Understanding Quotes

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The art of listening needs its highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we're saying.

- Sydney J. Harris

Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.

- Marge Piercy

Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership -- collectively "listening to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required."

- Joseph Jaworski

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

- Carl Sagan

All human eyes have longing in them.

- Ernesto Cardenal

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.

- David Augsburger

We are now at a point in time when the ability to receive, utilize, store, transform and trasmit data -- the lowest cognitive form -- has expanded literally beyond comprehension. Understanding and wisdom are largely forgotten as we struggle under an avalanche of data and information.

- Dee Hock

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the surface of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

- Annie Dillard

The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

- Wayne Dyer

Reality is much more complex than any judgment of right and wrong encourages you to believe. When you really understand the ethical, spiritual, social, economic, and psychological forces that shape individuals, you will see that people's choices are not based on a desire to hurt. Instead, they are in accord with what they know and what world views are available to them. Most are doing the best they can, given what information they've received and what problems they are facing.

- Michael Lerner

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

- Dale Carnegie

Everything we do is in service of our needs. When this one concept is applied to our view of others, we'll see that we have no real enemies, that what others do to us is the best possible thing they know to do to get their needs met.

- Marshall Rosenberg

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.

- Francis Bacon

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

- Michel de Montaigne

We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.

- Talmud

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

- Henry David Thoreau

Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.

- Sigmund Freud

I accept relationship as my primary teacher about myself, other people, and the mysteries of the universe.

- Gay Hendricks

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely -- the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears -- when you give your whole attention to it.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

- Immanuel Kant

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs.

- Leo Tolstoy