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.

When I was 18, I went to the Soviet Union. I kept hearing that America was planning to bomb them – lots of bombs were going to come down on these people. I went there not knowing anything, except that I thought the whole thing was stupid and that I wanted to see who these people were that we were going to bomb.

Saying nothing… sometimes says the most.

America is just downright mean.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

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.

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

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.

I don’t think anybody in America ought to be scared.

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

I will never relent in defending America – whatever it takes.

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.

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

From the FA to UEFA and FIFA, there’s a naivety, a lack of knowledge and understanding and packed with people who are out of touch.

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

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.

Jesus is a divine guest inside of you all the time – one who loves, understands, sees and hears you. He wants to live in oneness with you… to be the centerpiece of everything you do.

God never gives someone a gift they are not capable of receiving. If he gives us the gift of Christmas, it is because we all have the ability to understand and receive it.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

Here in America, we don’t give in to our fears. We don’t build up walls to keep people out.

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

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

All great change in America begins at the dinner table.

To understand the power of the priesthood, we must know its limitations.

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

I came to America to teach my method – not to enter a research experiment.

I have been so great in boxing they had to create an image like Rocky, a white image on the screen, to counteract my image in the ring. America has to have its white images, no matter where it gets them. Jesus, Wonder Woman, Tarzan and Rocky.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, intelligence, and energy of her citizens cannot cure.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

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

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

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

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.

America is the spirit of human exploration distilled.

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

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n‘ roll, the beat writers.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

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.

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 had faith in Israel before it was established, I have in it now. I believe it has a glorious future before it – not just another sovereign nation, but as an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.

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

Proselytism is solemn nonsense; it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

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.

The truth is that the vast majority of Americans are good, fair, and just, and they want their country to reflect those ideals.

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.

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.

Previous generations understood about death, and undoubtedly would have seen a reasonable amount of death. Once you get into the Victorian era, you might well have seen the funerals of many of your siblings before you were very old.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

Here in England, everyone’s a pop star, innit, whereas in America they believe in the term artist.

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 have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.