Quotes About Understanding

The person who kills himself sees suicide as a solution. If the observer views it as a problem, he precludes understanding the suicide just as surely as he would preclude understanding a Japanese speaker if he assumed that he is hearing garbled English.

In short, hysteria is a type of language in which communication is effected by means of pictures (or iconic signs), instead of by means of words (or conventional signs). Hysterical language thus resembles other picture languages, such as charades. Those who want to deal with so-called hysterical patients must therefore learn not how to diagnose or treat them, but how to understand their special idiom and how to translate it into ordinary language.

he knew he would always be the sad one: caged in that little round of skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages.  Lost.  He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any one

Only the dead know Brooklyn.

I had not yet learned that one cannot really be superior without humility and tolerance and human understanding. I did not yet know that in order to belong to a rare and higher breed one must first develop the true power and talent of selfless immolation.

Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any one, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never.

But it was many years before he could understand that that sensitive and feminine person, bound to him by the secret and terrible bonds of his own dishonor, had in him nothing perverse, nothing unnatural, nothing degenerate. He was as much like a woman as a man. That was all. There is no place among the Boy Scouts for the androgyne—it must go to Parnassus.

The only sin in the world is ignorance.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for Sauntering.

The man I meet is seldom so instructive as the silence which he breaks

It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

As a corollary, they (Greek intellectuals) believed that knowledge for its own sake was meaningless, its mere accumulation a waste of time. Knowledge must lead to understanding.

Anyone who maintains that we have nothing useful to learn from listening to speeches either lacks sense or has a secret agenda at stake. - Diodotus

Men assumed the right to reverse the usual values in the application of words to actions. Reckless audacity came to be thought as comradely courage, while for-sighted hesitation became well-disguised cowardice; moderation was a front for unmanliness; and to understand everything was to accomplish nothing.

Your children will smash your understanding, knowledge and reality. You will be better off. Then they will leave. You'll miss them forever.

Sometimes I would open my eyes when we were kissing, I would watch him and I could see it. I could actually see LOVE - not words, not an emotion, not an abstract concept or a subjective state of mind, but a living, breathing thing.

There are worse words than cuss-words, there are words that hurt.

I had learned at last to not project my darkness onto those around me;

There is a difference between memorizing Scripture and thinking biblically.

Whatever we're trying to understand about the world, each other, and ourselves, we won't get far without statistics – any more than we can hope to examine bones without an X-ray, bacteria without a microscope, or the heavens without a telescope.

The word "see" is often used as a direct synonym for "understand"—"I see what you mean." Yet sometimes we see but we don't understand; worse, we see, then "understand" something that isn't true at all. Done well, a picture of data is worth the proverbial thousand words.

the "curse of knowledge" is a constant obstacle to clear communication: once you know a subject fairly well, it is enormously difficult to put yourself in the position of someone who doesn't know it.

asking about sampling errors and margins of error, debating if the number is rising or falling, believing, doubting, analyzing, dissecting—without taking the time to understand the first and most obvious fact: What is being measured, or counted? What definition is being used? Yet while this pitfall is common, it doesn't seem to have acquired a name. My suggestion is "premature enumeration.