Understandings Quotes

1. "The French believe that all errors are distant, someone else's fault. Americans believe that there is no distance, no difference, and therefore that there are no errors, that any troubles are simple misunderstandings, consequent on your not yet having spoken English loudly enough."
Author: Adam Gopnik

2. "We seem to be unable to resist overstating every aspect of ourselves: how long we are on the planet for, how much it matters what we achieve, how rare and unfair are our professional failures, how rife with misunderstandings are our relationships, how deep are our sorrows. Melodrama is individually always the order of the day."
Author: Alain De Botton

3. "Many of you have already found out, and others will find out in the course of their lives, that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate our attention totally on it's pursuit. But even while it eludes us, the illusion of knowing it still lingers and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter."
Author: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

4. "Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps."
Author: Alexander McCall Smith

5. "One day, everyone stopped over-thinking. We started thinking just as much as we should, and not any more than necessary. There was no more misunderstandings whatsoever. Minor disagreements were forgotten, not turned into proof of larger things. Trivial errors of speech or judgement were just as important as items on the breakfast menu: you chose waffles and I chose eggs and it was a god damn miracle."
Author: Amelia Gray

6. "I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings." -from the Fox-"
Author: Antoine De Saint Exupéry

7. "Please-tame me!' he said.'I want to, very much,' the little prince replied. 'But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.''One only understands the things that one tames,' said the fox. 'Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me.''What must I do, to tame you?' asked the little prince.'You must be very patient,' replied the fox. 'First you will sit down at a little distance from me-like that-in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day..."
Author: Antoine De Saint Exupéry

8. "Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way."
Author: Anton Chekhov

9. "Even between the best of friends, mistakes and misunderstandings can happen."
Author: Avigdor Lieberman

10. "Enchantment frightens us for good reason. Whether it's enchantment of the ordinary kind or the magical kind, it may very well change us, and we may not be able to return to our old selves, to our old certainties and our easy understandings. Magical people seem to fear that less than the rest of us. They want to be enchanted and are quite willing to be changed forever as they go deeper and deeper into realms beyond everyday understanding. Most of us wouldn't mind a little more magic ourselves, if we could slip in and out of it. We too want to leave the brab realities of work-a-day life, experience the transcendent, to revel in endless possibility. But most of us have lost any belief in good magic. All that's left is a vague sence that evil is afoot and ready to draw nearer. The only magic most of us believe in is the scary stuff."
Author: Christine Wicker

11. "Audiences know exactly what's coming and they know from the beginning of the movie that everything's going to be OK and there will be high jinks that will get you from the beginning to the end, and eventually all the misunderstandings will be worked out and everyone will be in love."
Author: Dana Fox

12. "Did the Abrahamic God know that, by "divinely inspiring" the book of Genesis and other tales in the Bible, that He would cause millions to impede scientific understandings of our origins and push for myth to be taught in schools? Shouldn't he have left out the bit about humans being made from dust and ribs, knowing that fact?"
Author: David G. McAfee

13. "If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don't have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don't. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state."
Author: David Graeber

14. "A dog — a dog teaches us so much about love. Wordless, imperfect love; love that is constant, love that is simplegoodness, love that forgives not only bad singing and embarrassments, but misunderstandings and harsh words.Love that sits and stays and stays and stays, until it finally becomes its own forever. Love, stronger than death. A dog is a four-legged reminder that love comes and time passes and then your heart breaks."
Author: Deb Caletti

15. "There have been some friendships lost over this. That's the most difficult for me. I find it very uncomfortable to know that I was at one time close friends with someone, and because of jealousies and misunderstandings and so on, these friendships have dissolved."
Author: Donald Johanson

16. "So many misunderstandings. I was going across to you you were coming across to me but I was motioned back told to sit down and wait and that you would be with me seven years from this day. If you would get yourself photographed front face and silhouette and send it to me I will send postal order by return. Make sure the photographer catches the spill of your hair and your trim black beard."
Author: Edna O'Brien

17. "Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don't ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence."
Author: Elif Shafak

