Understanding Ourselves Quotes & Sayings

The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves "inside the skin" of the other. We "go inside" their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the subject of our observation. When we are in contact with another's suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, "to suffer with." — Nhat Hanh

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art
novels, poems, plays, paintings or films
can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world. — Alain De Botton

How ironic it is then, to realize how many of we humans are masochists! That even when we are placed in paradise, the majority of us would, by choice, focus on everything outside the present moment and make ourselves suffer by thinking about Dis-Ease! Too many of us would dwell on a past that no longer exists while everything in the present moment is wonderful. What great paradoxes we as humans are capable of! — Alaric Hutchinson

My joy is that there is no such world at all, but that the substance of life is in everyone! There is no reason to be troubled because we are absurd, is there? For we really are: we are absurd, frivolous, we have bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look around ourselves, we don't know how to understand, we are all like this, all of us, you, and I, and everyone! And you aren't offended by my telling you straight to your faces that you are absurd? There is the basic stuff of life in your, isn't there? You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, we can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection! To reach perfection there must first be much we do not understand. And if we understand too quickly we will probably not understand very well. I tell this to you who have been able to understand so much and - do not understand.'
p. 577 — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

That the nobility of Man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, lay in making himself the conquerer of matter, and that I had enrolled in chemistry because I wanted to maintain faithful to that nobility. That conquering matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary to understanding the universe and ourselves: and that therefore Mendeleev's Periodic Table, which just during those weeks we were laboriously learning to unravel, was poetry, loftier and more solemn than all the poetry we had swallowed doen in liceo; and come to think of it, it even rhymed! ...
[T]he chemistry and physics on which we fed, besides being in themselves nourishments vital in themselves, were the antidotes to Fascism ... because they were clear and distinct and verifiable at every step, and not a tissue of lies and emptiness like the radio and newspapers. — Primo Levi

There is great advantage to be gained in distantly estranging ourselves from our age and for once being driven as it were away from its shores back on to the ocean of the world-outlooks of the past. Looking back at the coast from this distance we command a view, no doubt for the first time, of its total configuration, and when we approach it again we have the advantage of understanding it better as a whole than those who have never left it. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Perhaps we know only by comparing, by drawing distinctions from and similarities to what we already know. But when we use our terms of comparison to shut off any understanding of our connections with one another as human beings, we risk becoming something less than human ourselves. (7) — Martha Minow

Most impediments to scientific understanding are conceptual locks, not factual lacks. Most difficult to dislodge are those biases that escape our scrutiny because they seem so obviously, even ineluctably, just. We know ourselves best and tend to view other creatures as mirrors of our own constitution and social arrangements. ( Aristotle , and nearly two millennia of successors, designated the large bee that leads the swarm as a king. — Stephen Jay Gould

[O]ur thoughts and feelings are us. They are a part of ourselves. There is a temptation to look upon them, or at least some of them, as an enemy force which is trying to disturb the concentration and understanding of your mind. [...] When we have certain thoughts, we are those thoughts. We are both the guard and the visitor at the same time. We are both the mind and the observer of the mind. Therefore, chasing away or dwelling on any thought isn't the important thing. The important thing is to be aware of the thought. This observation is not an objectification of the mind: it does not establish distinction between subject and object. — Thich Nhat Hanh

If we are all in agreement on the decision - then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about. — Alfred P. Sloan

Forgiveness entails the authentic acceptance of our own worthiness as human beings, the understanding that mistakes are opportunities for growth, awareness and the cultivation of compassion, and the realization that the extension of love to ourselves and others is the glue that holds the universe together. Forgiveness ... is not a set of behaviors, but an attitude. — Joan Z. Borysenko

benefits, we gain a greater understanding of ourselves, of — Marianne Gracie

Our success and our understanding is that all beings are right inside, the deeper we go inside ourselves. There's a saying that Unity uses that I have always liked: "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me." We all have to be a part of this. We have to be the initiator. We can't wait. — Edgar Mitchell

Why do we so mindlessly abuse our planet, our only home? The answer to that lies in each of us. Therefore, we will strive to bring about understanding that we are
each one of us
responsible for more than just ourselves, our family, our football team, our country, or our own kind; that there is more to life than just these things. That each one of us must also bring the natural world back into its proper place in our lives, and realize that doing so is not some lofty ideal but a vital part of our personal survival. — Lawrence Anthony

