Quotes About Comprehension

fact that she couldn't understand herself.

une science indigeste?

We refuse to believe that which we don't understand.

We become adolescents when the words that adults exchange with one another become intelligible to us.

In the past few years I've assigned books to be read before a student attends one of my weeklong seminars. I have been astonished by how few people -- people who supposedly want to write -- read books, and if they read them, how little they examine them.

but the watchers knew their story

Character displays "the weighty impatience of having to explain something that should already be understood.

Whenever I meet in Laplace with the words 'Thus it plainly appears', I am sure that hours and perhaps days, of hard study will alone enable me to discover how it plainly appears.

You may be an idiot but I don't think you're a fool.

If only it was effortless to understand you because if it wasn't so. . .there wouldn't be any point to be by your side... —kakeru manabe

Alas, in our age, some arrogantly believe that if they cannot comprehend something, then God cannot comprehend it, either.

The difference between stupid and intelligent people – and this is true whether or not they are well-educated – is that intelligent people can handle subtlety.

People of a television culture need "plain language" both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it in some circumstances by law. The Gettysburg Address would probably have been largely incomprehensible to a 1985 audience.

The modern idea of testing a reader's "comprehension," as distinct from something else a reader may be doing, would have seemed an absurdity in 1790 or 1830 or 1860. What else was reading but comprehending?

the world we live in is very nearly incomprehensible to most of us. There is almost no fact, whether actual or imagined, that will surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and consistent picture of the world that would make the fact appear as an unacceptable contradiction. We believe because there is no reason not to believe.

That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached.

Controlling your body is, however, only a minimal requirement. You must also have learned to pay no attention to the shapes of the letters on the page. You must see through them, so to speak, so that you can go directly to the meanings of the words they form. If you are preoccupied with the shapes of the letters, you will be an intolerably inefficient reader, likely to be thought stupid.

Al lector se le exigirá que asuma una actitud imparcial y objetiva. Esto incluye su aporte a la tarea de lo que Bertrand Russell denominó la "inmunidad a la elocuencia", que significa que el lector es capaz de distinguir entre el placer sensual, el encanto, o el tono insinuante (si lo hubiere) de las palabras y la lógica de su argumento.

Did he have extra-sharp hearing or just a sixth sense about the approach of his best friend?

Discovering laws involves drafting them. Recognizing patterns is very much a matter of inventing and imposing them. Comprehension and creation go on together.

Without language, one cannot talk to people and understand them; one cannot share their hopes and aspirations, grasp their history, appreciate their poetry, or savor their songs.

La verdadera clarividencia descansa, no en tu capacidad de ver cosas más allá del alcance de la visión humana, sino más bien en tu capacidad de comprender lo que ves.

True clairvoyance rests, not in your ability to see things beyond the range of human vision, but rather in your ability to understand that which you see.

El hombre natural no acepta las cosas del espíritu de Dios porque le son locura, no las puede comprender, porque se han de discernir espiritualmente".