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

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

I think a number of the leaders are, whether you like it or not, in the hip-hop generation. And when they understand enough, they’ll do wonders. I count on them.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

A person hears only what they understand.

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

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

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.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

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.

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.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

Listen with your eyes for feelings.

If you would judge, understand.

Hear reason, or she’ll make you feel her.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.

The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.

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 have learned from personal experience that putting trust in God means there will be some unanswered questions. That was a hard lesson for me because I naturally want to understand everything… to know what’s going on so I can feel like I’m in control.

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

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

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

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.

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.

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.

Consequences are unpitying.

The infinite faith I have in people’s ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

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

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

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

I have a collective sense of suffering.

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

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

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

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

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.

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

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

What one fool can understand, another can.

My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!

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.

‚Thank you‘ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

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.

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.

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