101 Understanding Famous Quotes

In a world overflowing with words, famous quotes stand as timeless beacons of wisdom, distilled through generations, capturing the essence of human thought, emotion, and experience. Whether it's the profound insights of philosophers, the stirring rhetoric of leaders, or the poetic reflections of writers, these quotes offer us guidance and inspiration. They have the power to provoke thought, spark conversation, and serve as a catalyst for change. In this meticulously curated collection, we delve into the top 101 famous quotes, uncovering the layers of meaning behind each one. Join us as we explore these verbal landmarks that continue to illuminate our paths and enrich our lives.

1. “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” - Carl Gustav Jung

2. “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Søren Kierkegaard

3. “Why should things be easy to understand?” - Thomas Pynchon

4. “Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way. River: Also, I can kill you with my brain.” - Ben Edlund

5. “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.” - Francis Bacon

6. “I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.” - Hermann Hesse

7. “Mama said it's probably because of Suzanne, and that you are never the same after a child dies. That made me wonder what she was like before Clover died, because I don't think I really knew my own mother until I had children, and if she was different before, I don't remember.” - Nancy E. Turner

8. “Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.” - Anais Nin

9. “Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” - Aristotle

10. “If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.” - Frederick Buechner

11. “Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck.” - Joss Whedon

12. “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” - Albert Einstein

13. “The world has a soul and whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of many things.” - Paulo Coelho

14. “If men could only know each other, they would neither idolize nor hate.” - Elbert Hubbard

15. “No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.” - Stephen Fry

16. “In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.” - Orson Scott Card

17. “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” - St. Augustine of Hippo

18. “Belief gets in the way of learning.” - Robert A. Heinlein

19. “If you know the why, you can live any how.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

20. “When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.” - Clarence Darrow

21. “After visiting these two places (Berchtesgaden and the Eagle's lair on Obersalzberg) you can easily see how that within a few years Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived. He had boundless ambition for his country, which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way that he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him. He had in him the stuff of which legends are made.” - John Fitzgerald Kennedy

22. “To be understood is to prostitute oneself” - Fernando Pessoa

23. “If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. 'Green fingers' are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart.” - Russell Page

24. “It is not for you to say - you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently forgotten what blood you shed, and what extremities you proceeded to in the conquering - it is not for you to say how far the worst of all exasperations may, or may not, carry the maddened men of an enslaved nation. The iron that has entered into our souls has gone too deep for you to find it. Leave the refugee alone! Laugh at him, distrust him, open your eyes in wonder at the secret self which smolders in him, sometimes under the every-day respectability and tranquility of a man like me - sometimes under the grinding poverty, the fierce squalor, of men less lucky, less pliable, less patient than I am - but judge us not. In the time of your first Charles you might have done us justice - the long luxury of your freedom has made you incapable of doing us justice now. ” - Wilkie Collins

25. “Will any of those men under you ever really understand all this? They're professional cynics, and it's too late for them. Why do you want to go back with them? So you can keep up with the Joneses? To buy a gyro just like the Smith has? To listen to music with your pocketbook instead of your glands?” - Ray Bradbury

26. “O how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew nothing. One lived and ran about the earth and rode through forests, and certain things looked so challenging and promising and nostalgic: a star in the evening, a blue harebell, a reed-green pond, the eye of a person or a cow. And sometimes it seemed that something never seen yet long desired was about to happen, that a veil would drop from it all, but then it passed, nothing happened, the riddle remained unsolved, the secret spell unbroken, and in the end one grew old and looked cunning . . . or wise . . . and still one knew nothing perhaps, was still waiting and listening.” - Herman Hesse

27. “We have to make mistakes, it's how we learn compassion for others.” - Curtis Sittenfeld

28. “One day, may we all meet together in the light of understanding.” - Malcolm X

29. “I really had no idea you'd be this stupid but then again you were the only person that really got me” - Novala Takemoto

30. “Then why do you want to know?""Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.” - Umberto Eco

31. “Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

32. “To be agreeable in society, you must consent to be taught many things which you already know.” - Talleyrand