18. "Only to he avoid misunderstandings, I must say that even last year, when I wrote my pamphlet, I heartily wished that Prussia should declare war against Napoleon."
Author: Ferdinand Lassalle

19. "Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings."
Author: Francois Truffaut

20. "On the flip side of everything we think we absolutely have pegged lurks an equal amount of the unknown. Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings. Just between us, that's my way of comprehending the world. In a nutshell."
Author: Haruki Murakami

21. "Despite Japan's desires and efforts, unfortunate differences in the ways that Japan, England, the United States, and China understood circumstances, together with misunderstandings of attitudes, made it impossible for the parties to agree."
Author: Hideki Tojo

22. "What is the nature of the border between truth and lies? It is permeable and blurred because it is planted thick with rumour, confabulation, misunderstandings and twisted tales. Truth can break the gates down, truth can howl in the street; unless truth is pleasing, personable and easy to like, she is condemned to stay whimpering at the back door."
Author: Hilary Mantel

23. "And, thinking of this judgment I would no longer be able to change, I suddenly felt a kind of relief, as if peace could come to me only after the moment when there would be nothing to add and nothing to remove in that arbitrary ledger of misunderstandings, and the galaxies which were gradually reduced to the last tail of the last luminous ray, winding from the sphere of darkness, seemed to bring with them the only possible truth about myself, and I couldn't wait until all of them, one after the other, had followed this path."
Author: Italo Calvino

24. "There is an old question, rarely voiced these days, but nevertheless running as an undercurrent beneath the squabbles and misunderstandings that occur in households, workplaces and universities on a daily basis. ‘What do women want?' has been asked in a bewildered, almost exasperated, tone since women first began to say they wanted more. Yet the answer seems to us to be simple and entirely self-evident. Women want what all sentient human beings want. They want to develop their own talents and put them to good use, to earn and control their own money so they can be truly independent and make free choices. They want to gain status and respect as they prove to be worth of it. To love and to be loved as free and equal adults, to be allowed their human flaws and foibles and not to be unfairly judged for them, and to be forgiven when they fail, behave badly or have trouble coping. To be the subject and not the object. They want, in short, what men want. – pg. 237"
Author: Jane Caro Catherine Fox

25. "And they lived happily (aside from a few normal disagreements, misunderstandings, pouts, silent treatments, and unexpected calamities) ever after."
Author: Jean Ferris

26. "When she was in Djibouti and I was in Aden, and I used to go and see her for twenty-four hours, she managed to multiply the misunderstandings between us until there were exactly sixty minutes before I had to leave; sixty minutes, just long enough to make you feel the seconds passing one by one."
Author: Jean Paul Sartre

27. "I put away that stuffed God I had all stitched up with my human understandings and fears. God is less formulaic and quantifiable as he once used to be, but experiencing the reality of his love is infinitely better than dragging that other one around."
Author: Jim Palmer

28. "And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings and a desire to know. But besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to the most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers."
Author: John Adams

29. "Exciting discoveries in neuroscience are allowing us to fit educational methods to new understandings of how the brain develops."
Author: John Katzman

30. "I want to block some common misunderstandings about 'understanding': In many of these discussions one finds a lot of fancy footwork about the word 'understanding.'"
Author: John Searle

31. "I have to be clear with myself and very conscious of what I am trying to say. Misunderstandings will always take place; it's unavoidable."
Author: Jose Padilha

32. "How often, you wonder, has the direction of your life been shaped by such misunderstandings? How many opportunities have you been denied--or, for that matter, awarded--because someone failed to see you properly? How many friends have you lost, how many have you gained, because they glimpsed some element of your personality that shone through for only an instant, and in circumstances you could never reproduce? An illusion of water shimmering at the far bend of a highway."
Author: Kevin Brockmeier

33. "Our investigation is a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language."
Author: Ludwig Wittgenstein

34. "Isn't the analogy with good manners perfect? Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word 'punctilious' ('attentive to formality or etiquette') comes from the same original root word as punctuation. As we shall see, the practice of 'pointing' our writing has always been offered in a spirit of helpfulness, to underline meaning and prevent awkward misunderstandings between writer and reader."
Author: Lynne Truss

