Quotes About Understanding

If there is any person to whom you feel a dislike, that is the person of whom you ought never to speak.

The resentful man is a human with the capacity for affection so poorly developed that his understanding for the motives of others very nearly does not exist.

Whatever the culture, there's a tongue in our head. Some use it, some hold it, some bite it. For the French it is a rapier, thrusting in attack; the English, using it defensively, mumble a vague, confusing reply; for Italians and Spaniards it is an instrument of eloquence; Finns and East Asians throw you with constructive silence. Silence is a form of speech, so don't interrupt it!

the Japanese observe and quietly learn from both.

Americans using expressions like "You are killing me" or "Say that once again and I'll walk away from this deal" will cause great consternation among their Japanese partners.

Cultural and religious differences may make it impossible for some people to laugh at the same thing.

As is often true of biblical literature, it is up to the reader to hear and appraise the contradictory messages and then create from them a pattern of meaning that relates to the reader's particular situation.

In this spirit, Marxists recognize that all social analyses, no matter which theoretical framework is used to produce them, are partial and never complete or finished, No one can understand or write the whole story about how a society is structured and how it is changing.

He didn't say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech.

wir [müssen] begreifen, dass es in unserem Leben letztlich auf das Sein ankommt und nicht darauf zu erhoffen, dass das Werden ein besseres Sein ist, als die Gegenwart.

Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.

More generally, as I shall repeat in Chapter 8, one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

ER also helps students move away from a word-by-word approach to reading. It helps them to look for the general meaning of what they read. They can ignore any details they do not fully understand.

Books are masters who instruct us without rods or ferules, without words or anger, without bread or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; If you seek them, they do not hide; If you blunder, they do not scold; if you are ignorant, they do not laugh at you.

A dire il vero, quei laici che guardano un libro piegandolo a rovescio, come se fosse quello il suo verso normale, sono indegni di avere contatti con libri di qualsiasi genere.

Dogs are my favorite people.

A little kindness from person to person is better than a vast love for all humankind.

It's developing a relationship with actors that makes it work.

the fundamental purpose of school is learning, not teaching.

Michael was silent. "Too often," I said, "technology evokes a sense of wonder instead of understanding, and I think this makes it a corrosive force which sometimes requires opposition.

The Chinese believe in constant change, but with things always moving back to some prior state. They pay attention to a wide range of events; they search for relationships between things; and they think you can't understand the part without understanding the whole. Westerners live in a simpler, more deterministic world; they focus on salient objects or people instead of the larger picture; and they think they can control events because they know the rules that govern the behavior of objects.

14. Song and Schwarz, "If It's Hard to Read, It's Hard to Do.