How To Understand Quotes & Sayings

Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills). — Albert Einstein

Until we are willing and able to make the connections between what we are eating and what was required to get it on our plate, and how it affects us to buy, serve, and eat it, we will be unable to make the connections that will allow us to live wisely and harmoniously on this earth.When we cannot make connections, we cannot understand, and we are less free, less intelligent, less loving, and less happy. — Will Tuttle

Someday, my love, you're going to understand just how much I care for you. You're my light, my warmth, my other half. I only feel alive when I'm with you. I love you. Caine — Julie Garwood

We imagine "pure" cybernetic systems, but we can prove only that we know how to build fairly dysfunctional ones. We kid ourselves when we think we understand something, even a computer, merely because we can model or digitize it. — Jaron Lanier

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom
which is bordered on all sides by isolation
is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet. — Saul Bellow

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like'. Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity. — Richard J. Foster

I went through some tough times because if you're used to having a voice in contemporary culture and all of sudden, you don't have that voice, you don't have that outlet. I didn't appreciate that. I didn't understand how important that was to me. And all of a sudden, after investing all this time and energy, I had no identity. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I had to say. I didn't have a way to say it. It was very painful. — Tom Ford

I hate how the people who really get you are the ones you can never hold on to for very long. And the ones who don't understand you at all stick around. — Marisha Pessl

How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand ... there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep. — J.R.R. Tolkien

When the drum beat comes to an end, you shall not hear the drum beat again, but you shall remember how it sounded, and you shall understand clearly how you should or should not have danced to the drum beat — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I think there is something about being described and having your abilities described as something definable. I was diagnosed at about six, when a teacher couldn't understand how I could be a bright girl and yet couldn't read yet. I did that whole backwards letters thing. I used to sit in the same place when I did homework because I remembered that B's went towards the window and D's went away from it. — Lucy Corin

Yet, know this if you understand nothing else: You have a right to your joy; children or no children; spouse or no spouse. Seek it! Find it! And you will have a joyful family, no matter how much money you make or don't make. And if they aren't joyful, and they get up and leave you, then release them with love to seek their joy. — Neale Donald Walsch

We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed - begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I've never mastered it - I only know how true it is; that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life. — Truman Capote

If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position hire the best writer. it doesn't matter if the person is marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever, their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing clear writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. great writers know how to communicate. they make things easy to understand. they can put themselves in someone else's shoes. they know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. Writing is making a comeback all over our society ... Writing is today's currency for good ideas. — Jason Fried

How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything. Besides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we ever do it? — George Bernard Shaw

That is why we have the polio vaccine. People are blazing their own trial. That is what seems to be important. I don't care to follow and to do what the mass is doing. That is not doing anything, to be doing what everyone else is doing. Everybody is unique. The funny thing about people now is that people don't really understand or really appreciate how unique each individual on earth is. — Henry Threadgill

It was all a mistake," he pleaded, standing out of his ship, his wife slumped behind him in the deeps of the hold, like a dead woman. "I came to Mars like any honest enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I built me the finest little stand you ever saw right there on that land by the crossroads - you know where it is. You've got to admit it's a good job of building." Sam laughed, staring around. "And that Martian - I know he was a friend of yours - came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All I wanted to do was have a hot-dog stand, the only one on Mars, the first and most important one. You understand how it is? I was going to serve the best darned hot dogs there, with chili and onions and orange juice." The — Ray Bradbury

A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from snares, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognise snares, and a lion to frighten wolves. Those that wish to be only lions do not understand this. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Redd's lact of knowledge astounded the tutor. Did she really understand so little about how a Wonderland princess became queen?
She doesn't know what she doesn't know," he mumbled, and then: "Your Imperial Viciousness, perhpas we should speak face-to-face, without this velvet barrier between us. Are you decent?"
I'm never decent! — Frank Beddor

Using SROI to explore the value of our online question and answer service, askTheSite, helped us develop new mechanisms for speaking to young people and gain a real insight into the impact of our work. The project enabled us to demonstrate YouthNets commitment to robust impact measurement as well as our commercial approach to project evaluation. Perhaps most importantly, being able to assign a monetary value to askTheSite has enabled YouthNet to convey to current and potential funders how valuable the service is for both young people and the wider society in a language that they understand — Sarah McCoy

We call ourselves Homo sapiens
man the wise
because our intelligence is so important to us. For thousands of years, we have tried to understand how we think: that is, how a mere handful of matter can perceive, understand, predict, and manipulate a world far larger and more complicated than itself. The field of artificial intelligence, or AI, goes further still: it attempts not just to understand but also to build intelligent entities. — Stuart J. Russell

