Quotes About Comprehension

Philosophical attention is focused on a more complex matter: the possession of wisdom (sophia – the wisdom loved by the philosophos). It is assumed, taken to be a matter beyond argument, that wisdom is not just knowing individual facts, but being able to relate them to one another in a unified and structured way, one that involves understanding of a field or area of knowledge.

unified understanding is not a theoretical grasp cut off from practice, but may itself involve a practical ability to apply the understanding in question.)

What would show that a person has wisdom and understanding comes to be referred to as 'giving an account', logon didonai. Logos is the ordinary Greek word for reason; what you say about the topic you are supposed to understand must give reasons in a way that explains the matter.

What would show that a person has wisdom and understanding comes to be referred to as 'giving an account', logon didonai. Logos is the ordinary Greek word for reason; what you say about the topic you are supposed to understand must give reasons in a way that explains the matter. Socrates' victims can produce plenty of words, but they fail to give a reasoned account of their subjects, and so are shown not to understand what they are talking about.

Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept.

We write to make sense of it all.

Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn't struck you.

Wisdom is knowing what you can accept.

She studied it soberly, with something like recognition or acknowledgment in her eyes, as if those who have been dead understand things that will never be understood by those who have only lived.

This is not a journal", he wrote, "it is not notes for a novel, not a line-a-day record of the trivia my mind dredges up. Call it an attempt to understand." (Bruce) -Wallace Stegner (The Big Rock Candy Mountain, Pg. 436)

And one trembles to be so understood and, at last,To understand, as if to know becameThe fatality of seeing things too well.

If you've told a child a thousand times and he still doesn't understand, then it is not the child who is a slow learner.

In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.

If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused

Being read is a fringe benefit, and being read with understanding is a form of grace.

The only feeling that anyone can have about an event he does not experience is the feeling aroused by his mental image of that event. That is why until we know what others think they know, we cannot truly understand their acts.

Es ist wie bei einem gedruckten Satz: Er besteht aus lauter verschieden aussehenden Buchstaben, die scheinbar willkürlich durcheinanderstehen. Aber trotzdem kann man ihn lesen! Und er ergibt einen Sinn. Man kann sogar drüber lachen, wenn er komisch ist. So funktioniert Buchhaim. Das ist Biblionismus.

The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.

I don't learn so good, no matter how good the teacher is.

In the effort to tell a whole story, to see it whole and clear, I have had to imagine more than I have known.

The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.

She can't see it, Joss. We're at the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum here, surrounded by gamma rays. I know school isn't your favorite thing, but honestly, don't you pay attention at all?

there is something about understanding that comforts me, even if I don't like what I understand.

They looked at each other. "I don't understand it. But I know who sent it." Maddie Singer's thumbs and her iPhone were often incompatible. She claimed she'd been a lot more comfortable with her smartphone before it got so smart.