quotations about understanding
The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself: and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own object.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
journal, 1847
The particulars of flat-earth devotion are easy to ridicule. But it isn't difficult to understand why people are seduced by the tenor of the message. The flat-earth movement, in its own peculiar way, appeals to the arrogance of the ignorant, arousing a dormant sense of being meant for something special. It empowers you to overcome confusion and conquer stupidity -- not the hard way, by learning and understanding, but in a way that's much easier, by redefining the things you don't understand as wrong in the first place.
CALUM MARSH
"Why the flat-earth movement is the best symbol of the increasingly diminished value of truth and intelligence", National Post, April 21, 2017
Knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to the eyes.
JOHN LOCKE
Some Thoughts Concerning Education
What you understand no longer matters.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Trompe L'oeil"
The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
Understanding is the reward of faith.
SAINT AUGUSTINE
attributed, Wise Words and Quotes
You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything ... and know that we don't, that's the important part.
NOAM CHOMSKY
interview in Cardiff, Wales, UK, March 11, 2011
We all feel that religious understanding is crucial in a multiracial country, and the way to achieving that is to practise moderation. Everybody has different ways of thinking. We cannot and should not force others to think like we do, we must respect the differences, understand and accept each other to achieve social harmony.
A. HEMADASA
"Getting set for Wesak", The Star Online, May 8, 2017
Every man should be capable of all ideas and I understand that in the future this will be the case.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote", The Garden of Forking Paths
One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
journal, August 1, 1835
Tolerance and understanding are guideposts on the upward path toward improving the human condition, whereas intolerance and ignorance lead to a downward spiral of destruction and despair.
PETER G. SZILAGYI
"The Road to Tolerance and Understanding", AAP News, May 3, 2017
Cry out for insight and understanding. Search for them as you would for lost money or hidden treasure.
BIBLE
Proverbs 2:3-4
Don't you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn't developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don't expect to see.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
When understanding is analyzed as an ability to make counterfactual inferences in the contexts of manipulation, prediction, and explanation, its relation to knowledge can be clarified. Understanding is only knowledge about the relations of dependence, not something mysterious added to knowledge.
PETRI YLIKOSKI
"The Illusion of Depth of Understanding in Science", Scientific Understanding: Philosophical Perspectives
It's pathetic how we can't live with the things we can't understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Choke
Be it assembling a model airplane, baking a cake or choosing flowers and shrubs for the garden, reading and understanding is necessary to achieve success. Most people would think that nothing could be simpler than reading the picture tag slipped in the side of a pot at a garden center's display, but without understanding, simple instructions can lead to failure.
LEEANN BARTON
"In the Garden: Understanding Labels", Stillwater News Press, April 23, 2017
Wouldn't we all do better not trying to understand, accepting the fact that no human being will ever understand another, not a wife with a husband, nor a parent a child? Perhaps that's why men have invented God -- a being capable of understanding.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Quiet American
If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
1Q84
To trace the unfamiliar to the familiar ... is to understand.
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
"The Damned", Incredible Adventures