We must come to understand the deep mutual connection or kinship between the various forms of our spirituality. We must recollect our original spiritual and moral substance, which grew out of the same essential experience of humanity. I believe that this is the only way to achieve a genuine renewal of our sense of responsibility for ourselves and for the world. And at the same time, it is the only way to achieve a deeper understanding among cultures that will enable them to work together in a truly ecumenical way to create a new order for the world. — Vaclav Havel

We must concern ourselves not with what is beyond life, or what is life, or what is the purpose of life, but rather with the understanding of this complex existence of everyday life, because that is the foundation upon which we must build. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Death drives every creative and destructive impulse we have as human beings. The closer we come to understanding it, the closer we come to understanding ourselves. This — Caitlin Doughty

What is love but understanding and rejoicing that another lives, works, and feels in a different and opposite way to ourselves? That love may be able to bridge over the contrasts by joys, we must not remove or deny those contrasts. — Friedrich Nietzsche

To gain a true understanding of human experience, we must understand both our conscious and our unconscious selves, and how they interact. Our subliminal brain is invisible to us, yet it influences our conscious experience of the world in the most fundamental of ways: how we view ourselves and others, the meanings we attach to the everyday events of our lives, our ability to make the quick judgment calls and decisions that can sometimes mean the difference between life and death, and the actions we engage in as a result of all these instinctual experiences. — Leonard Mlodinow

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay - and rise! — Maya Angelou

We are not 'everything,' but neither are we 'nothing.' Spirituality is discovered in that space between paradox's extremes, for there we confront our helplessness and powerlessness, our woundedness. In seeking to understand our limitations, we seek not only an easing of our pain but an understanding of what it means to hurt and what it means to be healed. Spirituality begins with the acceptance that our fractured being, our imperfection, simply is: There is no one to 'blame' for our errors - neither ourselves nor anyone nor anything else. Spirituality helps us first to see, and then to understand, and eventually to accept the imperfection that lies at the very core of our human be-ing. — Katherine Ketcham

We are usually undone by our lack of understanding of ourselves. — Julian Fellowes

The way to an extraordinary life lies in exploring ourselves, in learning of our greatest capacities and in understanding who we fundamentally are as people. Then, equipped with this essential knowledge, we can go out into the world to do what we have been wired to do and create the goodness that we have been placed here to create. Remember, you have a duty to shine, and this world will be less of a place if you choose to play small with your life. — Robin S. Sharma

We want to see ourselves as curious and open-minded and smart and understanding things in terms of context and nuance, but when someone tries to do that in the midst of a shaming they're turned on. — Jon Ronson

There is, of course, no complete solution. But we can do something. The chief means open to us is education There is no excuse for letting another generation be as vastly ignorant, or as devoid of understanding and sympathy, as we are ourselves. — C.P. Snow

We think we control our environment, but in fact, it's our environment that controls us. We can't change the world. The only thing we can change is ourselves, by trying to get a better understanding of our own messed-up wiring. — Guy Spier

The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues. — Bruce Lee

I'd like to see education play a larger role in our daily lives, have people come to a larger understanding - a "bigger picture" understanding - of how we fit into the world, and how we fit into the universe. Not necessarily thinking of ourselves, but thinking of others. — George Lucas

Because the eternal principle of agency gives us the freedom to choose and think for ourselves, we should become increasingly able to solve problems. We may make the occasional mistake, but as long as we are following gospel principles and guidelines, we can learn from those mistakes and become more understanding of others and more effective in serving them. — M. Russell Ballard

My mother gave me a piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. The correction was the meat, the substance. And then she would sandwich that with another piece of bread, which was love and encouragement. That was very important in shaping and molding our morality, our understanding of ourselves, making sure that we didn't think we were better than or less than anyone, feeling no more worthy or no less worthy than anyone else. — Lauryn Hill

Old Testament scholar David Atkinson writes: "Shame . . . is that sense of unease with yourself at the heart of your being."89 We know there is something wrong with us, but we can't admit it or identify it. There is a deep restlessness, which can take various forms - guilt and striving to prove ourselves, rebellion and the need to assert our independence, compliance and the need to please others. Something is wrong, and we may know the effects, but we fall short of understanding the true causes. — Timothy Keller

We read scripture in order to be refreshed in our memory and understanding of the story within which we ourselves are actors, to be reminded where it has come from and where it is going to, and hence what our own part within it ought to be. — N. T. Wright

To gauge the understanding and insight that metaphysics provides is to ask whether, in the final analysis, it helps us to cope with our world and harmonize our existence with nature, humanity, and ourselves, and leads to greater freedom and self-realization. Metaphysics is only the beginning. The end is human progress. — Rudolph Rummel

