Understanding Quotes

400+ Sourced quotes

I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone.

Abraham Lincoln

The dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness are contrary to the order of creation....A given culture reveals its understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption... a great deal of educational and cultural work is urgently needed, including the education of consumers in the responsible use of their power of choice...

Pope John Paul II

The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the most beautiful reward for one who has striven his whole life to grasp some little bit of truth if he sees that other men have real understanding of and pleasure with his work.

Albert Einstein

Knowledge and understanding are life's faithful companions who will never prove untrue to you. For knowledge is your crown, and understanding your staff; and when they are with you, you possess no greater treasures.

But my understanding is there are many villages you go to where there's really no schools, as a practical matter, and many of the schools still teach just how to memorize certain things rather than how to think critically about problems. And every country at this point, if it wants to succeed, needs to put in place free, compulsory education for its young people — because they just can't succeed unless they have some basic skills. They have to be able to read. They have to be able to do mathematics. They have to have some familiarity with computers. They have to be able to understand basic principles of science. If you don't have those basic tools, then it's very hard to find a decent job in today's economy.

Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them.

Abraham Lincoln

The fact that man produces a concept "I" besides the totality of his mental and emotional experiences or perceptions does not prove that there must be any specific existence behind such a concept. We are succumbing to illusions produced by our self-created language, without reaching a better understanding of anything. Most of so-called philosophy is due to this kind of fallacy.

Albert Einstein

Societies evolve based on new understandings and new science and new appreciation of who we are.

If he exalts himself, I humble him. If he humbles himself, I exalt him. And I go on contradicting him Until he understands That he is a monster that passes all understanding.

You laughed for the marrow in their bones that was not yet ready for laughter;
And you wept for their eyes that yet were dry.
Your voice fathered their thoughts and their understanding.
Your voice mothered their words and their breath.

To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Art and science work in quite different ways: agreed. But, bad as it may sound, I have to admit that I cannot get along as an artist without the use of one or two sciences.... In my view, the great and complicated things that go on in the world cannot be adequately recognized by people who do not use every possible aid to understanding.

Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.

I attacked with great resolution the editorial matter, and, reading it from beginning to end without understanding a syllable, conceived the possibility of its being Chinese, and so re-read it from the end to the beginning, but with no more satisfactory result.

Edgar Allan Poe

But what will he do when he sees only too clearly why his patient is ill; when he sees that it arises from his having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because he is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because he is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding, because he has failed to read the meaning of his own existence?

Gently eliminating all obstacles to his own understanding, he constantly maintains his unconditional sincerity. His humility, perseverance, and adaptability evoke the response of the universe and fill him with divine light.

When intelligent people pride themselves on not understanding, it is quite natural they should succeed better than fools.

The Imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature imbued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call Understanding; and is common to Man and Beasts.

Science contributes to our culture in many ways, as a creative intellectual activity in its own right, as the light which has served to illuminate man's place in the universe, and as the source of understanding of man's own nature.

John F. Kennedy