Quotes About Understanding

Being human means understanding the reality around us not because God commands us to, but because that is what our mind does as part of its nature. The Augustinian and the Neoplatonist mind passively contemplates the world and waits for a connection to a higher truth to be revealed. Aquinas saw the mind as Aristotle did, as actively analyzing that world in order to forge those connections for itself.

But how do we do that? Especially since, as we have seen, the Forms do not exist in time and space, and none of us ever really knows them until we are dead.

For Aristotle, it was man's nature to know things. For Aquinas, to know is to be in an existential sense; to know the world is to be part of the world ourselves. God has put us into the world for a purpose, His purpose. We need to use and understand that world to catch a glimpse of that purpose, and thus a glimpse of God Himself.

Common sense tells us that we can understand and navigate our way through that reality, and common sense tells us that the more we know about that outside world, the better we can act on it, both as individuals and as members of a community.

On one side, interaction with others sharpens our minds and deepens our understanding. But it also teaches us about our obligations toward others—

We decide that what helps and pleases a person we love is good, because it also gives us pleasure. What injures him is bad, because it causes us pain to see him unhappy. We begin to realize that the happiness of others is also our happiness.

crucial for understanding that more celebrated book. For in writing the Discourses, Machiavelli discovered a basic paradox: When it comes to liberty, nothing fails like success.

liberty. "All politeness is owing to Liberty," he wrote. "We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a sort of amicable Collision. To restrain this, is inevitably to bring a Rust upon Men's Understanding. 'Tis a destroying of Civility, Good Breeding, and even Charity itself. . . ." Shaftesbury

Bacon's curiosity makes him sound amazingly modern, and in many ways he was. But his writings look back as much as they look forward, and the figure to whom he owes his greatest debt is without doubt Aristotle, whom he discovered through his admiration for Grosseteste.5 Aristotle's works unlocked for Bacon a world of scientific investigation, above all a method of exploring the wonders of nature and understanding its underlying principles

Again, our observations make it evident, not only that the earth is circular, but also that it is of no great size.

The universe, Galileo wrote, "is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single world of it." Without mathematics, he concluded, "one wanders about in a dark labyrinth"—or what Plato might have called a cave.

Understanding is the reward of faith," Saint Augustine says. "I believe, in order that I may understand" will be the catchphrase of the early Middle Ages. It is the summing-up of Augustine's final authoritative fusion of Neoplatonism and Christianity.

And since all knowledge forms a whole, the corollary is never throw anything away. Every doctrine, no matter how esoteric or seemingly irrational or irrelevant, may hold yet another secret to understanding the rest.

a mind broadened by rigorous understanding of theory, but also steeped in the nuances of actual practice.

Aristotle decided that Reality with a capital R is not (for the most part) something ultimately above or behind the world we see and hear and smell and touch. It is that world. What Plato had dismissed as the illusions of the cave, Aristotle set out to prove were the keys to ultimate understanding all along.

Reason steps in after, not before, experience; it sorts our observations into meaningful patterns and arrives at a knowledge as certain and exact as anything in Plato's Forms.

Spreken over iets wat je niet begrijpt is onnozel, ernaar vragen slim. Wat is wetenschap anders dan uitkomen voor je onwetendheid? Je kunt immers alleen iets leren waar je nog geen weet van hebt.

Lippen die je kussen, hoef je niet te lezen.

Zo zal het straks dus zijn, …, in vogelvlucht ene continent te kunnen oversteken, te zien hoe het ene land na het andere onder je voorbijtrekt, over alle grenzen heen verbroedering te kunnen brengen en begrip.

Zou je geen medelijden krijgen met alles wat normaal is?' verzucht Rosa. Zij wendt haar gezicht af en drukt zich tegen Lemmy aan. 'Je zo bedreigd te moeten voelen door alles wat een beetje afwijkt!

Mensen die denken dat je leed kunt delen met woorden hebben zelf nooit iets meegemaakt. Uit dingen die worden gezegd valt geen enkele troost te peuren. Het delen van stilte, dat is het enige waaraan ik behoefte heb.

Het is misschien niet altijd nodig elk detail te kennen, ' ging hij verder en hij zwoer dat hij naar de toedracht rond ....... dood niet verder zou peuren. 'Het moet toch mogelijk zijn, Modja, denk je niet, een zaak te laten rusten zonder dat je hem volledig hebt begrepen.

Elke dag weer moeten wij vechten om gehoord te worden. Hoe het ín ons is zal een ander nooit verstaan, maar wij blijven het proberen, met elk woord en elke klank opnieuw.

How old am I? Old enough to know it's impossible to change the thinking of fools, but young and foolish enough to keep on trying.