It seems to me that we value individuality, but only to a point. When what sets one person apart from another is beyond our understanding or becomes too much to handle, we dismiss the quirk and the soul that accompanies it to give ourselves the greatest comfort. What does that accomplish? — Kiera Cass

If we have a hope of really understanding our place in nature and of carving out a place for ourselves that is sustainable, it's primarily because of the new level of communication. It used to be, 'What you don't have in your mind, you have on your shelf.' But now we have the Web. — Sylvia Earle

We are in danger, all of us, and I will give you an example why - a journalist I knew years ago. He was a good journalist. He went around the world and recorded what he saw and came to various conclusions. He said, Paris is this and London is that - and Greece is worth a couple of days. He felt two days was enough to give him an understanding of Greece. What that statement reveals is that the basis of our Western culture now, and of professional man, is middle-class. The middle class makes statements and knows nothing. You and I are the middle class and must think of ourselves as middle-class. We are middleclass actors, middle-class journalists, middle-class plumbers and morticians. The creation of the modern theater took a genius like Ibsen. — Stella Adler

We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about - survival and growth. — Audre Lorde

Why has the medical profession not taken advantage of the help available from evolutionary biology, a well-developed branch of science with great potential for providing medical insights? One reason is surely the pervasive neglect of this branch of science at all educational levels. Religious and other sorts of opposition have minimized the impact in general education of Darwin's contributions to our understanding of ourselves and the world we live in. — Randolph M. Nesse

The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding. Real renunciation is not a matter of compelling ourselves to give up things still inwardly cherished, but of changing our perspective on them so that they no longer bind us. When we understand the nature of desire, when we investigate it closely with keen attention, desire falls away by itself, without need for struggle. — Bhikkhu Bodhi

For the past several generations we've forgotten what the psychologists call our archaic understanding, a willingness to know things in their deepest, most mythic sense. We're all born with archaic understanding, and I'd guess that the loss of it goes directly along with the loss of ourselves as creators. — Madeleine L'Engle

A democratic state begins from the assumption that most of those who gravitate toward power are mediocre and probably immoral. It assumes that we must always protect ourselves from bad government. We must be prepared for the worst leaders even as we hope for the best. And as Karl Popper wrote, this understanding leads to a new approach to power, for it forces us to replace the question: Who shall rule? By the new question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage? — Chris Hedges

If she possessed a genius - and a growing number of us think she did - it was a capacity for understanding and trusting the improvisational nature of her will. This might seem a contradictory state, and for most of us it would be. We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears. Fan was different. As we have come to realize, she was not one to hold herself back. Or to be fettered. In this way she startles us, inspires us. She was someone who pursued her project as a genuine artist might, following with focus and intensity as well as an enduring innocence a goal she could not quite yet understand or see but wholly believed. — Chang-rae Lee

Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses. — Michel De Montaigne

Becoming aware of our inner man and woman means to discover the roots and creative potential of both the male and female aspect within ourselves. Becoming aware of the inner man and woman means to understand that they have different visions of life. It means to understand that they have different perspectives and views of life. The inner man and woman are our two wings of love and freedom. Through awareness, acceptance and understanding, we can allow our two wings to develop in a deep and natural harmony. In the world today, a one-sided development of the male side leads to destructivity. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, exhaustion and a separation from life. A one-sided development of the female side leads to passivity and dependence. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Don't ask me what good and what evil are, we knew
what it was each time we had to act when blindness was an ex-
ception, what is right and what is wrong are simply different
ways of understanding our relationships with the others, not that
which we have with ourselves, one should not trust the latter — Jose Saramago

The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are. To follow a path with heart, we must understand the whole process of making war within ourselves and without, how it begins and how it ends. War's roots are in ignorance. Without understanding we can easily become frightened by life's fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death. Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be satisfying. — Jack Kornfield

Of all the things we are wrong about, error might well top the list ... We are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition. Far from being a moral flaw, it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honourable qualities: empathy, optimism, imagination, conviction, and courage. And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance, wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change. Thanks to error, we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world. — Kathryn Schulz

If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into a kind of energy that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us. By the work of mindful observation, our unpleasant feelings can illuminate so much for us, offering us insight and understanding into ourselves and society. — Nhat Hanh

Once He created the Big Bang ... He could have envisioned it going in billions of directions as it evolved, including billions of life-forms and billions of kinds of intelligent beings. As a theologian, I would say that the proposed search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is also a search of knowing and understanding God through his works - especially those works that most reflect Him. Finding others than ourselves would mean knowing Him better. — Theodore Hesburgh

