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.

Respect the burden.

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

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’re always, by the way, in fundamental physics, always trying to investigate those things in which we don’t understand the conclusions. After we’ve checked them enough, we’re okay.

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.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

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.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it.

If I spent all my time criticising myself, I wouldn’t be able to function. There are actors who theorise till the cows come home. I haven’t the patience for them. It’s maybe shallow, but that’s why I’ll never be part of the acting set.

The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

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

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

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

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.

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

While physics and mathematics may tell us how the universe began, they are not much use in predicting human behavior because there are far too many equations to solve. I’m no better than anyone else at understanding what makes people tick, particularly women.

One man cannot practice many arts with success.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

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

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

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

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.

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

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

They are resilient children, but they are children, and as much as they need help to understand the hard truths in life, they also need what we all need – protection and love.

North Americans don’t understand… that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.

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

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.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

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.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

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.

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.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

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

Gravitation is, so far, not understandable in terms of other phenomena.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

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

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

We should play free football, defend lively with a passion, and have the best understanding in offence.

You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

We’re in very bad trouble if we don’t understand the planet we’re trying to save.

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

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

I’m a big fan of Aamir Khan… Among actresses, I like Aishwarya Rai.

Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem.