Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

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

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.

Commonsense is the realised sense of proportion.

There happen to be a lot of people around who spent an hour on the Internet and think they know a lot of physics, but it doesn’t work like that… There’s a reason there are graduate schools in these departments.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

We are all special cases.

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Why, if someone is good in one field can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn’t love them.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

The media need superheroes in science just as in every sphere of life, but there is really a continuous range of abilities with no clear dividing line.

If a man writes a book, let him set down only what he knows. I have guesses enough of my own.

I’m afraid that everything will get homogenized and be the same.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

The modern mind is in complete disarray. Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find any foot-hold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.

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.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

People don’t want drama 365 days a year. I’m a sense of relief; it’s my job to take your mind off what’s bad for that brief second you’re in the room with me, regardless of shape, race, colour or anything. It brings people together, and it makes me feel good about what I’m doing.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Today, Negroes play on every big league club and in every minor league. With millions of other Negroes in other walks of life, we are willing to stand up and be counted for what we believe in. In baseball or out, we are no longer willing to wait until Judgment Day for equality – we want it here on earth as well as in Heaven.

Men and women aren’t the same. And they won’t be the same. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be treated fairly.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

I belong to a gospel choir. They know I am an atheist but they are very tolerant.

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

I agree with people like Richard Dawkins that mankind felt the need for creation myths. Before we really began to understand disease and the weather and things like that, we sought false explanations for them. Now science has filled in some of the realm – not all – that religion used to fill.

The second time around, I’ll understand that, as a husband, my wife doesn’t care about my opinions. I just need to tell her the things that will continue to help me stack the brownie points.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.

You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

People from all over the world come to London wanting to make their own mark on it, and they add to the energy and vitality of the capital. It’s got a bit busier since the ’60s, but the more the merrier!

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

There’s always going to be people who don’t understand or accept the united science, and I will just ignore them, as I’m only acting and communicating on the science.

Men and women do think differently, and frankly, we don’t understand each other. Not at all! But that’s what makes relationships so amazing.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they’re being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I’m black. I tell them, ‚Don’t stop now. If I shot somebody you’d mention it.‘

I will meet my countrymen. I understand only one language: that they are my countrymen, they are my brothers. You may see with whatever colour you want; Modi will not go into that colour.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

Until blacks and whites see each other as brother and sister, we will not have parity. It’s very clear.

When we value correct principles, we have truth – a knowledge of things as they are.