I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

As a tactic, violence is absurd. No one can compete with the Government in violence, and the resort to violence, which will surely fail, will simply frighten and alienate some who can be reached, and will further encourage the ideologists and administrators of forceful repression.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

You always admire what you really don’t understand.

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.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

We had violence directed at us by the growers themselves, trying to run us down by cars, pointing rifles at us, spraying the people when they were on the picket line with sulfur.

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

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

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

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.

The threat and use of violence is stimulating nuclear proliferation along with jihadi terrorism.

Consequences are unpitying.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

Sooner or later, jihadist-style terror and WMD are going to come together and the consequences could be horrendous.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

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

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code – with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It’s very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

We hunger to understand, so we invent myths about how we imagine the world is constructed – and they’re, of course, based upon what we know, which is ourselves and other animals. So we make up stories about how the world was hatched from a cosmic egg or created after the mating of cosmic deities or by some fiat of a powerful being.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Me is a common sense man. That mean when me explain things, me explain it in a very simple way; that mean if I explain it to a baby, the baby will understand too, you know.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Racism and injustice and violence sweep our world, bringing a tragic harvest of heartache and death.

There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.

I have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything… to know what’s going on so I can feel like I’m in control.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

Sir one more comment like that and I will strangle you with my microphone wire!

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

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.

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

My faith helps me understand that circumstances don’t dictate my happiness, my inner peace.

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.

For a tear is quickly dried, especially when shed for the misfortunes of others.

Science never solves a problem without creating ten more.

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

The dropping of bombs on people – isn’t that terrorism?

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.