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Understanding Quotes

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Understanding Quotes

“A person whose skin is metallic can no more have its reproduction restricted than a black-skinned person. Regarding life as a form of machinery and intelligent machines as people without our environmental limitations is essential in understanding FAP, the Final Anthropic Principle, which deals with evolution in the far future.”

PeoplePersonsFormUnderstandingBlackDealsPrinciplesEvolutionEssentialsSkinsMachinesIntelligentEnvironmentalFinalsLimitationMachineryOur EnvironmentReproductionMetallicAnthropic PrincipleIntelligent Machines
Author:Frank J. Tipler
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“We have been taught to keep the commandments, and we have kept them all too well. We have enshrined them like religious relics in sealed containers on the altar. Thus, it could be said that one lives by the commandments in much the same way as many persons live by a neighbor, never learning his name, let alone having any understanding communication with him.”

WayWellsPersonsHas BeensSaidNamesUnderstandingReligiousTaughtCommunicationNeighborLive ByCommandmentsAltarsRelicsContainers
Book:Breaking the Ten Commandments: Discover the Deeper Meaning
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“I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention And especially if it's given from the heart. When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they're saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. Most of us don't value ourselves or our love enough to know this.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWayNeedsGivingHeartPersonsImportantEnoughCareValuesGivenUnderstandingPowerfulAttentionTalkingCommunicationImportant ThingsCaringSuspectsOur LoveJust Listen
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“My father was extremely loving to me and funny and wise and understanding, and at other times extremely demanding, critical, calculating, exacting. When you're a young woman, I think you want to please a lot, so maybe you accept more of the criticism than you would as an older person. But criticism can be very wounding. It certainly was to me.”

ThinkingWantPersonsYoungFatherUnderstandingAcceptingWisePleaseCriticismCriticalYoung WomenCalculating
Author:Anjelica Huston
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“Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth. And when a person does not understand the creation of resources and wealth, the only intellectual alternative is to believe that increasing wealth must be at the cost of someone else. This belief that our good fortune must be an exploitation of others may be the taproot of false prophecy about doom that our evil ways must bring upon us.”

WayBelieveMayPersonsDoeHandsEvilBeliefProcessUnderstandingWealthEconomyCreationCostIntellectualResourcesFortuneAlternativesExploitationProphecyDoomGood FortuneHand In Hand
Author:Julian Simon
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“The mediocre mind has no capacity for understanding. It is stuck somewhere near thirteen years in its mental age, or even below it. The person may be forty, fifty, seventy years old - that does not matter, that is the physical age. He has been growing old, but he has not been growing up. You should note the distinction. Growing old, every animal does. Growing up, only a few human beings manage.”

ShouldYearsMindHumansMayPersonsDoeHas BeensMatterMotivationalAgeUnderstandingHuman BeingsAnimalGrowing UpGrowingCapacityNotesStuckManageFiftyDistinctionFortyMediocreSeventiesGrowing OldThirteenMediocre Minds
Author:Rajneesh
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“But the plain fact of the matter is that, for any person to successfully lead others, he or she must deal with reality and be ready to accept the fact that leadership , at times, can bring out the worst in us. And understanding, as well as coming to grips with the darker side of your personality, is key to dealing with real-life situations.”

WellsPersonsRealMatterFactsRealityMotivationalUnderstandingSidesDealsSituationAcceptingWorstReadyKeysPersonalityReal LifeDarker Side
Author:Donald T. Phillips
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“The person who appreciates a great work of art has the feeling that the work grows in him as he becomes involved in a prolonged capturing of emerging marginal meanings. He feels that he, too, is creative, that he himself is adding to his experience and understanding. Moreover, he wants to confront the work of art many times. He is not easily tired of it, as he would be had he read a purely logical statement. He realizes that the work of art does not merely transmit information; it produces pleasure.”

WantFeelsPersonsDoeArtFeelingsWould BeGrowsUnderstandingRealizingPleasureCreativeInformationProduceInvolvedAppreciateTiredStatementsLogicalWorks Of ArtGreat WorkEmergingTransmit
Book:Creativity: The Magic Synthesis
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“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to.”

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Author:Khalil Gibran
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“No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark.”

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Book:Moll Flanders
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“There are such beings in the world -- perhaps one in a thousand -- as the creature you and I should think perfection; where grace and spirit are united to worth, where the manners are equal to the heart and understanding; but such a person may not come in your way, or, if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a man of fortune, the near relation of your particular friend, and belonging to your own county.”

IfsThinkingMenWorldWayShouldHeartMayPersonsDoeSpiritUnderstandingUnitedGraceParticularHe ManSonThousandCreaturesEqualPerfectionRelationFortuneMannersBelongingCountyEldestEldest Son
Book:Jane Austen's correspondence and letters: The complete and definitive edition
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“The institution of the family is decisive in determining not only if a person has the capacity to love another individual but in the larger social sense whether he is capable of loving his fellow men collectively. The whole of society rests on this foundation for stability, understanding and social peace.”

IfsMenPersonsWholeIndividualSocialUnderstandingCapableCapacityFellowsInstitutionsFoundationStabilityFellow ManCapacity To Love
Book:Family and Nation: The Godkin Lectures, Harvard University
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“"What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe.”

