Quotes About Understanding

We cannot understand without wanting to understand, that is, without wanting to let something be said...Understanding does not occur when we try to intercept what someone wants to say to us by claiming we already know it.

In truth history does not belong to us but rather we to it.

It is the tyranny of hidden prejudices that makes us deaf to what speaks to us in tradition.

En el caso del arte, siempre nos encontramos ya, en realidad, en una tensión entre la pura aspectualidad (Aspekthaftigkeit) de la visión y del Anbild, según lo he llamado, y el significado que adivinamos en la obra de arte y que reconocemos por la importancia que cada encuentro semejante con el arte tiene para nosotros. ¿En qué se basa este significado? ¿Qué es ese plus que se añade, y sólo por el cual llega la obra de arte a ser lo que es?

La significatividad inherente a lo bello del arte, de la obra de arte, remite a algo que no está de modo inmediato en la visión comprensible como tal.

Quite obviously, a theoretical determination of the numerical value of ? would signify great progress in our understanding of fundamental interactions. Many physicists have tried to find it, but without significant success to this day. Richard Feynman, the theory wizard of Caltech in Pasadena, once suggested that every one of his theory colleagues should write on the blackboard in his office: 137 -- how shamefully little we understand!

We get mad at someone for cutting us off in traffic or for taking too long to order at Starbucks or for not responding exactly as we see fit, and we have no idea that behind their facade, they may be dealing with some industrial-strength shit. Their lives may be in pieces. They may be in the midst of incalculable tragedy and turmoil, and they may be hanging on to their sanity by a thread. But we don't care. We don't see. We just keep pushing.

For a short time, I hated them. But when you think about it, what good does that do?It takes so much to hold on to hate—you lose your grip on what's important, you know?

You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.

I don't mind you thinking I'm stupid, but don't talk to me like I'm stupid

Often the difference between a successful marriage and a mediocre one consists of leaving about three or four things a day unsaid.

Eyes blinded by the fog of things cannot see truth. Ears deafened by the din of things cannot hear truth. Brains bewildered by the whirl of things cannot think truth. Hearts deadened by the weight of things cannot feel truth. Throats choked by the dust of things cannot speak truth.

Here and there among men, there are those who pause in the hurried rush to listen to the call of a life that is more real… He who sees and hears too much is cursed for a dreamer, a fanatic, or a fool, by the mad mob who, having eyes, see not, ears and hear not, and refuse to understand…

We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Yet the strongest, most authentic motive for deep reading…is the search for a difficult pleasure.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.

I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough.

People cannot stand the saddest truth I know about the very nature of reading and writing imaginative literature, which is that poetry does not teach us how to talk to other people: it teaches us how to talk to ourselves.

Reading is an intimate act, perhaps more intimate than any other human act. I say that because of the prolonged (or intense) exposure of one mind to another.

And what is love? My measure of it is that I should have died to spare her. Her measure is for us to be together longer. I

Approach each session as an occasion to practice being with another without expectation.

Nothing is so tiring to the reader as excavating nuggets of meaning from mountains of words.

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem. We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.

too much explanation can take the pleasure out of any poetry. (Preface, vii)