Quotes About Understanding

My dear man, wisdom is a primitive concept," he had told him. "What we want now is knowledge.

According to the account in the second chapter of Genesis, Satan is the father of science, for he induced Eve to make Adam taste of the fruit of knowledge, and the

Fifty grand for a paper bucket? Well it was all about context, you see.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, that children understand; their stories and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the water of their lives.

These days, though, tolerance means that you accept the other person's views as being true or legitimate. If you claim that someone is wrong, you can get accused of being intolerant--even though, ironically, the person making the charge of intolerance isn't being accepting of your beliefs.

Rodney Stark puts it this way: "To expect to learn anything about important theological problems from Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett is like expecting to learn about medieval history from someone who had only read Robin Hood.

philosophy is "the love of wisdom.

Rumpty! he muttered, which was very rude if you were one of the few people in the universe who understood what it meant.

Only fools and criminals didn't know why they did things.

Lizzie had come to understand that Sue's mission in life was to say the things that she, or indeed anyone else, wouldn't or couldn't.

acting nice feels natural—so natural that it's hard to detect its hidden, selfish payoff: It allows women to avoid uncomfortable but necessary conflict

Immature people will not receive loving truth, no matter how gently you offer it. You can agonize over what to say, endlessly rehearse your future conversation, and then deliver your pearls of wisdom in a tone more tender than Florence Nightingale—and in the end, it won't help. The immature want what they want, when they want it, and how they want it, even if having what they want damages you.

you will be continually disappointed if you expect your husband to intuitively read your mind so that you don't have to own your own feelings

We shall then, for the first time, see everyone as he really was. There will be surprises.4

You learn eventually that, while there are no villains, there are no heroes either. And until you make the final discovery that there are only human beings, who are therefore all the more fascinating, you are liable to miss something.

You have to be able to see things from the user's point of view.

learn to program by looking at good programs — not just at what they do, but at the source code.

looking at things from other people's point of view is practically the secret of success.

Reading and experience train your model of the world. And even if you forget the experience or what you read, its effect on your model of the world persists. Your mind is like a compiled program you've lost the source of. It works, but you don't know why.

Most makers make things for a human audience. And to engage an audience you have to understand what they need.

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.

Empathy doesn't necessarily mean being self-sacrificing. Far from it. Understanding how someone else sees things doesn't imply that you'll act in his interest; in some situations — in war, for example — you want to do exactly the opposite.

Part of what software has to do is explain itself. So

Like painting, most software is intended for a human audience. And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work.