Best 4500 quotes in «understanding quotes» category

In knowledge there is strength, in understanding there is might, and in wisdom there is power.

In its final passage, a good book does not require understanding; but rather the understanding of the book’s main idea.

In Jiu Jitsu, we often fall into the trap of simply trying a technique "harder," rather than recognizing that it is a poorly chosen tool for the task at hand.

In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', 'be good so that you can go to Heaven', absurd miracles, hyper-fundamentalist tales, religious hypocrites, and Jesus telling people not to judge. There is no horse more dead than such. I maintain that understanding Christianity and the Bible is quite like painting a piece of art. Let a toddler paint a puppy; then let an adult who is a long-time painter paint the very same puppy. They are both paintings of the puppy, but one is far more detailed, rational, realistic, and believable than the other. One is distorted and comical; the other is proportional and lively. One can write off Theology if he so pleases, but he might not be very wise in using the toddler's painting when it comes time to identify the real puppy or when trying to confront actual men of the Faith.

In my experience, men who understand women seem to rarely want to have anything to do with them.

In my opinion, at least, the splendid achievements of Alexander are the clearest possible proof that neither strength of body, nor noble blood, nor success in war even greater than Alexander's own... that none of these things, I say, can make a man happy, unless he can win one more victory in addition to those the world thinks so great---the victory over himself.

In order to become great, one must understand the secret of time conversion.

In order for knowledge to be of value, there must be an internal process of understanding how that knowledge applies to reality. Furthermore, that understanding must be translated into a corresponding change of behavior. This is the process of learning. Learning is the process of adapting knowledge and experience into a change of behavior.

In order to grasp the principles of spiritual growth, you need to be filled with understanding and the wisdom of God.

I not only understood her, but it was just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that frankness of soul—that very soul of hers which seemed to be fettered by her body—it was that soul I loved in her.

In our ever busy world, patience is now not easily found like diamonds.

In reality, everyone is unlimited. All limits are simply illusions. Understanding is the breeze that sweeps them away.

Inside her, great castles of comprehension, models of the world as she had understood it, shivered. She could not decide whether to let them crumble or to try desperately to save them.

Insight perceives, intelligence understands, intellect comprehends, wisdom knows.

In sandy soil, when deep you delve, you reach the springs below; The more you learn, the freer streams of wisdom flow.

In some ways, we will always be different. In other ways, we will always be the same. There is always room to disagree and blame, just as there is always room to take a new perspective and empathize. Understanding is a choice.

Intelligence is a seed, understanding is the stem, insight is the branches, and wisdom is the fruit.

Intelligence is the icing, but wisdom is the cake.

Intelligence is a gift. Understanding is a prize. Wisdom is a blessing. Enlightenment is your reward.

Intelligence is carnal, understanding is natural, but wisdom is divine.

Intelligence is short, virtue is narrow, understanding is wide, and wisdom is tall.

Intelligence is the seed, understanding is the stem, knowledge is the roots, and wisdom is the tree.

Intelligence is what you know, understanding is what you do, wisdom is what you become.

Intent of complete surrender (devotion) is worship itself. Complete surrender with (full understanding and real) knowledge is a very high level of worship. Even the surrender done with relative knowledge (ignorance of one’s own real self) can be called worship.

Intelligence brings light to your mind, understanding brings light to your heart, and wisdom brings light to your soul.

Intelligence is of the mind, understanding is of the heart, wisdom is of the soul.

Intelligence is quick, understanding slow.

Intelligence is strong because of its mind. Understanding is mighty because of its heart. Wisdom is powerful because of its soul.

Intelligence tells you what to do. Insight tells you how to do it. Understanding tells you when to do it. Wisdom tells you why you do it.

In the area of linguistics, there are major language groups: Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Greek, German, French, and so on. Most of us grow up learning the language of our parents and siblings, which becomes our primary or native tongue. Later, we may learn additional languages but usually with much more effort. These become our secondary languages. We speak and understand best our native language. We feel most comfortable speaking that language. The more we use a secondary language, the more comfortable we become conversing in it. If we speak only our primary language and encounter someone else who speaks only his or her primary language, which is different from ours, our communication will be limited. We must rely on pointing, grunting, drawing pictures, or acting out our ideas. We can communicate, but it is awkward. Language differences are part and parcel of human culture. If we are to communicate effectively across cultural lines, we must learn the language of those with whom we wish to communicate. In the area of love, it is similar. Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other. My friend on the plane was speaking the language of “Affirming Words” to his third wife when he said, “I told her how beautiful she was. I told her I loved her. I told her how proud I was to be her husband.” He was speaking love, and he was sincere, but she did not understand his language. Perhaps she was looking for love in his behavior and didn’t see it. Being sincere is not enough. We must be willing to learn our spouse’s primary love language if we are to be effective communicators of love.

