Quotes About Understanding

somewhat leaky boat are on the lookout for a human companion. Not me. I have learned to love the inside of my own head. There isn't much I'd rather say than think. Of course for more than thirty years I've had Chuck. We've known each other so long that we don't have to talk, and when we do we don't have to say anything. When he asks me if I'd like to take a trip around the world I can say yes knowing I'll never have to go.

Is memory property? If two people remember something differently is one of them wrong? Wasn't my memory of a memory also real?

If God were a theory, the study of theology would be the way to understand Him. But God is alive and in need of love and worship. This is why thinking of God is related to our worship. In an analogy of artistic understanding, we sing to Him before we are able to understand Him. We have to love in order to know. Unless we learn how to sing, unless we know how to love, we will never learn to understand Him.

The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted...Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.

The principle to be kept in mind is to know what we see rather than to see what we know.

In our own lives the voice of God speaks slowly, a syllable at a time. Reaching the peak of years, dispelling some of our intimate illusions and learning how to spell the meaning of life-experiences backwards, some of us discover how the scattered syllables form a single phrase.

Only those will apprehend religion who can probe its depth, who can combine intuition and love with the rigor of method

Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living . What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.

We may not know whether our understanding is correct, or whether our sentiments are noble, but the air of the day surrounds us like spring which spreads over the land without our aid or notice.

The surest way of misunderstanding revelation is to take it literally, to imagine that God spoke to the prophet on a long-distance telephone. Yet most of us succumb to such fancy, forgetting that the cardinal sin in thinking about ultimate issues is literal-mindedness.

Happy is he who is aware of the mysteries of his Lord.

The most incomprehensible fact is that we comprehend at all.

This is the status of the Bible in modern life: it is a sublime answer, but we do not know the question any more. Unless we recover the question, there is no hope of understanding the Bible.

Het begin van geluk is gelegen in het begrip dat het leven zonder verwondering niet de moeite waard is geleefd te worden. (p.56)

The creatures of the earth think of Him as being on high, declaring, 'His glory is above the heavens' (Psalms 113:4), while the heavenly beings think of Him as being below, declaring, 'His glory is over all the earth? (Psalms 57:12), until they both, in heaven and on earth concur in declaring, Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place,' because He is unknowable and no one can truly understand Him.

For Sinai consisted of both a divine proclamation and a human perception. It was a moment in which God was not alone.

In trying to understand Jewish existence a Jewish philosopher must look for agreement with the men of Sinai as well as with the people of Auschwitz.

We must never forget that there is a higher truth than the one we are able to comprehend at first sight.

Truth is the courage to fathom the facts in order to see how they relate to the Word.

The Bible is to be understood by the spirit that grows with it, wrestles with it, and prays with it.

Thus Judaism is based upon a minimum of revelation and a maximum of interpretation, upon the will of God and upon the understanding of Israel.

The Torah is primarily divine ways rather than divine laws.

The prophets make us partners of an existence meant for us. What was revealed to them was not for their sake but intended to inspire us. The word must not freeze into habit; it must remain an event. To disregard the importance of continuous understanding is an evasion of the living challenge of the prophets, an escape from the urgency of responsible experience of every man, a denial of the deeper meaning of "the oral Torah.

Conceptual thinking is adequate when we are engaged in an effort to enhance our knowledge about the world. Situational thinking is necessary when we are engaged in an effort to understand issues on which we stake our very existence.