Information is strength without coordination. We become a danger mostly to ourselves when we have it. Understanding is the ability to coordinate that raw information in meaningful ways. Understanding creates a certain enthusiasm. We can direct our knowledge toward potentially useful ends
but we may also be a danger to others. Wisdom, however, is knowing how, when, and why we use our understanding; wisdom is settling into our understanding without being too enamored by it. — Shane Hipps

I have argued that when we encounter other humans we experience them first as persons, and cannot help but do so. This means that in order to see a human person as an animal or organism we must abstract from the totality of our experience. My suggestion is that we take this fact seriously in understanding the ontology of everyday objects. According to this proposal a "human animal" or "human organism" is not a thing in its own right, but rather a particular perspective we take on ourselves and our lives, one that attends only to our purely biological functions. — Marya Schechtman

21. Revelation
WE make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone find us really out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are — Robert Frost

... no one is exactly sure of what they mean on any given subject until they have written their thoughts down; I similarly believe that we have very little understanding of what we have thought until we have submitted those thoughts to others who are at least as intelligent as ourselves. — Stephen King

To inquire into the intricacies of a distant landscape, then, is to provoke thoughts about one's own interior landscape, and the familiar landscapes of memory. The land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves. — Barry Lopez

There are species on this planet we've never seen. They live in lands and seas that no human has ever explored, and they are struggling to survive in a world unknown to us...We destroy their homes. And then they are gone, before we even have a chance to meet them.
Every species on this planet tells a story, an evolutionary novel packed with generations upon generations of knowledge. Letting those species disappear is like setting fire to every library on earth...the key to understanding life itself- is right here: millions of years of trial and error, data we can never even hope to accrue on our own...The only way we will ever learn what animals have to teach us about ourselves- about life- is if we keep them around. — Christie Wilcox

The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society - and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding. — William H. Whyte

Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves. — Alice Walker

Lao Tsu says the way of life is ancient, timeless. It is existence which he calls the Tao - a mysterious source, beyond understanding, and all of us are a reflection, if not that source of life ourselves. — Frederick Lenz

Understanding that we are forgiven and cleansed, and knowing who we are in Christ sets us free from the need to impress others. As long as we know who we are, we don't have to be overly concerned about what others think of us. Once we know who we are and accept ourselves, we no longer have anything to prove. When we have nothing to prove we can relax and be at ease in every situation. — Joyce Meyer

We seek to understand Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to understand ourselves. We have different explicit goals, from getting in shape, learning self-defense or competition, but tacitly we all seek mastery of ourselves. — Chris Matakas

It will be increasingly difficult to be of maximum service to the world if we cannot or will not be open-minded and understanding towards people who might "appear" to be different from ourselves. When we can love someone who is not like us, we are living mindfully. — Christopher Dines

On my recent trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to visit Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial, and reaffirm our collective responsibility to confront anti-Semitism, prejudice, and intolerance across the world. On this Yom Hashoah, we must accept the full responsibility of remembrance, as nations and as individuals-not simply to pledge "never again," but to commit ourselves to the understanding, empathy and compassion that is the foundation of peace and human dignity. — Barack Obama

As women, we understand our bodies, and there's a blossoming that occurs. We're hungry for gourmet meals instead of the fast food. We bring to life a more expansive understanding of life, ourselves, and others. We are more generous and assertive. — Sharon Stone

Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems. Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin - which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us. Viewing — Sam Harris

12Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding. — Anonymous

To make good decisions, CEOs need the courage to seek out disagreement. Alfred Sloan, the longtime CEO and chairman of General Motors, once interrupted a committee meeting with a question: "Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here?" All the committee members nodded. "Then," Sloan said, "I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what this decision is about. — Chip Heath

Life here on Earth is promised suffering and one needs to find ways to live through it. Many people turn to meditation and prayer - anything that can connect us deeper into ourselves and with the divine. — Kat Lahr

The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable cloth by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven's Sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too awful for our terrors ? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and wich is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods. — Joseph Conrad

I searched modern fiction and poetry for clues to how we confronted and evaded reality, how we articulated our experience and turned to language not to revel ourselves but to hide. I was as sure then as I am now that by looking at contemporary Iranian fiction I could gain access to a real understanding of political and social events. (p289) — Azar Nafisi

