Quotes & Sayings About Not Trying To Understand
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Top Not Trying To Understand Quotes

- With respect, Professor McGonagall, I'm not quite sure you understand what I'm trying to do here.
- With respect, Mr. Potter, I'm quite sure I don't. Unless - this is a guess, mind - you're trying to take over the world?
- No! I mean yes - well, NO!
- I think i should perhaps be alarmed that you have trouble answering the question. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

You'll be sorry some day. Why don't you ever understand what I'm trying to tell you: it's with your six sense that you're fooled into believing not only that you have six senses, but that you contact an actual outside world with them. If it wasn't for your eyes, you wouldn't see me. If it wasn't for your ears, you wouldn't hear that airplane. If it wasn't for your nose, you wouldn't smell that midnight mint. If it wasn't for your tongue taster, you wouldn't taste the difference between A and B. If it wasn't for your body, you wouldn't feel Princess. There is no me, no airplane, no mind, no Princess, no nothing, you for krissakes do you want to go on being fooled every damn minute of your life? — Jack Kerouac

They wanted a list of symptoms: dizziness, blurred vision, palpitations. You could not say, it is a different life trying to nudge this one aside. I am meant to be living that different life. Who would understand that, if she could make no better sense of understanding it herself? — Jean Thompson

The attachment to parental figures I am trying to describe here is an attachment to parents who have inflicted injury on their children. It is an attachment that prevents us from helping ourselves. The unfulfilled natural needs of the child are later transferred to therapists, partners, or our own children. We cannot believe that those needs were really ignored, or possibly even trampled on by our parents in such a way that we were forced to repress them. We hope that the other people we relate to will finally give us what we have been looking for, understand, support, and respect us, and relieve us of the difficult decisions life brings with it. As these expectations are fostered by the denial of childhood reality, we cannot give them up. As I said earlier, they cannot be relinquished by an act of will. But they will disappear in time if we are determined to face up to our own truth. This is not easy. It is almost always painful. But it is possible. In — Alice Miller

In trying to understand the Linux phenomenon, then, we have to look not at a single innovator but to a sort of bizarre Trinity : Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman, and Bill Gates. Take away any of these three and Linux would not exist. — Neal Stephenson

To look at her, you might not guess that inside she is laughing and crying, at her own stupidities and luckiness, and at the strange enigmatic ways of the world which she will spend lifetime trying to learn and understand. — Sylvia Plath

It's also hard for me to understand growing up not knowing where I came from. I searched for my parents - I started when I was twenty; I found both my mother and my father when I was twenty-two. Trying to catch up on twenty-two years that we can never get back, trying to reconcile that - that's a hard thing for me. — Michael Franti

For shit's sake, it wasn't like there was a twelve-step for being the Scribe Virgin's kid:
Hi, I'm Vishous. I'm her son and I've been her son for three hundred years.
HI, VISHOUS.
She's done a head job on me again, and I'm trying not to go to the Other Side and scream bloody murder at her.
WE UNDERSTAND, VISHOUS.
And on the bloody note, I'd like to dig up my father and kill him all over again, but I can't. So I'm just going to try to keep my sister alive even though she's paralyzed, and attempt to fight the urge to find some pain so I can deal with this Payne.
YOU'RE A STRAIGHT-UP PUSSY, VISHOUS, BUT WE SUPPORT YOUR SORRY ASS. — J.R. Ward

Noble!" "What?" He was annoyed at her interruption. Didn't she understand that he was trying to help her organize her life into something satisfactory? "I am not the one chained naked to my mistress's bed with a broken man part. — Katie MacAlister

Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible test of human reasoning ability. It involves subtle trickery, beautiful tightropes of logic on which one has to walk in order not to make a mistake in predicting what will happen. The quantum mechanical and the relativity ideas are examples of this. — Richard P. Feynman