To get the most out of an algorithm, you must be able to do more than simply follow its steps. You need to understand the following: The algorithm's behavior. Does it find the best possible solution, or does it just find a good solution? Could there be multiple best solutions? Is there a reason to pick one "best" solution over the others? The algorithm's speed. Is it fast? Slow? Is it usually fast but sometimes slow for certain inputs? The algorithm's memory requirements. How much memory will the algorithm need? Is this a reasonable amount? Does the algorithm require billions of terabytes more memory than a computer could possibly have (at least today)? The main techniques the algorithm uses. Can you reuse those techniques to solve similar problems? — Rod Stephens

How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence? — R.D. Laing

It may be asked, how come we to ascribe our sensations to any external cause? And is there sufficient ground for so ascribing them? It is known, that there are metaphysicians who have raised a controversy on the point; maintaining that we are not warranted in referring our sensations to a cause such as we understand by the word Body, or to any external cause whatever. — John Stuart Mill

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions. — Parker J. Palmer

I understand how not even a priest can resist you when you want him. I can understand how love is something horrible and complex and hurting and something that still happens even if it shouldn't, and can't, and how one can want to be somebody else's world. I get it. And it fucking hurts. — Aleksandr Voinov

Love has been many things throughout history: the simple comfort of the familiar, having a person to know and being known by that person in return; a connection born of shared experiences, an irrational joy in another's presence; a particular calming influence that one member of the couple may exert on the other, or that they both provide to one another. A combination of all these and myriad other things can go into making one person wish to stay tied to another. Anyone who is not in the couple--that is, everyone else in the world--will not understand precisely how or why it works for two people. — Annette Gordon-Reed

I just don't see how anyone can be so cold. (Kiara) And you should be grateful, little girl, to whatever god you worship, that you can say that. In the world we come from, I don't understand how anyone can be anything but cold. (Syn) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

But then I knew better than anyone how the persona you chose to present to the world could be very different from what was really inside. I knew how grief could make you behave in ways you couldn't even begin to understand. — Jojo Moyes

When we presume to lie for the benefit of others, we have decided that we are the best judges of how much they should understand about their own lives - about how they appear, their reputations, or their prospects in the world. — Sam Harris

Maris held his hand to his temple as if his head was throbbing from their discussion. "Okay, alien life-form here. I still don't understand the nuances of how all this works." His face was a mask of frustration. "Everyone thinks you're gayer than I am. Won't they ask how you're supposed to produce an heir when you're ostensibly homosexual?" Darling — Sherrilyn Kenyon

My parents did not discourage me but could not understand how I could make a living by art. Their idea of an artist was a person who was condemned to starvation. — Jacob Epstein

I thought to myself then that it didn't matter where I ended up; I'd always be living that summer in that town, wishing that I;d done things differently, tormented by the fact that I hadn't. I'd never go far enough to be able to escape it. Maybe you're happy about that. OR maybe you're not. Maybe you're carrying your own regrets, and you understand how easy it is to let your life get away from you. I wish I could be the hero of this story, but I'm not. I'm just the one to tell it, at least my part in it- the story of Katie Mackey and the people who failed her. It's an old one, this tale of selfish desires and the lament that follows, as ancient as the story of Adam and Eve turned away forever from paradise. — Lee Martin

In education, we need to begin paying attention to matters routinely ignored. We spend long hours trying to teach a variety of courses on, say, the structure of government or the structure of the amoeba. But how much effort goes into studying the structure of everyday life - the way time is allocated, the personal uses of money, the places to go for help in a society exploding with complexity? We take for granted that young people already know their way around our social structure. In fact, most have only the dimmest image of the way the world of work or business is organized. Most students have no conception of the architecture of their own city's economy, or the way the local bureaucracy operates, or the place to go to lodge a complaint against a merchant. Most do not even understand how their own schools - even universities - are structured, let alone how much structures are changing under the impact of the Third Wave. — Alvin Toffler

There's a reason for the word heartbeat not be called beat of heart. The perfect woman only needs a good beat. The heart will follow. Emotions, when put in equilibrium with reason, create more miracles than any emotion, no matter how strong, deprived from reason. This is why it's much easier to love a woman that can play the drums or any other instrument with rhythm, than one that believes in unreasonable magic, simply because there's more magic in reason than in the lack of it. You see, loving someone that you truly want to love, someone you admire, someone you want to spend your time with, helping, sharing and growing together, makes much more sense than expecting someone to love you for no reason than your will, needs and desires. And when humans understand this, they will understand love, find it easily and never lose it again. — Robin Sacredfire

