Quotes About Understanding

Carmen's first language is Spanish. I only speak Spanish with her... and with Alec she is smart enough to know that she needs to switch to English.

In sociology, they call it 'code switching.' I can feel just as comfortable in a room full of people who don't look like me because I understand the social cues of class and race.

Everybody likes to hold up a really big righteous sword when people make mistakes. Well guess what, now it's recorded and everyone has access to it... so let's stop judging people.

We simply believe that we should lean into the world with something other than the pointed edge of a sword.

It is important that the audience should understand every syllable of every word, for only then can they grasp the meaning of the song.

I don't categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I don't judge; I just play them.

It's never clear to me why it's so hard for people to say sorry. It's a simple word, just two syllables and its positive impact is enormous.

When you think about musicians who are reading music, my contention has always been the energy that you're using deciphering what the symbol is is taking away from the maximum creative energy that you might have had if you understood that it's but a symbol.

I understand the power of symbols, and if I had anything on my house that seriously offended someone, I'd take it down if for no other reason than common courtesy.

Art is about forgetting all these feelings, good and bad, and trying to understand what acts will last longer, which symbols will remain in history. It's a question of perspective: The further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems.

To be sympathetic without discrimination is so very debilitating.

People aren't inherently sympathetic.

Sometimes films ignore other points of view because it's simpler to tell the story that way, but the more genuine and sympathetic you are to different points of view and situations, the more real the story is.

It's interesting that one of the definitions of the word 'human' is 'sympathetic.' More and more people are beginning to show that they understand why that is important.

I try to find what makes even the worst, most despicable character sympathetic at his or her core.

I'm lucky to be married to someone who entirely gets what I do. She is totally sympathetic to the actor's life. Her own mother was an actress, so she sort of grew up with it.

Sympathetic characters usually have a voice. They usually don't have any trouble being heard.

There will be people who are sensitive about seeing the American point of view presented as less than sympathetic.

A lot of the work I've done has involved playing quite sympathetic characters.

My parents, once I made it clear to them that I wanted to do science, they were totally sympathetic.

People have very difficult lives. We can judge them for making the wrong decisions, but if you look harder and understand that these lives can be difficult, hopefully you're at least a bit more sympathetic to the decisions these people have to make.

As a firearms owner myself, I'm very sympathetic to the concerns that people like me face every day.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Sympathy is charming, but it does not make up for pain.