I am very sorry, sir, but I cannot give you the Windsor crown," Rita said calmly. "I do not have it, and even if I did, it is not mine to give away."
"I don't know if you heard me correctly," the sergeant repeated, his words falling like bricks. "I said, hand it over."
Rita smiled serenely and stood, holding her thin hands clasped in front of her. Nora glanced up at her, a worried look in her eyes.
"Quite possibly it was you who did not understand my reply. I said, I am very sorry, but I am afraid I cannot give you the crown. But I can offer you a nice cup of tea, and I just baked a batch of cheddar scones."
A muffled snicker went through the room. I could even see Wesley, who stood by the door, trying not to smile. — Galaxy Craze

Once you understand it, that this is the root of your childishness, the outgoing mind ... Small children start reaching for the moon, and even the biggest scientists are trying to reach the moon - they have reached. There is not much difference. Reaching outside, you may reach other stars but you will remain childish. — Osho

The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us. You think every soldier who picked up a cutter gun was a bad person? No. She was just doing what the soldier next to her was doing, who was doing what the soldier next to her was doing, and so on and so on. And I bet most of them - not all, but most - who made it through the war spent a long time after trying to understand what they'd done. Wondering how they ever could have done it in the first place. Wondering when killing became so comfortable. — Becky Chambers

Wouldn't we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife a husband, a lover a mistress, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that's why men have invented God -- a being capable of understanding. Perhaps if I wanted to be understood or to understand I would bam-boozle myself into belief, but I am a reporter; God exists only for leader-writers. — Graham Greene

Lesson number one in trying to develop the ability of independent thought: Understand that EVERYTHING the government says has the potential to be lies and deception. You can believe it's the truth only after you question, exhaust every avenue, and find that their story checks out. If you're a patriot, it's your duty to always question your government anyway, at every turn. A patriot is loyal to his country and his countrymen, not his government. — Derek R. Audette

People don't want to listen. All they see is someone they think is trying to get a free ride. They don't understand I'm working, I'm not begging. I was actually trying to make a living. Just because I wasn't wearing a suit and a tie and carrying a briefcase or a computer, just because I didn't have a payslip and a P45, it didn't mean that I was freeloading. — James Bowen

NiOptics also was an example of something Doriot had tried to teach me back at Harvard, and it is a lesson I have learned more than once. In venture capital investing, Doriot said, it is important to understand who will buy the technology you're trying to sell. It is easy to fall in love with technology and lose sight of the fact that someone at some point will have to pay for it. An investor can lose a lot of money that way, and we have not been immune to such temptations. — Robert Finkel

I'm not trying to defend Israel. What I'm telling my nation is that Israel is just like any other state, and I want them to get out of the illusion that Jewish people are evil, and that all they want is to kill Muslims and Palestinians. I want them to understand that their biggest problem is not Israel. — Mosab Hassan Yousef

When you see evil do not form ideas that are in the likeness of that evil; do not think of the evil as bad, but try to understand the forces that are back of that evil - forces that are good in themselves, though misdirected in their present state. By trying to understand the nature of the power that is back of evil or adversity, you will not form bad ideas, and therefore will feel no bad effects from experiences that may seem undesirable. At the same time, you will think your own thought about the experiences, thereby developing the power of the master mind. — Christian D. Larson

In the castle of Benwick, the French boy was looking at his face in the polished surface of a kettle-hat. It flashed in the sunlight with the stubborn gleam of metal. It was practically the same as the steel helmet which soldiers still wear, and it did not make a good mirror, but it was the best he could get. He turned the hat in various directions, hoping to get an average idea of his face from the different distoritons which the bulges made. He was trying to find out what he was, and he was afraid of what he would find.
The boy thought that there was something wrong with him. All through his life
even when he was a great man with the world at his feet
he was to feel this gap: something at the bototm of his heart of which he was aware, and ashamed, but which he did not understand. There is no need for us to try to understand it. We do not have to dabble in a place which he preferred to keep secret. — T.H. White

Waiting here for Everyman
Make it on your own if you think you can
If you see somewhere to go I understand
I'm not trying to tell you
That I've seen the plan
Turn and walk away if you think I am
But don't think too badly
Of one who's left holding sand
He's just another dreamer,
Dreaming 'bout Everyman. — Jackson Browne

[On parents:] They're not gods to be pleased or devils to be exorcised. They're just there, and we can only hope they understand when we seem less than perfect. And try to understand, ourselves, when they're not all we'd like them to be. — Helen Van Slyke