It doesn't matter how many years go by, how much therapy I embark on, how much I try to achieve that elusive thing known as perspective, which is supposed to put all past wrongs into their rightful and diminished place, that happy place where all the talk is of lessons learned and inner peace. No one will ever understand the potency of my memories, which are so solid and vivid that I don't need a psychiatrist to tell me they are driving me crazy. My subconscious has not buried them, my superego has not restrained them. They are front and center, they are going on right now. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

There's something about those secrets that only the deceased person can rightly understand. Something that can't be explained, no matter how hard you try. They're what the dead person has to take with him to his grave. Like a valuable piece of luggage. — Haruki Murakami

You know, I think there was a point in time when people didn't really understand how birth certificates were kept in the state of Hawaii, and now, I think that it's been pretty much disclosed that they used to have a long form and now they don't have a long form. Arizona used to have a long form, we now have a short form. — Jan Brewer

The best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us. This doesn't mean that we should do what others expect us to do, but it helps us to understand ourselves better. — Paulo Coelho

When it comes to such open-heart reflection, I'm a firm believer in the observer effect, which states that anything you try to observe is automatically changed by the mere fact that you're looking at it. The way I see it, if you try to study your emotions on a microscopic level, the best you can do is understand how it feels to hold the magnifying glass. — Neal Shusterman

What I don't understand is how a policy against outing trumps a policy of reporting. Whenever you're reporting on hypocrisy, you're kind of 'outing' something to begin with. — Kirby Dick

Carl had met Renee at a party given by a colleague of his. He had been taken with her face. Hers was a remarkably plain face, and it appeared quite somber most of the time, but during the party he saw her smile twice and frown once; at those moments, her entire countenance assumed the expression as if it had never known another. Carl had been caught by surprise: he could recognize a face that smiled regularly, or a face that frowned regularly, even if it were unlined. He was curious as to how her face had developed such a close familiarity with so many expressions, and yet normally revealed nothing. It took a long time for him to understand Renee, to read her expressions. But it had definitely been worthwhile. Now — Ted Chiang

My point is, or should be, simple: history happened. The object is not to undo it, distort it, or to make it fit our present political attitudes. The object of history, which each generation properly interprets anew, is to understand what happened and why. A multicultural Canada can and should look at its past with fresh eyes. It should, for example, study how the Ukrainians came to Canada, how they were treated, how they lived, sometimes suffered, ultimately prospered, and became Canadians. What historians should not do is to recreate history to make it serve present purposes. They should not obscure or reshape events to make them fit political agendas. They should not declare whole areas of the past off-limits because they can only be presented in politically unfashionable terms any more than they should fail to draw object lessons from a past that was frequently less than pleasant and less than honourable. Because the past was not perfect, it must not be made perfect today. — J.L. Granatstein

I've been playing piano my whole life, but I'd never tried to understand how compositions are made, really. Try to imagine if you'd loved paintings your whole life but had never painted one. My aspiration now is just to understand. — Caio Fonseca

I think that language matters. I think that people who are in public life have an opportunity to help the public understand issues and understand the urgency of issues. And to that extent, I think it is important how issues are talked about. — Maya Harris

No, I don't think you understand just how stupid goblins are. Let me give you an example. One of the B'wa Kell generals, and this is their top fairy, was caught caught trying to pass off forged credit slips by signing his own name. — Eoin Colfer

I understand how difficult it can be for an African-American in today's society. In fact, I can relate to black people very well indeed. My ancestors once owned slaves, and it is in my lineage to work closely with the black community. However, just because they were freed over a century ago doesn't mean they can now be freeloaders. They need to be told to work hard, and the incentives just aren't there for them anymore. When I'm president I plan to work closely with the black community to bring a sense of pride and work ethic back into view for them. — Mitt Romney

And wasn't that him giving her permission to hurt him? It felt as if he were handing over the reins of his own suicidal impulses. That was how Sadie understood it. Of course, it was how she wanted to understand it, because to her, toying with him and offering him hope every now and then that she might actually find value in him as a human being, before pulling it all out from under him, was pure pleasure. It was everything and more. So there'd been no reason why she'd done what she'd done. There'd just been no reason not to. — Stephanie Kuehn

One of the things about working for an old school studio like Warner Bros. is that there is an institutional culture and institutional memory, in terms of production design, camera work, and directors who understand how to do this kind of thing. — Bruno Heller