33. “Despite the fact that I have no regrets about how things turned out in my life, I still can't help wanting to understand my intense relationship with Leo, as well as that turbulent time between adolescence and adulthood when everything feels raw and invigorating and scary-and why those feelings are all coming back to me now.” - Emily Giffin

34. “There is a saying that to understand is to forgive, but that is an error, so Papa used to say. You must forgive in order to understand. Until you forgive, you defend yourself against the possibility of understanding. ... If you forgive, he would say, you may indeed still not understand, but you will be ready to understand, and that is the posture of grace.” - Marilynne Robinson

35. “They didn't understand what they were doing.I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race.” - Michael Crichton

36. “The Winter Photograph was my Ariadne, not because it would help me discover a secret thing (monster or treasure), but because it would tell me what constituted that thread which drew me toward Photography. I had understood that henceforth I must interrogate the evidence of Photography, not from the viewpoint of pleasure, but in relation to what we romantically call love and death.” - Roland Barthes

37. “I think it happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.” - Nicholas Sparks

38. “But if we are to remain a great empire, we must have a greater understanding of the hearts and minds of others.” - Libba Bray

39. “I write to understand as much as to be understood.” - Elie Wiesel

40. “It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth.” - E. M. Forster

41. “That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays” - Mitch Albom

42. “Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

43. “God is the name we give to the science we don't understand. Science is the name we give to the God we don't understand.” - Steve Maraboli

44. “True love is born from understanding.” - The Buddha

45. “Logic only tells us what's there; it can't really address what isn't. Even the most devoted empiricist must admit that we have no hope of understanding the universe. Some things are unknowable.” - Megan Chance

46. “The special virtue of freedom is not that it makes you richer and more powerful but that it gives you more time to understand what it means to be alive.” - Adam Gopnik

47. “[T]he enduring problem for liberals, as for everyone else, is not whether history will judge them wise or foolish regarding the war on terrorism; it is, rather, the way that the past decade has splintered them away from other Americans. This fracture comes with a steep price: in today's toxic atmosphere, liberals are no less cynical, shortsighted, and parochial than anyone else, and they understand their fellow-Americans just as badly as they themselves are understood. When liberals look at red-state voters, they see either a mob of pious know-nothings or the insensible victims of militarism and class warfare. Yet.... [such people] defy fixed categories, which means that they have to be figured out the hard way--on their own terms.” - George Packer

48. “It isn't normal to know what we want. It is a rare and difficult psychological achievement.” - Abraham Harold Maslow

49. “He who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it.” - Pittacus Lore

50. “So, why do you write these strong female characters?Because you’re still asking me that question."[Equality Now speech, May 15, 2006]” - Joss Whedon

51. “Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti

52. “They said no one knew a man as well as a woman who slept with him.” - Iris Johansen

53. “When people recover from depression via psychotherapy, their attributions about recovery are likely to be different than those of people who have been treated with medication. Psychotherapy is a learning experience. Improvement is not produced by an external substance, but by changes within the person. It is like learning to read, write or ride a bicycle. Once you have learned, the skills stays with you. People no not become illiterate after they graduate from school, and if they get rusty at riding a bicycle, the skill can be acquired with relatively little practice. Furthermore, part of what a person might learn in therapy is to expect downturns in mood and to interpret them as a normal part of their life, rather than as an indication of an underlying disorder. This understanding, along with the skills that the person has learned for coping with negative moods and situations, can help to prevent a depressive relapse.” - Irving Kirsch

54. “And in this passion for understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to herself. But he must be made abstract first.” - D.H. Lawrence

55. “My father taught me that you can you read a hundred books on wisdom and write a hundred books on wisdom, but unless you apply what you learned then its only words on a page. Life is not lived with intentions, but action.” - Shannon Alder

56. “and afterward, after it was done, it was too much, and I felt like I was going to... I don't know.... explode, and it was just too much, I had to let it out you know? I had to-I interrupted her hysteria It's okay, I understand.That was a lie. I didn't get her cutting at all. She'd done it sporadically, ever since the accident and it scared me each time. She'd try to explain it to me, how she didn't want to die - she just needed to get it out somehow. She felt so much emotionally, she would say, that a physical outlet - physical pain - was the only way to make her internal pain go away. It was the only way she could control it.” - Richelle Mead