The most compassionate and peaceful thing you can do for yourself and others is to let go of the past, let go of the anger, let go of trying to hurt people that wronged you. There are thousands of people dying from cancer that wish they had someone to care about them and be with them during their final days. There are children being sold into sex trafficking and are hoping someone would rescue them. There are homeless people that wish they had something warm to wear or eat. There is an entire species being wiped out because not enough people care about our oceans. Today, remember that there is someone praying for the very things you take for granted. Spend your effort where God needs you to be
on the front lines of the war on earth, not on the battlefields of the past. — Shannon L. Alder

It's the way I study - to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself. — Richard P. Feynman

Strive as she would to put some order in her thoughts, the words would not come more clearly; yet she felt that she could not leave him without trying to make him understand that she had saved herself whole from the seeming ruin of her life. — Edith Wharton

I truly understand that there is a lesson in everything that happens to us. So I tried not to spend my time asking "Why did this happen to me?" but trying to figure out why I had chosen this. — Oprah Winfrey

I would then say that there are two kinds of feeling. The first is to feel in the sense of concentrating your emotions on something immediately available for your understanding: you make your understanding out of the emotions you have about it. The second is to feel in the sense of being affected without trying to understand: something is felt, you do not know what, and it is more important to feel it than to try to understand it, since once you try to understand it you no longer feel it. — Laura Riding

I don't understand, Your Majesty."
"Of course you don't; you academics!" Skarmak snarled. "All you do is sit in your towers, trying to think your way into a reality that exists only in your own minds, and then you judge the world as wrong because it does not conform to your impossible standards. I live in a real world, academic. And it's my real world that keeps pumping blood into your dead, idealistic one. — Tracy Hickman

I am tomorrow I wonder what the future holds. I hear rippling water that soothes me when things are not calm. I see the word success, big and bold. I want to see the world. I am Tomorrow I claim I already have what I know is yet to come. I feel apprehensive because change is something that I have to endure. I touch a black pen and make beautiful, vivid colors. I worry about inflation, war, revolution, a car, self-destruction, hate, hidden prejudices, my fate. I cry when I think I won't see my mom anymore. I AM TOMORROW I understand that tomorrow is not promised. I say live like you're trying to get your name on his list. I dream that I am happy, prosperous, and loved. I try to meet the world and greet them with a smile on my face. I hope that the weight on my shoulders will take off and fly like a dove. I am tomorrow — Ericka Davis

Bloody North," said Shev as she picked her way towards it and had a tentative drag at the ropes. "Even their bridges are shit."
"Their men are good," said Javre, clattering out with no fear whatsoever. "Far from subtle, but enthusiastic."
"Great," said Shev as she edged after, exchanging a mutually suspicious glance with a crow perched atop one of the posts. "Men. The one thing that interests me not at all."
"You should try them."
"I did. Once. Bloody useless. Like trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even speak your language, let alone understand the topic."
"Some are certainly more horizontally fluent than others."
"No. Just no. The hairiness, and the lumpiness, and the great big fumbling fingers and ... balls. I mean, balls. What's that about? That is one singularly unattractive piece of anatomy. That is just ... that is bad design, is what that is. — Joe Abercrombie

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind. — Thomas Sowell

Critics have a job to do. I understand that. It's not just to criticize. They're trying to interpret art for the public. — Paul Emsley

Ayla, what am I doing wrong?" he asked, standing in front of her, dripping. "It's not you. I'm the one who's doingit wrong." "You're not doing anything wrong." "Yes I am. I've been trying all day to encourage you, but you don't understand Clan gestures. — Jean M. Auel

Worry, wariness, anxiety and concern all have a purpose, but they are not fear. So any time your dreaded outcome cannot be reasonably linked to pain or death and it isn't a signal in the presence of danger, then it really shouldn't be confused with fear. It may well be something worth trying to understand and manage, but worry will not bring solutions. It will more likely distract you from finding solutions. — Gavin De Becker