The worst part is the unknown. The pain of being alone, the loneliness, is familiar. You've dealt with that. You understand it. But loving someone, risking everything, is unknown. There's no way to know how bad it's going to be. You barely survive the pain of being alone, so how can you deal with anything worse? So you don't bother to try. — Susan Mallery

All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence. — Luis Bunuel

There are freaky talking mannequins in the Salem Witch Museum that recite the Lord's Prayer and while they do resemble shrunken apples they nevertheless help the visitor understand how hard it must have been for the condemned to say the line about forgiving those who trespass against us. — Sarah Vowell

Chinese Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? — Maxine Hong Kingston

Give two cooks the same ingredients and the same recipe; it is fascinating to observe how, like handwriting, their results differ. After you cook a dish repeatedly, you begin to understand it. Then you can reinvent it a bit and make it yours. A written recipe can be useful, but sometimes the notes scribbled in the margin are the key to a superlative rendition. Each new version may inspire improvisation based on fresh understanding. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as all that, but such exciting minor epiphanies keep cooking lively. — David Tanis

I need to learn how to stop destroying myself, stop being hard on myself and be nice to myself. I need to keep telling myself that I need to keep wanting something, something nice, something warm[so] I can make other people happy. I can understand other people's pain because I can love even after all that is left of me is gone because I have that strength. — Daul Kim

As the physicist Paul Davies puts it, 'If everything needs everything else, how did the communities of molecules ever arise in the first place?' It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake - but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life. It is also little wonder that we have barely begun to understand it. — Bill Bryson

Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe ... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way.
River: Also, I can kill you with my brain. — Ben Edlund

The unsolved problems of the physical world now seem even more formidable than those solved in the twentieth century.

Though in application it works splendidly, we do not even understand the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, much less how it might be united with general relativity.

We don't know why the dimensionless constants (ratios of masses of elementary particles, ratios of strength of gravitational to electric forces, fine structure constant, etc.) have the values they do, unless we appeal to the implausible anthropic principle, which seems like a regression to Aristotelian teleology. — Gerald Holton

For he who lives as passion directs will not hear argument that dissuades him, nor understand it if he does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change his ways? — Aristotle.

Human beings, in point of fact, are lonely by nature, and one should feel sorry for them and love them and mourn with them. It is certain that people would understand one another better and love one another more if they would admit to one another how lonely they were, how sad they were in their tormented, anxious longings and feeble hopes. — Halldor Laxness

Sometimes, when you're feeling you're lowest, the real you is summoned~And you understand, maybe for the first time ever, how grand you are, because you discover that vulnerable doesn't mean powerless, scared doesn't mean lacking in beauty, and uncertainty doesn't mean that you're lost~These realizations alone will set you on a journey that you will take you far beyond what you used to think of as extraordinary.~There is always a bright side, The Universe — Mike Dooley

The Jews understand that the blessing of wealth was dependant upon obedience to the law and covenant. The laws in the Torah, if followed, would bring blessings.5 The Tanakh says, "How joyful are those who fear the Lord and delight in obeying his commands ... they themselves will be wealthy." (NLT, Psalm 112:1, 3) "If they listen and obey God, they will be blessed with prosperity throughout their lives." (NLT, Job 36:11) — H.W. Charles

When I say, 'I love you,' it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I've seen your kindness and your strength. I've seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are. You're a hell of a person. — Joss Whedon

Jesper jabbed an accusing finger at Kuwei. "You should have said something!"
Kuwei shrugged. "You were very brave on Black Veil. Since we're all probably going to die - "
"Damn it," Jesper cursed, stalking toward the door.
"You're a very good kisser," called Kuwei after him.
Jesper turned. "How good is your Kerch really?"
"Fairly good."
"Okay, then I hope you understand exactly what I mean when I say you are definitely more trouble than you're worth."
Kuwei beamed, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "Kaz seems to think I'm worth a great deal now."
Jesper rolled his eyes skyward. "You fit right in here. — Leigh Bardugo

Back then, I didn't understand that what was happening in my house was not happening in everyone's house at night, when the doors were shut and the blinds were drawn. It took me just as long to sort out my physical self - how to dress in a way that flattered my shape, how to do my hair and makeup (or pay professionals to do it), how to be in a body, in the world. It took time before I could take all that pain and use it; transform all that loneliness and isolation and shame into stories. — Jennifer Weiner

