Quotes About Understanding

I don't understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians… it's a concept I honestly cannot grasp. To me, it's not who you love… a man, a woman, what have you… it's the fact that you love. That is all that truly matters.

To know something, he argued, was not the same as to be certain beyond all doubt. And to believe something was definitely not the same as to know it.

il faut apprendre, par observation et raisonnement, à reconstituer le vrai des choses d'après les apparences

nous n'avons aucune puissance sur les passions tant que nous n'en connaissons pas les vraies causes

We pose only those questions whose answers are the pre-given conditions of the questions themselves.

Lacan savait que le théâtre est un réservoir capital quand il s'agit de comprendre le mécanisme qui transforme le réel en représentation et le désir en images.

If we wish to understand Indian thought, we must return to its sources, that is, to the great civilization that preceded the arrival of the Aryans, which has continued to the present time and of which the Shaiva religion, the cosmological theory called Sâmkhyä, the practices of Yogä, as well as the bases of what we consider to be the Hindu philosophy, are part.

Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved.

Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

love is a skill, not just an enthusiasm.

Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.

The people who criticise you will not be the ones taking care of your legs when you are in your wheelchair. People who never drove a car in these conditions, they just don't know.

I came to the conclusion that, even in life, unless I'm responding with my whole self—unless, in fact, I'm willing to be changed by you—I'm probably not really listening. But if I do listen—openly, naïvely, and innocently—there's a chance, possibly the only chance, that a true dialogue and real communication will take place between us.

If a rattlesnake thinks he can swallow a mouse, he probably can. Don't assume you think like a snake unless you are one.

I hope they'll pay attention not so much to the mechanical things, like a sudden change of pace in a talk or a sudden change in volume of their voice. I hope they'll pay attention, instead, to the fundamental source of that pacing and volume, which is the connection with the other person. That connection makes us respond like a leaf in the breeze to whatever is happening in the faces of those in front of us.

In order to fight a war (probably the most extreme form of poor communication), unfamiliarity is the preferred state of mind.

The person who's communicating something is responsible for how well the other person follows him.

While leadership is important, just as important is how leadership is communicated. On the one hand, you can command good performance from someone in exchange for not firing them. On the other hand, you might be able to ignite the desire in a person to perform well by tuning in to their state of mind.

When you're with someone, try labeling … is Jack upset? Is Jane excited? … It'll change how you hear what they're saying.

As long as it doesn't seem fake, the more we establish familiarity with our audience - not speaking to them from left field or from on high - the better chance we have that they'll listen to what we have to say. And possibly even accept it.

We were developing empathy and the ability to be aware of what was happening in the mind of another person. This, we realized, is the key, the fundamental ingredient without which real communication can't happen. Developing empathy and learning to recognize what the other person is thinking are both essential to good communication, and are what this book is about.