Punishment? You don't have any right to punish me. And I can curse. I choose not to most of the time, but don't think it doesn't go through my head, asshole. I was trying to give you something. I was trying to give you my body."
"That's where you fucked up, little girl. I don't want your body. I want your soul. I want your everything. And I definitely want your orgasms. I want them all. I'll be a greedy bastard, savoring them and hoarding them all for myself. You wanted to give me your body? I can buy that on a street corner, sweetheart. You're the one who's being selfish now."
"How is it selfish to offer to have sex? I don't understand what you want."
"First off, I want you to stop hiding yourself from me. You're the one making this tawdry by pretending it's dirty and not worthy of the light of day."
"I didn't mean it that way."
"We're going to do this my way. We tried yours and it didn't work, so I'm taking control. I should have done it in the first place. — Lexi Blake

But one may acquire what MacIntyre calls a "second first language," a language which is learned in the same way that a child learns to use the native tongue. A missionary or an anthropologist who really hopes to understand and enter into the adopted culture will not do so by trying to learn the language in the way a tourist uses a phrasebook and a dictionary. — Lesslie Newbigin

I'm not the guy who will sit in a room with somebody who's using a bunch of big words and just act like I know what they're talking about, or sit on set with somebody and they'll be trying to explain something and not using layman's terms and I'll just say, "Hey, excuse me, what do you mean by that? Explain to me so I just understand." — Mark Wahlberg

The beauty of Mars exists in the human mind," he said in that dry factual tone, and everyone stared at him amazed. "Without the human presence it is just a collection of atoms, no different than any other random speck of matter in the universe. It's we who understand it, and we who give it meaning. All our centuries of looking up at the night sky and watching it wander through the stars. All those nights of watching it through the telescopes, looking at a tiny disk trying to see canals in the albedo changes. All those dumb sci-fi novels with their monsters and maidens and dying civilizations. And all the scientists who studied the data, or got us here. That's what makes Mars beautiful. Not the basalt and the oxides — Kim Stanley Robinson

Damn, Josie. Are you trying to kill me?"
She glanced back my way. "Not particularly right now. Why?"
I didn't even try to stop staring. It would have been a wasted effort. "Because that dress is enough to give a man a heart attack if you come any closer, or break a man's heart if you walk away."
"Now lines like that help me understand why you've got a reputation for being such a ladies man."
"That wasn't even my best one."
( ... )
That kind of dress could bring a man to his knee to propose, even if that had been the furthest thing from his mind when he woke up that morning. Hell, it was bringing me close to a proposal, and I was dead set against anything marriage related. — Nicole Williams

And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people its not, but for me its a choice, and you dont get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if its a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesnt matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not. — Cynthia Nixon

In my research, all roads led back to Oscar. It's definitely in a way trying to understand the truly English element to glam-rock. It really does not come from American culture. — Todd Haynes

You're trying to figure out a way to meet a horse to where he can understand. And to me, it's not to train a horse, it's to try to get the horse with you where it's one mind and one body. You may spend your whole life chasing that, but it's a good thing to chase. — Buck Brannaman

Dear doctor, you must not only let the patient tells his story, but you should also try to understand it. — William C. Brown

I think the first time I really felt that I was Palestinian was a time when I was trying to go back to school with my father at night and there was a curfew for Palestinians. My father said, "I will walk first, but you have to understand, the police will not let me go, so keep moving and don't look at me and don't look back." — Rula Jebreal

I think I'm known as an adventuress. Even generally in life, I have no fear. It's not that I'm not afraid of things, but when I am afraid of something, I don't back away - I approach it and try to understand what makes me afraid. — Bai Ling

I am trying to see things in perspective. My dog wants a bite of my peanut butter chocolate chip bagel. I know she cannot have this, because chocolate makes dogs very sick. My dog does not understand this. She pouts and wraps herself around my leg like a scarf and purrs and tries to convince me to give her just a tiny bit. When I do not give in, she eventually gives up and lays in the corner, under the piano, drooping and sad. I hope the universe has my best interest in mind like I have my dog's. When I want something with my whole being, and the universe withholds it from me, I hope the universe thinks to herself: "Silly girl. She thinks this is what she wants, but she does not understand how it will hurt. — Blythe Baird