The tendency to separate war stories from immigrant stories means that most Americans don't understand how many of the immigrants and refugees in the United States have fled from wars - many of which this country has had a hand in. Although — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Very few women understand how great is the hunger in a man to be near femininity...(b)ut if a woman wishes to give a most precious gift to a man, if she would truly feed this masculine hunger (a hunger that he will seldom show but that is always there), she will be very, very feminine when her man is in a mood, so he can get his bearings and be a man again. — Robert A. Johnson

Before I got to Juilliard I remember that I had learned the first few bars to all the Sachse etudes in several different keys because I knew what was coming. So in the first year he was throwing these Sachse etudes at me and I would knock off the first eight bars and fly right through it. He would say, 'Alright, that's good enough.' But, in my third year, he said 'Get out the Sachse book.' I couldn't understand why. So I pull it out and he said, 'Here, start in the middle.' I was in trouble! He said, 'Hey Balm, I took you for a guy who knows how to transpose-you're nothing but a bugler!' — Neil Balme

Stevie: (Not listening) That you can do these two things ... and not understand how it ... SHATTERS THE GLASS!!?? How it cannot be dealt with-how stop and forgiveness have nothing to do with it? and how I am destroyed? How you are? How I cannot admit it though I know it!? How I cannot deny it because I cannot admit it!? Cannot admit it, because it is outside of denying!? — Edward Albee

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

This book might also be seen as "a Christian primer." A primer teaches us how to read. Reading is not just about learning to recognize and pronounce words, but also about how to hear and understand them. This book's purpose is to help us to read, hear, and inwardly digest Christian language without preconceived understandings getting in the way. — Marcus J. Borg

They need to learn poetry. They don't need to learn about poetry. They don't need to be told how to interpret poetry. They don't need to be told how to understand poetry. They need to learn it. — Peter Davison

I had wished to find in philosophy and religion a remedy for my disgrace; I searched out an asylum to secure me from love ... duty, reason and decency, which upon other occasions have some power over me, are here useless. The Gospel is a language I do not understand when it opposes my passion ... but when love has once been sincere how difficult it is to determine to love no more! 'Tis a thousand times more easy to renounce the world than love. I hate this deceitful, faithless world; I think no more of it ... — Pierre Abelard

I believe that every one of us has something that's very unique to us specifically. Something unique enough that no one else might really ever understand it - not our parents, or teachers, or best friends, or siblings.
It's our point of view.
Our point of view is what makes us unique, because no one else - no one else - has your particular combination of thoughts, and dreams, and hopes, and desires, and ambitions and memories, and experiences. No one. And I believe that every once in a while, the Universe opens itself up to you and you alone, and shows you something that no one else is going to understand. And you have to decide in that moment how much you believe in what you have seen - even if everyone else in the world tells you you're wrong. — James A. Owen

I'm a person who really likes to understand motives - the inner motives and the inner personalities of persons. Why do people do some things? How do they deal with themselves while doing them? Definitely one of the most interesting parts of doing interviews and creating the movie was going into those persona issues in each one of them. — Dror Moreh

Arjuna asked Sri Krishna, "In this chaotic condition of my mind, what is my duty? I surrender myself to you, great Master. Please tell me."
The answer of Bhagavan Sri Krishna is, "You understand nothing. You draw conclusions without proper understanding of the structure of life and your relationship to people or things in general. It is a very sorry state. How can you draw conclusions without proper premises? If you draw a conclusion based on a wrong premise, the conclusion is also wrong. Therefore, all that you have been told up to this time is without any foundation because you do not know either yourself or the world. — Swami Krishnananda

Question: how can one manage not to lose time? Answer: experience it at its full length. Means: spend days in the dentist's waiting room on an uncomfortable chair; live on one's balcony on a Sunday afternoon; listen to lectures in a language that one does not understand, choose the most roundabout and least convenient routes on the railway (and, naturally, travel standing up); queue at the box-office for theatres and so on and not take one's seat; etc. — Albert Camus

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber

Taxing Women is a must-have primer for any woman who wants to understand how our current tax system affects her family's economic condition. In plain English, McCaffery explains how the tax code stacks the deck against women and why it's in women's economic interest to lead the next great tax rebellion. — Patricia Schroeder

What disturbs or assures us about race has very little to do with blood or biology. Race is about how you use language, understand your heritage, interpret your history, identify with your kin, figure out what your meaning and worth to a society that places values on you beyond your control. And it's also about what people see you as - or take you to be. — Michael Eric Dyson

