Quotes About Understanding

He could follow someone's mind around, and get where it was going before the other fellow knew where it was going.

There are no perfect relationships. There are no perfect partners. Relationships by their very nature are chaotic, eventful, and challenging.

Relationships are messy and there is no way to eliminate the bumps and potholes, but we don't have to make them any more difficult than they already are.

One client, who hadn't had sex with his wife in 14 months, shared in a Nice Guy group that he was tired of listening to his wife complain about her work problems. That night, for the first time in 15 years of marriage, he told his wife that he was too tired to listen. Even though she was initially angry, later that night she asked him if he wanted to make love.

There is no such thing as Just a cat.

Your enemy is never a villain in his own eyes. Keep this in mind; it may offer a way to make him your friend. If not, you can kill him without hate — and quickly.

Belief gets in the way of learning.

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

I know why we laugh. We laugh because it hurts, and it's the only thing to make it stop hurting.

Don't explain computers to laymen. Simpler to explain sex to a virgin.

Thou art god, I am god. All that groks is god.

If you don't like yourself, you can't like other people. -- Lazarus Long.

I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much... because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting ... But that's not all people laugh at. Isn't it? Perhaps I don't grok all its fullness yet. But find me something that really makes you laugh sweetheart... a joke, or anything else- but something that gave you a a real belly laugh, not a smile. Then we'll see if there isn't a wrongness wasn't there. He thought. I grok when apes learn to laugh, they'll be people.

Women talk when they want to. Or don't.

The 3-legged stool of understanding is held up by history, languages, and mathematics. Equipped with those three you can learn anything you want to learn. But if you lack any one of them you are just another ignorant peasant with dung on your boots.

Talking with a Martian is something like talking with an echo. You don't get any argument but you don't get results either.

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.

She taught me to love by loving me, and I learned—rather slowly; I wasn't too good a pupil, being set in my ways and lacking her natural talent. But I did learn. Learned that supreme happiness lies in wanting to keep another person safe and warm and happy, and being privileged to try.

It would take centuries and he must grow and grow and grow, but he was in no hurry--he grokked that Eternity and the ever-beautifully-changing Now were identical.

English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing.

Robert A. Heinlein

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — ie., none to speak of

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, 'I don't know', then it becomes possible to get at the truth.

Harshaw had the arrogant humility of the man who has learned so much that he is aware of his own ignorance and he saw no point in 'measurements' when he did not know what he was measuring.