Palant went to close the door, but she couldn't resist one last look. It was shocking, horrific, and magnificent. For so long she had studied these creatures, their body parts and belongings, trying to understand them through dead flesh, clotted blood, and disassociated tech and clothing. Now she was looking right at one. A living, alien creature, with mysterious thoughts, histories, and philosophies, and an outlook on the universe that she did not understand. However long she studied and theorised, she would never understand. — Tim Lebbon

Learning grammar can be viewed as a game that a little boy plays with his father. Daddy talks, the boy listens - perhaps disobeys - and Daddy talks some more. All the while the boy is trying to figure out the grammar that can generate the sentences in Daddy's speech. The boy might occasionally talk back, but there is no guarantee that Daddy will pay any attention. Not that he is a bad father: recall from Chapter 5 that in some cultures, adults do not interact with children until they are socially and linguistically adept. To fully understand the game of language learning, then, Daddy can be assumed only as a rather passive participant. The goal of the game is to learn Daddy's grammar within some finite amount of time: nobody learns forever. — Charles Yang

There's this party tomorrow night. The client with all the ex-husbands is throwing it, and I've got to go. I know it's last minute, and that Fridays are really busy for you. I'm also sure it's going to be boring. Anyway, if you can't go, I completely understand. But if you don't come with me, I'll be forced to meet rich, eligible bachelors who may or may not have all their original teeth and hair."
I bit my nail as I waited for his answer, trying to prepare myself for the possibility he couldn't go.
"You're not really giving me much of a choice," Jake said. "Not when I know you've got a weakness for bald men with dentures. — Cindi Madsen

Do you know that maxim "Write what you know"? Nonsense. That saying lets us off the hook for our more narcissistic impulses and for not trying to understand the world around us. The more a person learns - and this does not mean you need to get a PhD before you can work, merely that you nurture your curiosity and imagination - the more nuanced and complex his or her work becomes. Think — Jessa Crispin

The idea of making [conceptual] art was not a good way to approach things ... Instead I saw myself as trying to make something that my relatives could understand. — Sandy Skoglund

You need to control your wife."
"Haven't you figured it out?" Edward said quietly. "I married her to unleash her on the world, not to keep her under wraps."
James blinked, as if trying to understand that.
"I married her because she made me believe in her," Edward said. "Because I wished her beyond your power, not under mine. You have no idea of the debt I owe her. For her I'd do the unthinkable."
He glanced back at Free.
"If she asked me to do it," he told James, "I'd even forgive you. — Courtney Milan

Churches should be places where people come to hear the story of God and to tell their own. That's how we find out how the two relate. Tell your story with all of its shadows and fog, so people can understand their own. They want a leader who's authentic, someone trying to figure out how to follow the Lord Jesus in the joy and wreckage of life. They need you, not Moses, — Angie Smith

I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something. — Willis Earl Beal

I watched the gorilla's eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to teach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don't listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us of its life in a language that hasn't been born of that life? I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one. — Douglas Adams

He is talking to people in Toronto, trying to find out if I am guilty; but he won't find it out that way. He doesn't understand yet that guilt comes to you not from the things you've done, but from the things that other have done for you. — Margaret Atwood

Styling is my form of painting. I can understand the process behind it, the being afraid to start, and the diving into it. I've learned not to be afraid of doing something that might not be right. If you don't try then you won't know. — Lori Goldstein

The people who run our cities dont understand graffiti because they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit ...
the people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff ...
any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours, it belongs to you ,, its yours to take, rearrange and re use.Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.. — Banksy

I haven't lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that's from a lifetime of taking chances, making decisions, and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them. — Kevin Costner

I understand that not everyone agrees with my perspective on Ray Kelly. But what you gotta look at here is somebody like Bill de Blasio talking out of both sides of his mouth and trying to have it both ways on a really critical issue like stop-and-frisk. — Christine Quinn

I'm not head-strong, and I'm not egotistical. I understand certain things better now. I won't be trying to be play everyday. There's only one Cal Ripken, one Lou Gehrig and one Joe DiMaggio. What is good for them isn't necessarily good for Eric Davis. — Eric Davis

