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

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.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

We go on in our pleasures thinking they’re going to last forever.

Life is precious.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.

The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man.

I try to live what I teach. A lot of things come against us in life, but we should try to find something to be grateful for, and see each day as a gift.

Respect the burden.

What one fool can understand, another can.

It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it is more important to understand even the slang of today.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

The capability of negotiating… is something that means you not only have to understand fully what you believe and what your national interests are but in order to be a really good negotiator, you have to try to figure out what the other person on the other side of the table has in mind.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

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.

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that’s because I’m doing it wrong.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

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

If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

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.

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.

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

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore. There is always something to make you wonder in the shape of a tree, the trembling of a leaf.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

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.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.

Wide diversification is only required when investors do not understand what they are doing.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

Have you not noticed that love is silence? It may be while holding the hand of another, or looking lovingly at a child, or taking in the beauty of an evening. Love has no past or future, and so it is with this extraordinary state of silence.

You have to stay fresh and blank in your mind when you go out to bat. You complicate things, and you’re gone.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

Man only likes to count his troubles, but he does not count his joys.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

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.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

Science and mindfulness complement each other in helping people to eat well and maintain their health and well-being.

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.

When people get married young, you don’t really understand the true definition of marriage.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible.

The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.