Those who have a true understanding of America know that we have no desire for territorial expansion, for economic or other domination of other peoples. Such purposes are repugnant to our ideals of human freedom.

That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it. We embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence.

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.

No other country in the world does what we do. On every issue, the world turns to us, not simply because of the size of our economy or our military might – but because of the ideals we stand for, and the burdens we bear to advance them.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Foreign policy is like human relations, only people know less about each other.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.

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

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

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.

I report to you that our country is challenged at home and abroad: that it is our will that is being tried and not our strength; our sense of purpose and not our ability to achieve a better America.

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

Hanging out with politicians and corporations is very unhip work. But I think that the U2 audience have turned out to be incredibly subtle in their understanding.

You hear about actors being late and all that sort of stuff, but you never find that with an actor who’s directed, because an actor who’s directed understands all the problems your production is going through.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

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 try to speak plainly so that my constituents who don’t follow the nuances of government like I do, because they’re too busy earning a real living, can understand the issues before me. None of this stuff is brain surgery.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them – neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

It’s the way I study – to understand something by trying to work it out or, in other words, to understand something by creating it. Not creating it one hundred percent, of course; but taking a hint as to which direction to go but not remembering the details. These you work out for yourself.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

I don’t want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

It’s very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can’t imagine.

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

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!

I disagree with any policy that would turn America’s back on people who are fleeing harm. I frankly believe that it is contrary to everything that we have symbolically and actually said we stand for.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.

These people are very unskilled in arms… with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

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.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

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.

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

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

The less you know, the more you believe.

I came here in 1974 to do a play, and then I went to L.A. I really like living in America. I feel more at home here than anywhere else.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

I’ve said many a time that I think the Un-American Activities Committee in the House of Representatives was the most un-American thing in America!

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

Chicago gave me more music than any other city in America.

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

When you learn about the teaching and the practice of another tradition, you always have a chance to understand your own teaching and practice.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Let us not forget who we are. Drug abuse is a repudiation of everything America is.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

Selling an electric sports car creates an opportunity to fundamentally change the way America drives.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.