Quotes About Understanding

Qui t'as dit que je ne le savais pas ? -Tu le sais ? -Non.

I know a lot of people think therapy is about sitting around staring at your own navel - but it's staring at your own navel with a goal. And the goal is to one day to see the world in a better way and treat your loved ones with more kindness and have more to give.

Love is a word. A sound. Its association with a particular feeling is arbitrary, unmeasurable, and ultimately meaningless

My father I liked, but it was only after his death that I got to know him by writing the play.

The underlying message of the Lancet article is that if you want to understand aggressive behaviour in children, look to the social and emotional environment in which they are growing up, and the values they bring to the viewing experience.

To listen to someone means devoting time to the process, putting your own concerns on hold, remaining silent even when you're dying to say something. Patient listening also involves a willingness to postpone judgement about what is being said. Mostly, we want to rush in to agree, to disagree, to object, to correct; but listening demands the patience to let all that wait until the other person has finished saying to us what they want to say to us.

Here's the cardinal rule of the good listener: receive before you respond. [p97]

multiculturalism is the art of creating harmony out of diversity. [p58 Chapter 2: We were born to cooperate, not compete]

Certainty is the enemy of reason and of reasonableness.

Words are, of themselves, meaningless. We invest them with meaning, and, over time, come to feel as if certain words mean certain things. We construct dictionaries and then think they tell us what words mean, but dictionaries are mere historical documents, museums of meaning...

I don't think he ever told her he loved her. He probably knew the words would sound too small.

Things that appear unlikely, impossible, or paradoxical from one point of view often make perfectly good sense from another.

The gas-law of learning: . . . any amount of information no matter how small will fill any intellectual void no matter how large.

I wish" assumes that I know what is the opposite of my present experience.

No matter what we talk about, we are talking about ourselves

Now that I know that I am no wiser than anyone else, does this wisdom make me wiser?

What an absurd amount of energy I have been wasting all my life trying to find out how things 'really are', when all the time they weren't.

I talk because I feel, and I talk to you because I want you to know how I feel.

You say you just want to be my friend. I know that you mean you want to relate to my mind but not my body. I can understand that and will not ask you to relate to me in a way that you don't want to, or talk to me about subjects you find uncomfortable. But likewise I refuse to castrate myself for you by pretending not to have the feelings I have. If you want me as your friend you will have to accept my penis along with me.

Hoerenpraat natuurlijk, maar toch lief.

Was weiß denn ich vom Menschenleben? Bin freilich scheinbar drin gestanden, Aber ich hab es höchstens verstanden, Konnte mich nie darein verweben.

Sages seek from mind, not from the Buddha; fools

The Master said, "Fa-ta, when your mind practices, it reads the Lotus. When it doesn't practice, the Lotus does the reading. When your mind is true, it reads the Lotus. When your mind is false, the Lotus does the reading. When you develop the understanding of a buddha, you read the Lotus. When you develop the understanding of an ordinary being, the Lotus reads you.

And though he liked drawing trees he liked most of all to be with trees. He would climb them, lean against them, even talk to them. It saddened him to discover the not everyone shared his feelings towards them.