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.

I think kids are natural actors. You watch most kids; if they don’t have a toy, they’ll pick up a stick and make a toy out of it. Kids will daydream all the time.

We should understand the source of our authority and something of the keys that control its power.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

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.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

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

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

Imagination rules the world.

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.

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

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever.

I’m just hoping that people understand that Islam is peace and not violence.

If I am judged for my work, many myths about me as an autocrat or otherwise would become clearer. I feel false propaganda will not last, and truth will ultimately prevail.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

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

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

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.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

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

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

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.

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

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.

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.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

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.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

The less you know, the more you believe.

Japan’s very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don’t think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that’s already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.

When I was five, I think, that’s when I started wanting to be an actress. I loved to play. I didn’t like the world around me because it was kind of grim, but I loved to play house. It was like you could make your own boundaries.

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

I look at athletes in all sports and try to picture what kind of football player they’d be, what position they’d play and so on.

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

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.

Never, and I mean never, allow anyone else’s ideas of who you can or can’t become sully your dream or pollute your imagination. This is your territory, and a ‚Keep Out‘ sign is a great thing to erect at all entrances to your imagination.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it’s only money… they don’t know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

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.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.

Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.

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.

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

Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?