What does it matter, if we tell the same old stories? ... Stories tell us who we are. What we're capable of. When we go out looking for stories we are, I think, in many ways going in search of ourselves, trying to find understanding of our lives, and the people around us. Stories, and language tell us what's important. — Kameron Hurley

I believe that, seven generations beyond us, those who look back on our time will find that it was the cry of the trees that helped to restart the dreaming and foster the understanding that we must dream not only for ourselves but also for our communities and for all that shares life with us in our fragile bubble of air. — Robert Moss

Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do ... Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. — Howard Gardner

The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment"
that is, what surrounds us, we have already made a profound division between it an ourselves. We have given up the understanding
dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought
that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than they other. — Wendell Berry

We all have struggle in our lives. We're all searching for personal freedom, whether we're in a bad place or trying to be true to ourselves. — Barbara Becker Holstein

Compassion does not have to be a face-to-face relationship. Forgiveness does not imply friendship. Understanding why someone has inflicted pain on us is how we set ourselves free of the past, not how we excuse someone's behaviour so they can continue to abuse us. — Vironika Tugaleva

The indigenous understanding has its basis of spirituality in a recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependence of all living things, a holistic and balanced view of the world. All things are bound together. All things connect. What happens to the Earth happens to the children of the earth. Humankind has not woven the web of life; we are but one thread. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. — Rebecca Adamson

Maybe we should just love one another, even if we don't completely understand the things that people bear in their dark, strange hearts, even if the stars that other men and women are following seem invisible to us. If we make ourselves open to the humanity of others first, maybe understanding will follow. An incomprehensible theory of the universal isn't necessary if your only ambition is to embrace another soul. What you need, maybe all you need, in fact, is the willingness to love. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

The more we discover about God, the more we learn about ourselves and vice versa. Self-understanding and God awareness go hand in glove. We are not separated from the way God uniquely designed us; nor is our growing intimacy with God distinct from our ever-deepening self-discovery. Exploring both will lead us into the fullness of our life in the Spirit. — Stephen A. Macchia

Back therefore we find ourselves returning. Back to the wisdom of the plough; back to the wisdom of those who follow the sea. It is all a matter of the wheel coming full-circle. For the sophisticated system of mental reactions to which we finally give our adherence is only the intellectualised reproduction of what more happily constituted natures, without knowing what they possess, possess. Thus between true philosophers and the true simple people there is a magnetic understanding; whereas, the clever ones whose bastard culture only divorces them from the wisdom of the earth remain pilloried and paralysed on the prongs of their own conceit. — John Cowper Powys

We need to have a paradigm shift in our consciousness. If we don't get our act together and come in commonality and understanding with the organisms that sustain us today, not only will we destroy those organisms, but we will destroy ourselves. — Paul Stamets

We often try to understand the world without understanding ourselves. — Debasish Mridha

History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future. — Robert Penn Warren

Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves. — Dan Brown

Spirituality doesn't mean a blind belief in a spiritual teaching. Spirituality is a practice that brings relief, communication, and transformation. Everyone needs a spiritual dimension in life. Without a spiritual dimension, it's very challenging to be with the daily difficulties we all encounter. With a spiritual practice, you're no longer afraid. Along with your physical body, you have a spiritual body. The practices of breathing, walking, concentration, and understanding can help you greatly in dealing with your emotions, in listening to and embracing your suffering, and in helping you to recognize and embrace the suffering of another person. If we have this capacity, then we can develop a real and lasting spiritual intimacy with ourselves and with others. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We have the ability to be the ocean. And access all that infinite possibility, understanding, knowledge, awareness. Or we can get caught up in identifying ourselves as being the droplet, which cannot disconnect us literally from the ocean but does disconnect us from the awareness of the ocean, which means that we isolate our point of observation to that of the droplet. That's when we identify with being the image in the mirror. — David Icke

There's a secret to get through loss, pain and grief. If we're alone we can't see who we are. When we join the club, other people become the mirror. Through them, we see ourselves and gain an understanding of what we're going through. Then slowly, real slowly, we learn to accept who we see in the mirror. Then you become the mirror for them; by being honest about who you are, you'll help them learn to love and accept themselves. — Melody Beattie

For others, as for ourselves, we must trust him. If we could thoroughly understand anything, that would be enough to prove it undivine; and that which is but one step beyond our understanding must be in some of its relations as mysterious as if it were a hundred. — George MacDonald

We so seldom understand each other. But if understanding is neither here nor there, and the universe is infinite, then understand that no matter where we go we will always be smack dab in the middle of nowhere. All we can do is share some piece of ourselves, and hope that it's remembered. Hope that we meant something to someone — Shane Koyczan