57. “For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.” - Carson McCullers

58. “Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?” - Confucius

59. “Truth ain't be in secret site to be found.It lies within certain levels of understanding and knowledge.” - Toba Beta

60. “The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)” - Yasutani Roshi

61. “In a general sense, I admit to valuing the worldviews of men under the age of 40 and women over the age of 30.” - Criss Jami

62. “If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.” - Criss Jami

63. “She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding.” - Jane Austen

64. “Maybe, in the final analysis, they saw me as something I wasn't and I tried to turn them into something they could never be. I loved them all but maybe I never understood any of them. I don't think they understood me.” - Ava Gardner

65. “Music helps us understand where we have come from but, more importantly, what has happened to us.” - Simon Van Booy

66. “...I like stories very much,” the priest said. “They help me understand myself better.” - Simon Van Booy

67. “There is no hospitality like understanding.” - Vanna Bonta

68. “Understanding your dog and knowing how to control him, develop his potentials, and resolve behavior problems, emotional conflicts and frustrations are no less essential than love and respect.” - Michael W. Fox

69. “There are wrongs for which religion makes no provision, and of which it has no comprehension.--"Wanda” - Ouida

70. “Dictionaries stop where the heart starts.” - David Foenkinos

71. “The calling that has been thrust upon you is likewise as demanding and daunting. I understand how you feel, believe me. But we need you, Eena. I would say I’m sorry, but……honestly I’d have no other woman take your place. You are exactly what we need. And yes, it does require a great deal of sacrifice, but you don’t have to bear these burdens alone. We are all here to help you. And believe me there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t give his last breath to defend yours so you might go on to heal Harrowbeth. Don’t block us out. Don’t think you have to stand alone. Please wake up and know that I understand. And I promise I won’t say, ‘I told you so.’” The room fell quiet. Eena didn’t move. Derian could see how her breathing continued smoothly in and out just as before. “I’ll give you some chocolate if you wake up.” It was a last-ditch effort. “I’ve got plenty of it, and I don’t care for the stuff.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

72. “Whence then come my errors? They come from the sole fact that since the will is much wider in its range and compass than the understanding, I do not restrain it within the same bounds, but extend it also to things which I do not understand: and as the will is of itself indifferent to these, it easily falls into error and sin, and chooses the evil for the good, or the false for the true.” - René Descartes

73. “Sometimes you have to put yourself in other people’s shoes to really understand the hardships of their souls.” - Kellie Elmore

74. “We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.From time to time, sit close to the one you love, hold his or her hand, and ask, 'Darling, do I understand you enough? Or am I making you suffer? Please tell me so that I can learn to love you properly. I don't want to make you suffer, and if I do so because of my ignorance, please tell me so that I can love you better, so that you can be happy." If you say this in a voice that communicates your real openness to understand, the other person may cry.That is a good sign, because it means the door of understanding is opening and everything will be possible again. Maybe a father does not have time or is not brave enough to ask his son such a question. Then the love between them will not be as full as it could be. We need courage to ask these questions, but if we don't ask, the more we love, the more we may destroy the people we are trying to love. True love needs understanding. With understanding, the one we love will certainly flower.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

75. “If I had to create a god, I would lend him a “slow understanding”: a kind of drip-by-drip understanding of problems. People who understand quickly frighten me.” - Roland Barthes

76. “It may be necessary to stand on the outside of one is to see things clearly.” - Peter Høeg

77. “Talent is the presence of ability and absence of understanding about the source and operation of knowledge.” - Idries Shah

78. “Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind.” - Criss Jami

79. “There's a difference between thinking you can't be wrong and having no regrets. Wrongness is what occurs prior to empiricism, in hindsight a counterpart of revelation, and revelation is nothing to regret.” - Criss Jami

80. “Yo no soy tan fuerte. A mi me importa que me entiendan. Hay personas a quienes quiero comprender y quiero que me comprendan. Hasta cierto punto, pienso que es inevitable que el resto de la gnete no lo haga. Ya me he hecho a la idea. Así que no me ocurre lo mismo que a Nagasawa, a quien no le importa que no le entiendan.” - Haruki Murakami

81. “There are only two ways to live your life. One as if all that matters is to have someone love and accept you. The other is as though loving and accepting another person is all that matters. Often, when you choose the second you get the first.” - Shannon L. Alder

82. “The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.” - Erich Fromm

83. “the underlying struggle - between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us...” - Barack Obama

84. “If we were to understand how important it is to say something and say it well, maybe we wouldn’t write a single word, but that would be tragic.” - Dejan Stojanovic

85. “All I have learned in life really just boils down to this: there is only one difference between the so-called wise and the so-called foolish...and between those who are truly happy and those who are not. Those who are wise - and those who are happy - embrace and appreciate life. Those who are unhappy and unwise do not. That is all; that is the only difference.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

86. “The poem or the discovery exists in two moments of vision: the moment of appreciation as much as that of creation; for the appreciator must see the movement, wake to the echo which was started in the creation of the work. In the moment of appreciation we live again the moment when the creator saw and held the hidden likeness. When a simile takes us aback and persuades us together, when we find a juxtaposition in a picture both odd and intriguing, when a theory is at once fresh and convincing, we do not merely nod over someone else's work. We re-enact the creative act, and we ourselves make the discovery again......Reality is not an exhibit for man's inspection, labeled: "Do not touch." There are no appearances to be photographed, no experiences to be copied, in which we do not take part. We re-make nature by the act of discovery, in the poem or in the theorem. And the great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself re-creates them. They are the marks of unity in variety; and in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself, in art or in science, the heart misses a beat.” - Jacob Bronowski

87. “Love and translation look alike in their grammar. To love someone implies transforming their words into ours. Making an effort to understand the other person and, inevitably, to misinterpret them. To construct a precarious language together.” - Andres Neuman

88. “I think that's the way people absorb television. All the explanations in Doctor Who are there if that's your bag, but they're not essential to your enjoyment of it. An awful lot of storytelling isn't really about making people understand — it's about making people care.” - Steven Moffat

89. “...come lie beside me again and understand - the others can show by actions, but I alone will immortalize you in words...” - John Geddes

90. “I think, actually, that none of us understands anyone else very well, because we're all too shy to show what matters the most. If you ask me, it's a major design flaw. We ought to be able to say, Here, look what I am. I think it would be quite a relief.” - Elizabeth Berg

91. “Cruel people offer pity when they no longer feel threatened. However, kind people offer compassion and understanding regardless.” - Shannon L. Alder

92. “Becoming aware of our inner man and woman means to discover the roots and creative potential of both the male and female aspect within ourselves. Becoming aware of the inner man and woman means to understand that they have different visions of life. It means to understand that they have different perspectives and views of life. The inner man and woman are our two wings of love and freedom. Through awareness, acceptance and understanding, we can allow our two wings to develop in a deep and natural harmony. In the world today, a one-sided development of the male side leads to destructivity. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, exhaustion and a separation from life. A one-sided development of the female side leads to passivity and dependence.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

93. “And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.” - Rachel Hartman

94. “To understand yourself: Is that a discovery or a creation?” - Pascal Mercier

95. “One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgment, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.” - Tim Kreider

96. “What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.” - Tim Kreider

97. “... understanding, and action proceeding from understanding and guided by it, is the one weapon against the world's bombardment, the one medicine, the one instrument by which liberty, health, and joy may be shaped or shaped towards, in the individual, and in the race.” - James Agee

98. “Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late.” - Javier Marías

99. “Home is where 'I know you', 'I accept you', 'I forgive you', and 'I love you' are most likely to be heard.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

100. “You'd be surprised how often you doubt your own sanity when you don't understand your own capacities.” - K.M. Mac Aulay

101. “The most precious gift you can ever give to a young woman is, appreciating and understanding her true feelings” - M.F. Moonzajer