaks, the less they have to say.

If we don't truly know what something is programmed to do, chances are it is programming us. Once that happens, we may as well be machines ourselves.

Human beings connect so easily, it's as if we share the same brains.

The single most important thing [you can do] is to shift [your] internal stance from "I understand" to "Help me understand." Everything else follows from that. . . . Remind yourself that if you think you already understand how someone feels or what they are trying to say, it is a delusion. Remember a time when you were sure you were right and then discovered one little fact that changed everything. There is always more to learn.

Often we go through an entire conversation – or indeed an entire relationship – without ever realizing that each of us is paying attention to different things, that our views are based on different information.

Explicit disagreement is better than implicit misunderstanding.

Paradoxically, there is also considerable persuasion power in inquiry and listening.

Interpretations and judgments are important to explore. In contrast, the quest to determine who is right and who is wrong is a dead end. In

When competent, sensible people do something stupid, the smartest move is to try to figure out, first, what kept them from seeing it coming and, second, how to prevent the problem from happening again. Talking

We Ignore the Complexity of Human Motivations

Because good listening requires an open and honest curiosity about the other person, and a willingness and ability to keep the spotlight on them. Buried emotions draw the spotlight back to us. Instead of wondering, "How does what they are saying make sense?

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man. —Bertrand Russell

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of science. —Lord Kelvin (1824–1907),

Bertrand Russell once said, "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty. . . .

Instead of being overwhelmed by the apparent uncertainty in such a problem, start to ask what things about it you do know.

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision which the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. —Aristotle (384 b.c.–322 b.c.)