How much the fiction of Sir Walter Scott owes to Froissart, and to Philip de Comines after Froissart, those only can understand who have read both the old chronicles and the modern romances. It was one of the congenial labors of — William Cleaver Wilkinson

I would like to help people have honest and constructive conversations about energy. We need to understand how much energy our modern lifestyles use, decide how much energy we would like to use in the future, and choose where we will get that energy from. — David J. C. MacKay

A person who thought he knew everything simply didn't understand how much there was to know. — Jeanne DuPrau

The design of the Mac wasn't what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it's all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. — Steve Jobs

And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try. — Libba Bray

Incidentally, part of a photographer's gift should be with people. You can do some wonderful work if you know how to make people understand what you're doing and feel all right about it, and you can do terrible work if you put them on the defense, which they all are at the beginning. You've got to take them off their defensive attitude and make them participate. — Walker Evans

If the country is to survive as a democracy it will depend on voters who understand how our political institutions have evolved and the events that went into their creation. A nation's sense of its history is indistinguishable from its social cohesion. — Alan Bullock

Once you consider the extent of the magical thinking that tends to be tied in to the fantasy of thinness, you can understand how threatening it is to consider the idea that you may never get the thin body you crave. It means that you never get to become the person you want to be. Wow! No wonder it's so painful to let go of the drive to lose weight! Accepting your body is not just about physicality, it's about accepting who you are, not continuing to wait until you become the person you imagine being. — Linda Bacon

I'm better at accepting the people who don't have nice things to say about me anonymously, but until you've experienced it, you don't understand how much it can affect you and mess with your mind. — Steve Grand

All I wish is for you to be happy, that everything you aspire to achieve may come true and that, although you may forget me in the course of time, one day you may finally understand how much I loved you. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Entitlement is a precarious place from which to create or perform - it projects the idea that you have nothing to prove, nothing to claim, nothing to show but self-satisfaction, a smug boredom. It breeds ambivalence. It's as if instead of having to prove they are something, these musicians prove they aren't anything. It's an inverted dynamic, one that sets performers up to fail, but also gives them a false sense of having already arrived. I don't understand how someone would not push, challenge, or at least be present, how anyone could get onstage and not give everything. — Carrie Brownstein

How do you explain why the sun rises every morning? How do you explain the stars in the sky? How do you understand why no two snowflakes are alike? Some things just are, baby. And this is one of them. I can't give you pretty, dressed-up answers that are so polished they don't even sound sincere. I can only tell you that for me, it's you. It's always going to be you and nobody else. Fuck explaining it. I don't need an explanation. I just need you. — Maya Banks

But although the rules are vague
And widely disregarded now
Some precepts remain: live with love -
That is a rule we all can understand;
Forgive those who need forgiveness,
Which I think is everybody, more or less;
Be kind - that, perhaps, is first and foremost
In any postmodern, new-fangled
Code we devise for ourselves;
Yes, be kind: love one another,
And most of all tend with gentleness
The small patch of terra firma
That is allocated to each of us ... — Alexander McCall Smith

I view advertising as being this romanticizing element that helps us appreciate, understand and enjoy how remarkable it is that we've been able to do so much, and learn so much. I view it as really vital, even though sometimes it can be really annoying. — Jaron Lanier

You exist by the Weavers' grace. Only as long as you are what they expect of you. Do not understand how fragile that is? But if you replace your other, you might be safe. You might make your familiars happy, and then they will always keep you. So if only for my sake, child, hope that happens."
"I don't wish for her to die!"
"Then I will wish it," she replies ruthlessly. — Sangu Mandanna

Junction nineteen! Una, she came off at Junction nineteen! You've added an hour to your journey before you even started. Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?"
Oh GOD. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to THEM and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-it-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, "Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than, "Super, thanks. — Helen Fielding

I'm interested in history, in trying to relate the past to the present and to understand how people thought about their problems and pleasures. — Claire Tomalin

There's the famous quote that if you want to understand how animals live, you don't go to the zoo, you go to the jungle. The Future Lab has really pioneered that within Lego, and it hasn't been a theoretical exercise. It's been a real design-thinking approach to innovation, which we've learned an awful lot from. — Jorgen Vig Knudstorp

Wherever it left us,
we were barely learning to live with it
when here came Flannery O'Connor and Hank Williams
to tell us that no one has ever been loved
the way everybody wants to be loved,
and that's hard. That's hard.
last stanza of How Step by Step We Have Come to Understand — Miller Williams

I treasure a core value of humanity and that guides people why they act the way they do.
I will use this to show other people how they can understand each other ... as one, we can help society. — Megan Young