It is rather his mind has so wide a range, and so rich a retention, that he simply cannot understand that ordinary folk do not always follow him. 'I little imagined,' he said, 'that I should find you in the posture of Sir Isaac Newton.' Oh dear, I thought, here it comes again. What on earth was the meaning of *that*? So I just said No... and went fiddling with the oil-squirter, trying to remember things about Newton. — Beverley Nichols

It takes a long time to write a book. I'm not going to spend that much time trying to deliver a message. The reason I do it is because I want to understand something myself. It's not a delivery device, it's an inquiry device. Didactic fiction to my mind never works. It backfires. — Ruth Ozeki

I should just stop trying to control what's coming out of my mouth. I'm always going to keep what's important to me in mind and I completely understand considering that we're playing characters that are so coveted by so many people so I get why they want to know more about us. I just sort of have to not think about it. — Kristen Stewart

Intuition is the innate ability in everyone to perceive truth directly - not by reason, logic, or analysis, but by a simple knowing from within. That is the very meaning of the word "intuition": to know, or understand from within - from one's own self, and from the heart of whatever one is trying to understand. Intuition is the inner ability to see behind the outer forms of things to their inner essence. — Goswami Kriyananda

Oh come on, don't look that way. You have nothing to be ashamed of."
"I'm not," she says, trying to act casual. "I just want to know if you're disappointed in me for admitting this."
How could she ever understand that there isn't any way I could be disappointed since I no longer find anything worth looking forward to?
"You don't know much about me, do you?" I ask teasingly. — Bret Easton Ellis

I think I've learned to be mindful. I may not have taken the time to try to understand narrative techniques, let's say, with any rigor, if I did not also have to try to explain those techniques to someone else. — John Dufresne

When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline. — Walter Isaacson

What we are trying to do is to understand this confusion and not cover it up with quotations. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I felt guilty that I hadn't thought of Kizuki right away, as if I had somehow abandoned him. Back in my room, though, I came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happened, and Kizuki is still seventeen years old. Not that this means my memory of him has faded. The things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. What I want to say is this: I'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what Kizuki and I shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished, and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. I can't explain it any better than this, but I think that you can probably understand what I felt and what I am trying to say. — Haruki Murakami

Failure is always present as an actor. I make my living by taking chances. If I'm not risking something, then I'm not doing my job, so I'm constantly failing. In fact, I'm trying to fail bigger. I try to focus on the positive, the moment, and try to realize where I'm at in an attempt to understand the failure. — Damon Runyon

If you do not want what I want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong. Or if my beliefs are different from yours, at least pause before you set out to correct them. Or if my emotion seems less or more intense than yours, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel other than I do. Or if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, please let me be. I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up trying to change me into a copy of you. — David Keirsey

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

Before water generates steam, it must register two hundred and twelve degrees of heat. Two hundred degrees will not do it; two hundred and ten will not do it. The water must boil before it will generate enough steam to move an engine, to run a train. Lukewarm water will not run anything.
A great many people are trying to move their life trains with lukewarm water - or water that is almost boiling - and they are wondering why they are stalled, why they cannot get ahead. They are trying to run a boiler with two hundred or two hundred and ten degrees of heat, and they cannot understand why they do not get anywhere.
Lukewarmness in his work stands in the same relation to man's achievement as lukewarm water does to the locomotive boiler. No man can hope to accomplish anything great in this world until he throws his whole soul, flings his force to his whole life, into it. — Orison Swett Marden

It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is. — Leo Strauss

Horacio paused to pour himself another glass of brandy. "Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you, Prudencia? You can't build yourself a world made to measure, but you can build a village. In a way, all of us here belong to a club of refugees. Your employer is one of the few inhabitants with family roots in San Ireneo. He came back a few years ago and set it all up. You may not know it, but his father's family has lived here for centuries." Miss — Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera

There are situations when all answers and explanations fade. When you fully accept that you do not know, you give up struggling to find answers with the limited thinking mind. That is when the greater intelligence can operate though you. Sometimes surrender means giving up trying to understand and becoming comfortable with not knowing. — Eckhart Tolle

I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. And today I am still trying to find it; still trying to understand all those others and not to be the enemy of anyone. I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that's the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death. This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good. — Albert Camus

