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Understanding Quotes

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Understanding Quotes

“The equivocations, the confusions, the contradictions. There's no way we can live through or comprehend something so big that happened so long ago. We've lost true history. But if we are willing to tolerate the contradictions, and if we suffer through events rather than ticking them off, we may at least get closer to understanding what happened than if we grip the handrail of a carefully polished and reassuringly heroic narrative.”

IfsWayMayLongBigsSufferingLostUnderstandingHappenedEventsWillingConfusionNarrativeContradictionHeroicTolerateLong AgoPolished
Author:Nicholson Baker
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“What can be more foolish than to think that all this rare fabric of heaven and earth could come by chance, when all the skill of art is not able to make an oyster? To see rare effects, and no cause ; a motion, without a mover ; a circle, without a centre ; a time, without an eternity ; a second, without a first : these are things so against philosophy and natural reason, that he must be a beast in understanding who can believe in them. The thing formed, says that nothing formed it ; and that which is made is, while that which made it is not, This folly is infinite.”

ThinkingFirstsBelieveArtMadeReasonPhilosophyAbleEarthHeavenCausesUnderstandingNaturalChanceAtheismEffectsSkillsArt IsEternityInfiniteAtheistFoolishCirclesMade ItBeastFollyFabricCentreHeaven And EarthOysters
Author:Jeremy Taylor
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“Scientists often invent words to fill the holes in their understanding.These words are meant as conveniences until real understanding can be found. ... Words such as dimension and field and infinity ... are not descriptions of reality, yet we accept them as such because everyone is sure someone else knows what the words mean.”

KnowsMeanRealRealityScienceFoundUnderstandingAcceptingFieldsAcceptanceScientistHolesDimensionsDescriptionInfinityConvenienceNomenclature
Author:Scott Adams
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“To say that you have taught when students haven't learned is to say you have sold when no one has bought. But how can you know that students have learned without spending hours correcting tests and papers? . . . check students understanding while you are teaching (not at 10 o'clock at night when you're correcting papers) so you don't move on with unlearned material that can accumulate like a snowball and eventually engulf the student in confusion and despair.”

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Author:Madeline Hunter
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“The number one way a man can succeed in fulfilling a woman's primary love needs is through communication. By learning to listen to a woman's feelings, a man can effectively shower a woman with caring, understanding, respect, devotion, validation, and reassurance.”

MenWayNeedsFeelingsUnderstandingNumbersLove YouCommunicationSucceedCaringDevotionOne WayPrimariesShowersFulfillingValidationReassurance
Book:Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
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“Understanding like the eye; whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance and make it its own subject.”

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Book:Philosophical Works: Preliminary discourse by the editor. On the conduct of the understanding. An essay concerning human understanding
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“To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.”

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Book:The Emperor Marcus Antoninus His Conversation with Himself: Together with the Preliminary Discourse of the Learned Gataker ; as Also the Emperor's Life
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“The universe does not exist 'out there,' independent of us. We are inescapably involved in bringing about that which appears to be happening. We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense, this is a participatory universe. Physics is no longer satisfied with insights only into particles, fields of force, into geometry, or even into time and space. Today we demand of physics some understanding of existence itself.”

DoeTodayScienceUniverseForceUnderstandingSpaceExistenceFieldsStrangeInvolvedDemandHappeningsIndependentInsightPhysicsSatisfiedObservationTime And SpaceObserversParticlesGeometry
Author:John P. Wheeler III
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“The Ideas of primary Qualities of Bodies, are Resemblances of them, and their Patterns do really exist in the Bodies themselves; but the Ideas, produced in us by these Secondary Qualities, have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our Ideas, existing in the Bodies themselves. They are in Bodies, we denominate from them, only a Power to produce those Sensations in us: And what is Sweet, Blue or Warm in Idea, is but the certain Bulk, Figure, and Motion of the insensible parts in the Bodies themselves, which we call so.”

IdeasBodyScienceCertainUnderstandingQualityFiguresProduceSweetBluePatternsWarmPrimariesSensationsResemblanceInsensible
Book:An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
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“The senses at first let in particular Ideas, and furnish the yet empty Cabinet: And the Mind by degrees growing familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the Memory, and Names got to them.”

MindFirstsIdeasScienceNamesUnderstandingMemoriesGrowingParticularDegreesEmptySensesFamiliarCabinets
Book:The Locke Reader: Selections from the Works of John Locke with a General Introduction and Commentary
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“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.”

HumansMayOrderFoundUnderstandingSidesNumbersOpinionSupportGreaterAuthorityDrawsAll ThingsWeightAgreeConclusionInstanceFormerDistinctionRejectsNeglectDespiseAdoptedPernicious
Book:The Works of Francis Bacon
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“Computers and rocket ships are examples of invention, not of understanding. ... All that is needed to build machines is the knowledge that when one thing happens, another thing happens as a result. It's an accumulation of simple patterns. A dog can learn patterns. There is no "why&rdqo"; in those examples. We don't understand why electricity travels. We don't know why light travels at a constant speed forever. All we can do is observe and record patterns.”