In that moment, the nameless boy understood: This was the end. He was going to die. He would cease to breathe. Cease to be. Cease to hurt. It would be easy. But he didn't want to die.

In the context of the Negro problem neither whites nor blacks, for excellent reasons of their own, have the faintest desire to look back; but I think that the past is all that makes the present coherent, and further, that the past will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly.

In the midst of a vast field of numbers, a straight path opened before my eyes.

In the psychology of aesthetics, there is a name for the moment between the anxiety of confronting something new and the satisfying click of understanding it. It is called an 'aesthetic aha.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.

In the nearest future, those who understood the value of time will rule over those who trivialized time.

In the new quiet I heard the sea as if my ears were laid against the ocean floor. I could hear everything. The rumbling earthquake of a ship and spider crabs moving between weeds.

I often find that people either underestimate what they know, or overestimate it. Very rarely do they gauge their own knowledge appropriately.

In truth, people know very little about each other. I only know as much about you as I know about myself.

In Western culture, virtually everything is understood through the process of storytelling, often to the detriment of reality. When we recount history, we tend to use the life experience of one person — the “journey” of a particular “hero,” in the lingo of the mythologist Joseph Campbell — as a prism for understanding everything else.

{On the death of Hale's esteemed friend and fellow scientist, Luther Burbank. Burbank was much beloved by the population unil in an interview he revealed that he was an atheist. After this, the public turned on him and sent him thousands of letters with death threats. This upset the kind-hearted Burbank, who tried to amiably reply to each letter, so much that it ultimately led to his death} . . . he was misled into believing that logic, kindliness, and reason could convince and help the bigoted. He fell sick. The sickness was fated to be his last. What killed Luther Burbank, at just that time and in just that abrupt and tragic fashion, was his baffled, yearning, desperate effort to make people understand. His desire to help them, to clarify their minds, and to induce them to substitute fact for hysteria drove him beyond his strength. He grew suddenly old attempting to make reasonable a people which had been unreasonable through twenty stiff-necked generations. . . He died, not a martyr to truth, but a victim of the fatuity of blasting dogged falsehood.

I only wish you could spend just five minutes beneath my skin and feel what it’s like. Feel the savage swarming magic I feel.

I pass and I stay, like the Universe.

I protect myself by refusing to know myself.

I realize many wonderful things about language - "realize" in the sense of feeling or understanding intuitively: I realize such things most often when I am greatly concerned with another person's feelings. I think such realization is one gift which human beings may give each other. I'm not much good at analysis or scholarly efforts with language, probably because I don't value them as much as I value understanding, which is informed by that which is deeply felt before it is examined.

I remember seeing this video for the first time in college - miserable, half-drunk on Keystone Light, a Camel Light smoldering in my mouth, about to desperately tap-dance my way through another social interaction - and saying out loud: "I fucking *get* you, Bee Girl.

I remember when we found the first population of living Cerion agassizi in central Eleuthera. Our hypothesis of Cerion's general pattern required that two predictions be affirmed (or else we were in trouble): this population must disappear by hybridization with mottled shells toward bank-interior coasts and with ribby snails toward the bank-edge. We hiked west toward the bank-interior and easily found hybrids right on the verge of the airport road. We then moved east toward the bank-edge along a disused road with vegetation rising to five feet in the center between the tire paths. We should have found our hybrids but we did not. The Cerion agassizi simply stopped about two hundred yards north of our first ribby Cerion. Then we realized that a pond lay just to our east and that ribby forms, with their coastal preferences, might not favor the western side of the pond. We forded the pond and found a classic hybrid zone between Cerion agassizi and ribby Cerions. (Ribby Cerion had just managed to round the south end of the pond, but had not moved sufficiently north along the west side to establish contact with C. agassizi populations.) I wanted to shout for joy. Then I thought, "But who can I tell; who cares?" And I answered myself, "I don't have to tell anyone. We have just seen and understood something that no one has ever seen and understood before. What more does a man need?

I see you better in music, I hear you better in wind, I feel you more in a flooding moonlight, that understands nothing, but darkness and silence.

I saw something I could never forget. I saw lifetimes of acknowledgement, fear, wisdom, questioning, and understanding in a child's eye. It was the worst thing I would ever witness.

I sat in a world of sorrow trying to figure things out. I couldn’t because the world isn’t supposed to be figured out. You’re not supposed to get it. You’re supposed to flow with it and things come or don’t. It’s that simple, but we think everything’s complex when it’s just sitting right in front of us.