35. "How to explain the sheer tingling joy one experiences when two interesting, complex, and occasionally aggravating characters have at last settled their misunderstandings and will live happily ever after, no matter what travails life might throw in their path, because Jane Austen said they will, and that's that? How to describe the exhilaration of being caught up in an unknown but glamorous world of balls and gowns and rides in open carriages with handsome young men? How to explain that the best part of Jane Austen's world is that sudden recognition that the characters are just like you?"
Author: Margaret C. Sullivan

36. "Evolution provides a scientific foundation for the core values shared by most Christians and conservatives, and by accepting–and embracing–the theory of evolution, Christians and conservatives strengthen their religion, their politics, and science itself. The conflict between science and religion is senseless. It is based on fears and misunderstandings rather than on facts and moral wisdom. (138)"
Author: Michael Shermer

37. "Don't Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life."
Author: Miguel Angel Ruiz

38. "In the strange heat all litigation brings to bear on things, the very process of litigation fosters the most profound misunderstandings in the world."
Author: Renata Adler

39. "As we experience this love, there is a temptation at times to become hostile to our earlier understandings, feeling embarrassed that we were so "simple" or "naive," or "brainwashed" or whatever terms arise when we haven't come to terms with our own story. These past understandings aren't to be denied or dismissed; they're to be embraced. Those experiences belong. Love demands that they belong. That's where we were at that point in our life and God met us there. Those moments were necessary for us to arrive here, at this place at this time, as we are. Love frees us to embrace all of our history, the history in which all things are being made new."
Author: Rob Bell

40. "When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented. We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxers playing a joke. Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb."
Author: Robert Anton Wilson

41. "With Jesus, however, the device of parabolic utterance is used not to explain things to people's satisfaction but to call attention to the unsatisfactoriness of all their previous explanations and understandings."
Author: Robert Farrar Capon

42. "If acknowledging that racial misgivings and misunderstandings are still a part of politics and life in America, I plead guilty."
Author: Ron Fournier

43. "You could say Shakespeare is so extraordinary precisely because he was so ordinary. He had all the usual anxieties and understandings of what it is to have children, lose children, get married, struggle to make a living and so on."
Author: Simon Callow

44. "The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause of the serious misunderstandings that divide them."
Author: Simone De Beauvoir

45. "Nature is a hanging judge," goes an old saying. Many tragedies come from our physical and cognitive makeup. Our bodies are extraordinarily improbable arrangements of matter, with many ways for things to go wrong and only a few ways for things to go right. We are certain to die, and smart enough to know it. Our minds are adapted to a world that no longer exists, prone to misunderstandings correctable only by arduous education, and condemned to perplexity about the deepest questions we can ascertain."
Author: Steven Pinker

46. "Every year is filled with good times and fights and struggles and misunderstandings. All of it adds up to being in a band over a long time."
Author: Stone Gossard

47. "Constable Shoe,' said Constable Shoe, when the door of the bootmaker's factory was opened. 'Homicide.''You come 'bout Mister Sonky?' said the troll who'd opened the door. Warm damp air blew out into the street, smelling of incontinent cats and sulphur.'I meant I'm a zombie,' said Reg Shoe. 'I find that telling people right away saves embarrassing misunderstandings later on. But coincidentally, yes, we've come about the alleged deceased."
Author: Terry Pratchett

48. "Nothing beats effective communication because it clears all doubts, misunderstandings, accusations, rumour, insecurities, gossip, hearsay, etc."
Author: Uzoma Nnadi

49. "We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts."
Author: William Hazlitt

50. "There it lies, I think, Damien … possession; not in wars, as some tend to believe; not so much; and very rarely in extraordinary interventions such as here … this girl … this poor child. No, I tend to see possession most often in the little things, Damien: in the senseless, petty spites and misunderstandings; the cruel and cutting word that leaps unbidden to the tongue between friends. Between lovers. Between husbands and wives. Enough of these and we have no need of Satan to manage our wars; these we manage for ourselves … for ourselves."
Author: William Peter Blatty

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