Quotes About Understanding

I have faith, but I have faith in human reason

in response to a US interviewer who mocked her appreciation of relative US freedoms) I read Alexis de Tocqueville, and I read about democracy, and I lived in countries that had no democracies, that had no founding fathers, so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom, because you do not know what it is not to have freedom.

As a reader, I could put on someone else's shoes and live through his adventures, borrow his individuality and make choices that I didn't have at home.

There are times as a parent when you realize that your job is not to be the parent you always imagined you'd be, the parent you always wished you had. Your job is to be the parent your child needs, given the particulars of his or her own life and nature.

The sand looked so beautiful then, so many little individual grains in the light of the night, giving the watcher the childhood feeling of infinite things finally understood, the humiliating feeling of the watcher's nothingness.

What do you know and how do you know it

To say "I love you" one must know first how to say the "I".

Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.

The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.

The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who seek them.

James, you ought to discover some day that words have an exact meaning.

Il casco nasconde sentimenti che non possono essere compresi.

The missing link can only come through the practice of loving-kindness toward ourselves, in spite of everything we know about ourselves. Only then, in fact, will we be able to love others, without criticism or judgment.

Wisdom comes only from the understood experience and from nothing else.

It's only when the heart that we get the response that the heart of others can give.

Literature, as an institution par excellence of memory and a universally employed mode of human expression, untiringly explores ways of articulating who we are and of understanding both the incommensurability and the interconnectedness of our histories.

We had slipped into each others lives seamlessly, as though we had known each other for years.

The cognitive aspect of ideology is rooted in the fact that knowledge and frameworks of interpretation are collective and cumulative human constructs.

It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them. . .

Error always addresses the passions and prejudices; truth scorns such mean intrigue, and only addresses the understanding and the conscience.

The more you give of yourself, the more you find of yourself.

A book is a friend a good book is a good friend. It will talk to you when you want it to talk, and it will keep still when you want it to keep still and there are not many friends who know enough to do that.

My friend, if I could give you one thing, I would wish for you the ability to see yourself as others see you. Then you would realize what a truly special person you are.

The demarcation between science and metaphysics is determined by the limits of experiential inquiry, not Nature or God.