BUDGE (muffled)
No,no,nono.
NURSE BAKER
I understand what you're trying to say.
BUDGE
A hideous scream.
NURSE BAKER
Exactly.
BUDGE
A cry of desperation.
NURSE BAKER
Perfect.
BUDGE
A strangled sob. A plea torn from my throat. What sound can I make to convince you I'm not the one you want? A disconsolate sigh? Maybe that's what you want to hear. The smallest human moan imaginable. A whisper in a corner of an unlit room, with curtains blowing in the wind.
NURSE BAKER
What could be more touching? — Don DeLillo

Wrath is one of the seven deadly sins," she remarked, turning away from him to gaze out the window, trying to alleviate the burning sensation in her middle.
He laughed bitterly. "Remarkably, I have all seven; don't bother counting. Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, lust."
She lifted an eyebrow but did not turn around. "Somehow, I doubt that."
"I don't expect you to understand. You're only a magnet for mishap, while I am a magnet for sin. — Sylvain Reynard

She frowned, thinking of going down there and explaining herself all over again, reliving the horror of finding Mimi's body and trying not to think of how she'd looked when they'd dragged her up and out of the ravine. No sooner had she thought it than she heard Mimi's voice, chastising her over a year ago.
"You hide from life, Catherine. Even when you're in the middle of it, standing toe to toe with all the bad guys you bring in, you manage to keep an emotional distance. I understand why you do it, but ultimately, you're the one who will suffer. You're the one who's going to grow old alone."
Cat blinked back tears, remembering what she'd told her.
I won't be alone, Mimi. I'll always have you.
Obviously she had been wrong. — Sharon Sala

Not being categorized is like keeping your mouth shut. Categorization is linguistic, people trying to understand each other. Words are misty, language is a fog. I want to be in as many boxes as possible, describe myself as thickly as possible. — Kalan Sherrard

The meaning of a work is not what the author had in mind at some point, nor is it simply a property of the text or the experience of a reader. Meaning is an inescapable notion because it is not something simple or simply determined. It is simultaneously an experience of a subject and a property of a text. It is both what we understand and what in the text we try to understand. — Jonathan Culler

You have no idea how hard this is for me, but ... maybe, this isn't the right time. Not now, in a vampire tower ... with them all around." He opened his eyes, giving me a pleading look. "Do you understand ... what I'm trying to say?"
I smiled. "You're turning red, did you know that?"
"Allie!" Zeke blew out his breath in a huff. I laughed, released him and stepped back. — Julie Kagawa

I don't believe in "original sin." I don't believe in "guilt." I don't believe in villains or heroes - only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents.
This is so simple I'm ashamed to say it, but I'm sure it's true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that's why I don't understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in. — Tennessee Williams

You can't take the other person out of you. You can't take yourself out of others. The suffering still continues. So the question is not whether you will stay together or not; the question is whether you can focus on trying to understand each other using compassionate speech and deep listening, no matter what the outcome. — Thich Nhat Hanh

What are you doing?" she asked.
I don't know. Instinct not logic currently dictated his actions. But he didn't admit this aloud.
"Do you always ask so many questions?"
"Only when I'm trying to understand what's going on."
"Isn't it obvious?"
Confusion clouded her gaze. "No."
Did she not sense the attraction between them? Of course she didn't. She
was a simple human. She couldn't know how his bear chuffed at her
nearness. How the scent of her aroused him. How he wanted to lay claim
to her body. What the (deuce) is wrong with me?
Apparently, his grandmother wondered the same thing. "Reid Alexander Carver, what are you doing manhandling our guest?"
Oops, caught harboring naughty thoughts and jolted back to sanity. What am I doing? — Eve Langlais

So when you approach any individual, make sure you realize that he will do what he wants to do. Don't laugh at his choices; investigate them to better understand what he's trying to accomplish.
If you wish to trade, you will have to offer the person something he wants more than what he has already. It's his resources you are seeking. He will control their use. You will have to be in tune with his desires or there will be no exchange.
The consumer is the object of the whole process. And he chooses in terms that are meaningful to him (not to you). You will succeed only as you find ways to satisfy him. — Harry Browne