PersonsSelfUniverseIndividualUnderstandingAnswersCivilizationCertaintyMeaning Of LifeAweWhat Is The Meaning Of LifeWhat Is The Meaning
Author:Julian Jaynes
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“Spinoza , for example, thought that insight into the essence of reality, into the harmonious structure of the eternal universe, necessarily awakens love for this universe. For him, ethical conduct is entirely determined by such insight into nature, just as our devotion to a person may be determined by insight into his greatness or genius. Fears and petty passions, alien to the great love of the universe, which is logos itself, will vanish, according to Spinoza, once our understanding of reality is deep enough.”

MayPersonsEnoughRealityUniversePassionUnderstandingExampleGreatnessGeniusEternalEssenceStructureInsightDeterminedDevotionAliensEthicalPettyGreat LoveHarmoniousLogosSpinoza
Book:Eclipse of Reason
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“Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks out after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.”

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Author:Jean de la Bruyere
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“Occasionally there is a moment in a person's life when he takes a great stride forward in wisdom, humility, or disillusionment. For a split second he comes into a kind of cosmic understanding. For a trembling breath of time he knows all there is to know. He is loaned the gift the poet yearned for - seeing himself as others see him.”

KnowsKindPersonsMomentsWisdomUnderstandingSeeingHumilityPoetBreathsCosmicSplitsTremblingStrideDisillusionment
Author:Betty Smith
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“I would hate to say as a non-African-American person that it would be wrong for a black person to direct white people in a movie. Wouldn't that be awful of me to say that? The only sympathizing thing I might say for people that want to [grumble] is that a filmmaker should have an understanding for the place where the people you're portraying are coming from.”

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Author:Mick Jagger
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“Secretly in my heart, I believe food is a doorway to almost every dimension of our existence. ... Food never was just food. From the time a cave person first came out from under a rock, food has been a little bit of everything: who we are spiritually as well as what keeps us alive. It's a gathering place, and in the best of all worlds it's possible that when people of one country sit down to eat another culture's food it will open their minds to the culture itself. Food is a doorway to understanding, and it can be as profound or as facile as you would like it to be.”

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Author:Lynne Rossetto Kasper
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“If there is one sweeping generalization I can make without fear of contradiction, it is that 'change' is the scariest word in the English language Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior. Insight won't do it. Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them. Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it. We have to act. We have to take the first step down a new road.”

IfsFirstsPersonsI CanSelfLanguageUnderstandingStepsOur LivesBehaviorInsightContradictionFirst StepsEnglish LanguageSweepingGeneralizationPleadingNaggingNew RoadsUnderstanding Why
Author:Susan Forward
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“My mother taught me to focus on being myself and not to worry what other people think about you. I know that as long as I'm a good person I'll stay on the right path. From my dad I learned that when someone tells you “No” it's only the beginning of a conversation. They both have always let me know that I can do anything I want to do as long as I don't give up. They are the most important role models in my life because they are exactly who I want to be when I grow up. They are supportive and understanding and I try every day to remember what they've taught me.”

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Author:Lauren Conrad
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“The argument from design is ultimately an appeal to miraculous causes, i.e., causes that do not, and cannot, occur in the natural course of events. This is why an explanation via design is not a legitimate alternative to scientific and other naturalistic modes of explanation. To refer to a miraculous cause is to refer to something that is inherently unknowable, and this sanctuary of ignorance explains nothing at all. However much it may soothe the imagination of the ignorant, it does nothing to satisfy the understanding of a rational person.”

MayPersonsDoeCoursesCausesUnderstandingImaginationNaturalAtheismEventsDesignIgnoranceArgumentPositive AtheismIgnorantRationalAlternativesAppealsExplanationMiraculousSanctuary
Book:Why Atheism?
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“A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had.”

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Author:Elizabeth Bowen
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“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”

FirstsPersonsRealCharacterFeelingsJoyUnderstandingEmotionFictionEssentialsElementsImprovementNovelistsMisfortunesEvokeFactualReal PersonSimplificationSuppressing
Author:Marcel Proust
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“The only effective way to help well-intentioned, intelligent persons to do the best they can in raising children is to encourage and guide them always to do their own thinking in their attempts at understanding and dealing with child-rearing situations and problems, and not to rely blindly on the opinions of others.”

ThinkingWayWellsChildrenPersonsHelpingProblemUnderstandingSituationOpinionIntelligentGuidesRelyDo The BestRaising ChildrenChild RearingIntelligent Person
Author:Bruno Bettelheim
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“Central to Jungian psychology is the concept of "individuation," the process whereby a person discovers and evolves his Self, as opposed to his ego. The ego is a persona, a mask created and demanded by everyday social interaction, and, as such, it constitutes the center of our conscious life, our understanding of ourselves through the eyes of others. The Self, on the other hand, is our true center, our awareness of ourselves without outside interference, and it is developed by bringing the conscious and unconscious parts of our minds into harmony.”

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Author:Morris Berman
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“When you pray for anyone you tend to modify your personal attitude toward him. You lift the relationship thereby to a higher level. The best in the other person begins to flow out toward you as your best flows toward him. In the meeting of the best in each a higher unity of understanding is established.”

PersonsUnderstandingLevelsAttitudePrayingHigherFlowMeetingsUnityLiftsHigher Level
Book:The Power of Positive Thinking: 10 Traits for Maximum Results
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