Quotes About Understanding

There is no doubt that I am selective in my listening, hence "directive" if people wish to accuse me of this. I am centered in the group member who is speaking, and am unquestionably much less interested in the details of his quarrel with his wife, or of his difficulties on the job, or his disagreement with what has just been said, than in the meaning these experience have for him now and the feeling they arouse in him. It is to these meanings and feelings that I try to respond.

When asked a question, I try to consult my own feelings. If I sense it as being real and containing no other message than the question, then I will try my best to answer it. I feel no social compulsion, however, to answer simply because it is phrased as a question. There may be other message in it far more important than the question itself.

Each person is an island unto himself, in a very real sense; and he can only build bridges to other islands if he is first of all willing to be himself and permitted to be himself. So I find that when I can accept another person, which means specifically accepting the feelings and attitudes and beliefs that he has as a real and vital part of him, then I am assisting him to become a person: and there seems to me great value in this.

The collapse in evangelical doctrinal consensus is intimately related to the collapse in the understanding of, and role assigned to, Scripture as God's Word spoken within the church.

Theology masters the man; the man is never to master the theology.

The task of the Christian is not to whine about the moment in which he or she lives but to understand its problems and respond appropriately to them.

Fish swim in water; they do not give it a second thought; but the scientist who analyzes water is far more informed about the aquatic environment

Our godlike self-understanding, however, keeps colliding with the facts of death and of the fallen finiteness of this world.

In sum, the social imaginary is the way people think about the world, how they imagine it to be, how they act intuitively in relation to it—though that is emphatically not to make the social imaginary simply into a set of identifiable ideas.3 It is the totality of the way we look at our world, to make sense of it and to make sense of our behavior within it.

To respond to our times we must first understand our times.

People who understand interest earn it. People who don't pay it.

Budgeting isn't just about numbers. It's about awareness.

There aren't any embarrassing questions--just embarrassing answers.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.

The understanding of every type of representation disappears with the spread of economic thinking.

The cat seldom interferes with other people's rights. His intelligence keeps him from doing many of the fool things that complicate life.

The problem is not that dolphins are dumber than we thought, but that our anthropomorphism inevitably makes it hard to understand an intelligence other than our own.

When we see faces, we don't just recognize them; we also make the same face, if only for a moment.

The good thing about being with a woman who has amnesia is that the conversation gets to be all about you

When two people who love each other cannot come into agreement after substantial discussion, it is perfectly appropriate to agree to disagree without raining judgment down on each others' heads. For most people, there are some entrenched beliefs and opinions which will not change, regardless of persuasion or coercion.