But what is more, if we have succeeded in adding to the basic understanding of our universe and ourselves, we will have made a contribution to the totality of human culture. — Haldan Keffer Hartline

In Buddhism, there are three gems: Buddha, the awakened one; Dharma,
the way of understanding and loving; and Sangha, the community that
lives in harmony and awareness. The three are interrelated, and at
times it is hard to distinguish one from another. In everyone there
is the capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love. So in
ourselves we find Buddha, and we also find Dharma and Sangha. — Nhat Hanh

In fact, when we listen to the church today, at least in the West, we are often left with impression that Christianity actually has very little to do with truth. Christianity is only about feeling better about ourselves, about leaping over our difficulties, about being more satisfied, about have better relationships, about getting on with our mothers-in-law, about understanding teenage rebellion, about coping with our unreasonable bosses, about finding greater sexual satisfaction, about getting rich, about receiving our own private miracles, and much else besides. It is about everything except truth. And yet this truth, personally embodied in Christ, gives us a place to stand in order to deal with the complexities of life, such as broken relations, teenage rebellion, and job insecurities. — David F. Wells

A successful unification of quantum theory and relativity would necessarily be a theory of the universe as a whole. It would tell us, as Aristotle and Newton did before, what space and time are, what the cosmos is, what things are made of, and what kind of laws those things obey. Such a theory will bring about a radical shift - a revolution - in our understanding of what nature is. It must also have wide repercussions, and will likely bring about, or contribute to, a shift in our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to the rest of the universe. — Lee Smolin

Healing ourselves on the spiritual level involves developing a strong connection with our soul. We heal ourselves on the mental level as we become aware of our core beliefs, release those that limit us, and open to more supportive ideas and greater understanding. Emotional healing takes place as we learn to accept and experience the full range of our feelings. And we heal ourselves on the physical level when we learn to honor and care for our bodies, and for the physical world around us. — Shakti Gawain

The Web 2.0 world is defined by new ways of understanding ourselves, of creating value in our culture, of running companies, and of working together. — John Battelle

Perhaps for many Japanese, autobiographical fiction writing is life. We are a people expected to complement, to harmonize, to anticipate one another's needs. All without a single spoken clue.

And the reason is that he's in training to be a writer. Observing detail, understanding irony, interpreting motivation. Hiro knows that acts are symbolic. The hard sour fruit offered too soon in its season carries a message. He has made an error in the timing of his visit. He has inconvenienced that family.

This is the Japanese way. Cogitating on inner meaning. Revealing ourselves and perceiving others through carefully crafted scenes.

Writing our endless I-stories. — Lydia Minatoya

Anger is rooted in our lack of understanding of ourselves and of the causes, deep-seated as well as immediate, that brought about this unpleasant state of affairs. Anger is also rooted in desire, pride, agitation, and suspicion. The primary roots of our anger are in ourselves. Our environment and other people are only secondary. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Hurt people hurt people. We are not being judgmental by separating ourselves from such people. But we should do so with compassion. Compassion is defined as a "keen awareness of the suffering of another coupled with a desire to see it relieved." People hurt others as a result of their own inner strife and pain. Avoid the reactive response of believeing they are bad; they already think so and are acting that way. They aren't bad; they are damaged and they deserve compassion. Note that compassion is an internal process, an understanding of the painful and troubled road trod by another. It is not trying to change or fix that person. — Will Bowen

The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light ... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one?s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover ... — Kenneth E. Boulding

The problem is this: when we separate Jesus from his ideas for an alternative social structure, we inevitably succumb to the temptation to harness Jesus to our ideas - thus conferring upon our human political ideas an assumed divine endorsement. With little awareness of what we are doing, we find ourselves in collusion with the principalities and powers to keep the world in lockstep with the ancient choreography of violence, war, and death. We do this mostly unconsciously, but we do it. I've done it. And the result is that we reduce Jesus to being the Savior who guarantees our reservation in heaven while using him to endorse our own ideas about how to run the world. This feeds into a nationalized narrative of the gospel and leads to a state-owned Jesus. Thus, our understanding of Christ has mutated from Roman Jesus to Byzantine Jesus to German Jesus to American Jesus, etc. — Brian Zahnd

Christians agree that when we sell and market, we need to show potential customers that a product "adds value" to their lives. That doesn't mean it can give them a life. But because Christians have a deeper understanding of human well-being, we will often find ourselves swimming against the very strong currents of the corporate idols of our culture. — Timothy Keller