I understand all the problems for the Ministry of Defence, of course I do; working within a budget and trying to do so many things is not easy. — Mike Jackson

Before I sleep I normally lie awake and think of the future. I've resolved I can't understand life the way I can understand an equation or formula. For so long I've wanted to find concrete answers or die trying. It's hard at first to find comfort in not knowing or to make peace with it. But I think it is the only way to make it in this life. Getting stuck on a question only makes me estranged from the world. — Shane Crash

It's not just that,' she said, trying to explain in a way he would understand. 'My life - any lady's life - is made up of morning calls, and musicales, and balls. I would be thrown out of society. No one would receive me or send invitations. That's what it means to be ruined. — Eloisa James

I only believe in the easy things, like red lipstick
and coffee before noon and writing essays in pen.
I make my mind up about boys and then I unmake it,
compare us to continental drift, two ships passing.
I hit the snooze button too often. Write disposable
poems on napkins and old homework, try to discipline
myself when it comes to removing my makeup
before bed. I am trying to understand men better,
cut them some slack, write about them less. I dream
about oceans and mountains and wolves. I do not
always love myself. I do not always forgive myself.
I write apology letters and do not send them. Usually,
I do not mean it when I tell someone goodbye. — Kristina Haynes

It's an important thing and a necessary thing as a writer to always be reaching outside of yourself. They say write what you know. But what you know is rarely enough. You need to know more. But you've got to approach it with a lot of respect and humility. You owe it to the people and experience you're trying to understand. It's not a casual thing. — Ben Fountain

Now that you've gone looking for him, he won't be breaking his word. Not technically. You're fair game."
I lace my fingers through hers, trying to ground her. "You're freaking me out. Who are you talking about?"
"He'll come for you. He'll step through your dreams. Or the looking glass ... stay away from the glass, Allie! Do you understand?"
"Mirrors?" I ask, incredulous. "You want me to stay away from mirrors?"
She scrambles to her feet, and I struggle to balance on my crutch. "Broken glass severs more than skin. It will sever your identity. — A.G. Howard

Am touched that you are trying to comprehend me. A friend could not be more loving. I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand - through rational thought - that which cannot be understood at all. There is no exact principle to be found here. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground - unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive at revelation on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way." "I do have a dreadful love for understanding," Alma admitted. "Indeed you do love it, though it is not dreadful, — Elizabeth Gilbert

In other circumstances, if Jamie hadn't been so miserable, Ryan would have laughed. Jamie rarely got so pissed that he lost the thread of the conversation. "Yes, you are." Cradling Jamie's face, he brushed his lips against Jamie's forehead. "Everything will be fine, you'll see." He kissed Jamie's temple.
Jamie shuddered. "Don't. Not now. I can't - not now."
Frowning, Ryan pulled back to look at his friend.
Jamie was staring at him oddly, his lips parted and curled in half a grimace, his eyes gleaming with desperation. "I - " he said before suddenly lunging forward and closing the distance between their mouths.
For a moment, Ryan's alcohol-fogged brain couldn't understand what was going on.
Jamie was kissing him.
Jamie was kissing him. Or at least trying to, his lips clumsy and awkward but desperate and needy - so needy it was weirding Ryan out. — Alessandra Hazard

Questioner: How can we become integrated without conflict? KRISHNAMURTI: Why do you object to conflict? You all seem to think conflict is a dreadful thing. At present you and I are in conflict, are we not? I am trying to tell you something, and you don't understand; so there is a sense of friction, conflict. And what is wrong with friction, conflict, — Jiddu Krishnamurti

So [Polaroid's Dr. Edwin] Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure science, trying to crack the code of color vision. The man is a national treasure. I don't understand why people like that can't be held up as models: This is the most incredible thing to be - not an astronaut, not a football player - but this. — Steve Jobs

You may not understand this, but I don't think it matters killing people so long as you don't hate them. I also think that there are times when you can only show your feeling of brotherhood for someone else by killing him, or trying to. I believe most ordinary people feel this and would make a peace in that sense if they had any say in the matter. There has been very little popular resistance to this war, and also very little hatred. It is a job that has to be done. — George Orwell

The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself. — Louise Bourgeois