Quotes About Comprehension

Chinese Room

we needed to understand what "understanding

understanding cannot be measured by external behavior

Of course, having information to use is one thing. Knowing what it means and how to use it is a different story.

As Deborah had so astutely pointed out, I was engaged and still didn't get it.

I knew I was supposed to understand that Rita was actually saying something very specific, that her pauses and stutters added up to a great and marvelous thing that a human male would intuitively grasp. But I had not a single clue as to what it might be, nor how to figure it out. Should I count the breaths? Time the pauses and convert the numbers to Bible verses to arrive at the secret code? What was she trying to tell me? And why, for that matter, was she trying to tell me anything at all?

This was not even a matter of putting two and two together; it was looking at four.

She said it through a mouthful of pizza and still made it sound as if she was explaining shoelaces to someone with brain damage.

Deborah was the only person on earth who knew what I really was, and even though she was still getting used to the idea, I had thought she understood the very careful boundaries set up by Harry, and understood, too, that I would never cross them.

felt my jaw muscles moving, but no matter how carefully I listened, I did not hear myself saying anything. Brian watched me with real enjoyment for a moment before he finally spoke up.

I felt my jaw muscles moving, but no matter how carefully I listened, I did not hear myself saying anything. Brian watched me with real enjoyment for a moment before he finally spoke up.

There comes a point in every conversation where at least one of the people involved has to know what is being talked about, and I decided that point had arrived.

Confused?" "Not really. To be confused you have to be paying attention.

Knowles," said Emma

understand the

Being six is the closest most of us will ever come to understanding what it's like to have a butler.

Understanding that all sciences are essentially one rather than marking them off into distinct realms that share borders but no territory will, I think, increase our comprehension of them all in ways that we cannot yet imagine.

Wenn man verstehen will, was einer meint oder sagt, muss man im Grunde das, was er meint oder sagt, immer schon wissen. Ist dann ein gelungener Dialog nur Wiedererkennen? Und das Verstehen nicht etwas ein Weg, sondern vielmehr ein Zustand?

And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand.

Like so many of Archie's words, they seemed not to enter through my ears but to settle on my skin, there to burrow like tiny eggs awaiting the rain of my maturity, when they would hatch and I at last would understand.

The empty look on Beans's face indicated that the answer had reached his ears, but no farther.

Claude's father was one of those guys who thought if you didn't laugh, it was because you hadn't heard the joke clearly enough.

The only way to even begin to understand language is to love it so much that we allow it to confound us and to torment us to the extent that it threatens to swallow us whole.

We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend.