Aptitude found in the understanding and is often inherited. Genius coming from reason and imagination, rarely.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

The soul never thinks without a picture.

The infinite faith I have in people’s ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

The senses are of the earth, the reason stands apart from them in contemplation.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

To understand the true quality of people, you must look into their minds, and examine their pursuits and aversions.

Back when I was in school, few people understood dyslexia and what to do for it. My teachers thought I was lazy and not very clever, and I got bored easily… thinking of all the things I could do once I left school. I couldn’t always follow what was going on.

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.

One thing about ‚Star Wars‘ that I’m really proud of is that it expands the imagination. That’s why I like the ‚Star Wars‘ toys.

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

The greatest service that can be offered to children who show personality traits or inclinations that might not be understood by the adults around them is to allow them to express their own unique humanity.

Many children make up, or begin to make up, imaginary languages. I have been at it since I could write.

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

Read with care, George Orwell’s diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

To be sure I must; and therefore I may assume that your silence gives consent.

Today, I’d like to talk to Bob Marley. I’d just like to ask him what was his method. Bob is one of the greatest songwriters ever. I don’t know if people understand how powerful his songs are and the simplicity and genius behind them, from ‚Redemption Song‘ to ‚Is This Love?‘ and ‚I Shot the Sheriff.‘

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

But if I have a lot of imagination, I could tell myself whatever I wanted, you know. I handle myself quite well. I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know. There’s no discussion. There is an order. You follow it.

Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

The revolution has always been in the hands of the young. The young always inherit the revolution.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; it is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

Bad people are, from the point of view of art, fascinating studies. They represent colour, variety and strangeness. Good people exasperate one’s reason; bad people stir one’s imagination.

We as women, we have to understand that we know more, just even instinctively, than we think we do.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

There’s plenty about God that I don’t understand and can’t explain. But I come back to my core belief that God is good, that He’s for us.