KnowsLightHappensScienceUnderstandingCan DoSimpleResultsKnowledgeForeverRecordsOne ThingDogExampleNeededComputerMachinesConstantPatternsSpeedThings HappenInventionShipsElectricityRocketsAccumulation
Author:Scott Adams
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“Nature never makes excellent things, for mean or no uses: and it is hardly to be conceived, that our infinitely wise Creator, should make so admirable a Faculty, as the power of Thinking, that Faculty which comes nearest the Excellency of his own incomprehensible Being, to be so idlely and uselesly employ'd, at least 1/4 part of its time here, as to think constantly, without remembering any of those Thoughts, without doing any good to it self or others, or being anyway useful to any other part of Creation.”

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Book:An essay concerning human understanding. Also extr. from the author's works, i. Analysis of mr. Locke's doctrine of ideas [&c.].
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“Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark" . . . If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?”

PeopleIfsHumansFeelingsPassionUnderstandingDifferencesLibertyPrinciplesVirtueSeeingMankindHuman NatureCapableVicesInjurySparksResentmentFreedom And LibertyFreedom LibertyIndignationLatentAmiableVenerationEvermoreAmerican LibertyTrue And False
Book:Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or, political essays, published in ... 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of controversy, between Great Britain and her colonies; the former by John Adams ... the latter by Jonathan Sewall [or rather, Daniel Leonard] ... To which are added a number of letters lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor, etc
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“It is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obsesses the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into innumerable and inane controversies and fancies.”

MenMeanMatterChoicesLanguageForceUnderstandingLearningIllDefinitionsConfusionExplanationFancyDiscourseAssociatesVulgarConfusingControversyApprehensionThings Learned
Author:Francis Bacon
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“But the idols of the Market Place are the most troublesome of all: idols which have crept into the understanding through their alliances with words and names. For men believe that their reason governs words. But words turn and twist the understanding. This it is that has rendered philosophy and the sciences inactive. Words are mostly cut to the common fashion and draw the distinctions which are most obvious to the common understanding. Whenever an understanding of greater acuteness or more diligent observation would alter those lines to suit the true distinctions of nature, words complain.”

MenBelieveReasonPhilosophyTurnsNamesBeliefLanguageUnderstandingLinesCommonGreaterCuttingFashionDrawsObviousComplainingSuitsObservationDistinctionIdolsTwistsAlliancesDiligentTroublesome
Author:Francis Bacon
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“More people have access to education today than ever before. But I cannot help but feel that the modern educational experience is not preparing us adequately to attend the rich banquet of life. Certainly the young people of today have mastered the use of technology and are capable of solving complex scientific and mathematical problems, but who and what do these serve if they cannot think for themselves? If they have no understanding of the meaning and purpose of their own lives? If they do not know who they are as individuals?”

PeopleIfsThinkingKnowsFeelsHelpingUseProblemTodayYoungPurposeIndividualUnderstandingEducationTechnologyRichModernCapableComplexesEducationalAccessMathematicalPreparingBanquetsMathematical ProblemsAccess To EducationEducation TodayUse Of Technology
Author:Matthew Kelly
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“Since my logic aims to teach and instruct the understanding, not that it may with the slender tendrils of the mind snatch at and lay hold of abstract notions (as the common logic does), but that it may in very truth dissect nature, and discover the virtues and actions of bodies, with their laws as determined in matter; so that this science flows not merely from the nature of the mind, but also from the nature of things.”

MindMayDoeMatterBodyActionLawScienceUnderstandingCommonTeachVirtueFlowLogicAimLaysNotionDeterminedAbstractSlender
Book:Works of Francis Bacon: 4
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“The deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a place, is without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.”

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Book:The Works of John Adams Vol. 6: Defence of the Constitution IV, Discourses on Davila
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“I consider Otto Rank to be one of the great spiritual giants of the twentieth century, a genius as a psychologist and a saint as a human being. Though vilified by his original community of Freudians, he never became bitter. He died a feminist and deeply committed to social justice, in 1939....His deep understanding of creativity makes him a mentor for all of us living in a postmodern world....I believe that Art and Artist, especially chapters 12 to 14, may well emerge as the most valuable psychoanalysis of the spiritual life in our time.”

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Author:Matthew Fox
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“The human understanding is a revelation from its maker, which can never be disputed or doubted. There can be no scepticism, Pyrrhonism, or incredulity or infidelity here. No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove this celestical communication. This revelation has made it certain that two and one make three, and that one is not three nor can three be one. We can never be so certain of any prophecy, or the fulfilment of any prophecy, or of any miracle, or the design of any miracle, as we are from the revelation of nature, that is, nature's God, that two and two are equal to four.”

HumansMadeTwoCertainThreeUnderstandingFourDesignCommunicationProveEqualMiracleMade ItRevelationsMakersProphecyInfidelityDoubtedFounding Fathers ChristianFulfilmentFounding Fathers ReligionFounding Fathers ReligiousFounding Fathers Anti ReligionChristianity From Founding FathersScepticismIncredulity
Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

PeopleIfsLoveDoneRealityActionTogetherHumanityUnderstandingPoorHalfSituationFailingGenerationsDyingFailureRevolutionDiscoverySavedSettlingChanging The WorldOver YouFascismQuarrelsHalf Life
Book:Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson
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