This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants - more than anything else - to become rich. As long as they don't have the money, it will seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they will understand how important other things are - and have always been." - Joseph Brooks
"For the mass public, it is easier to understand problems if they are reduced to black/white dichotomies. It is easier to understand policies if they are attached to individuals who are simplistically labeled as hawks or doves. Yet in today’s world any attempt to reduce its complexities to a single set of ideological propositions, to a single personality, or to a single issue is in itself a distortion. Such a distortion also raises the danger that public emotions could become so strong as to make the management of a genuinely complex foreign policy well-nigh impossible." -
"If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday." - Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu
"People do not understand liberty or majorities. The will of the majority is the will of a rabble. Democracy is leveling - this is inconsistent with true liberty." - John Caldwell Calhoun
"Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself." - Richard Cecil
"Every man is an original and solitary character. None can either understand or feel the book of his own life like himself." - Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury
"They who have read about everything are thought to understand everything, but it is not always so; reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections - we must chew them over again." - William Ellery Channing
"I don't think we understand the importance of the present; there's nothing more important than what you are doing now." - Harold Clurman
"It takes a long time to understand nothing." - Edward Dahlberg
"I don't understand complicated problems I only understand simple ones." - Richard Deupree, fully Richard Redwood Deupree
"All finite things have their roots in the infinite, and if you wish to understand life at all, you cannot tear out its context. And that context, astounding even to bodily eyes, is the heaven of stars and the incredible procession of the great galaxies." - Fitzhugh Dodson
"To understand any living thing, you must, so to say, creep within and feel the beating of its heart." - Fitzhugh Dodson
"They understand but little who understand only what can be explained." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
"In the first place, the human mind, no matter how highly trained, is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many tongues. The little child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind to God. And because I believe this, I am not an atheist." - Albert Einstein
"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth." - Albert Einstein
"The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you cannot understand them." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
"Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though in truth his dreaming must be not out of proportion to his waking." - Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli
"A single mind can acquire a fair knowledge of the whole field of science, and find plenty of time to spare for ordinary human affairs. Not many people take the trouble to do so. But without a knowledge of science one cannot understand current events. That is why our modern our modern literature and art are mostly so unreal." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"A father inquires whether his boy can construe Homer, or understand Horace; but how seldom does he ask, or examine, or think whether he can restrain his passions, whether he is grateful, generous, humane, compassionate, just and benevolent." - Lady Hervey, fully Lady Victoria Frederica Isabella Hervey
"Many persons feel art, some understand it; but few both feel and understand it." - George Stillman Hillard
"The nature of God is incomprehensible; that is to say, we understand nothing of what He is, but only that He is; and therefore the attributes we give Him are not to tell one another what He is, nor to signify our opinion of His nature, but our desire to honor Him with such names as we conceive most honorable amongst ourselves." - Thomas Hobbes
"One of the most valuable habits a parent can have is that of explaining. Many parents think their children are too young to understand explanations, yet it is surprising how much a child will absorb if he is given a chance. And even if he does not understand completely, he will at least sense that someone cares enough to explain" - Elizabeth R. Hogan
"Enthusiasts soon understand each other." - Washington Irving
"We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"I am happy in having learned to distinguish between ownership and possession. Books, pictures, and all the beauty of the world belong to those who love and understand them - not usually to those who possess them. All of these things that I am entitled to have I have - I own by divine right. So I care not a bit who possesses them." -
"If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Let us have faith that right makes right, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." - Abraham Lincoln
"It requires wisdom to understand wisdom; the music is nothing if the audience is deaf." - Walter Lippmann
"Only the insider can make the decisions, not because he is inherently a better man, but because he is so placed that he can understand and can act." - Walter Lippmann
"The great art of learning is to understand but little at a time." - John Locke
"Wretched are you, O man, because of your speech! This fine endowment of your has been your curse. All dogs bark alike... All frogs in the swamp and marshes croak alike. But men are divided in languages according to their nationalities and one does not understand the other, thus destroying their bond of brotherhood, and having them regard one another like strangers." - Mendele Mokher Sforim or Sfarim, pseudonymn of Shalom Jacob Abramowitsch
"Let’s make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with our neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. to sit on the front steps - whether it’s a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city - and talk to our neighbors is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch make-believe world in not-quite living color." - Harvey Milk
"Home is not where you live but where they understand you." - Christian Morgenstern, fully Christian Otto Josef Wolfgang Morgenstern
"Perfection does not exist. To understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to desire to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness." - Alfred de Musset, fully Alfred Louis Charles de Musset
"When you understand how to love one thing - then you also understand how best to love everything." - Novalis, pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg NULL
"People do not always understand the motives of sublime conduct, and when they are astonished they are very apt to think they ought to be alarmed. The truth is none are fit judges of greatness but those who are capable of it." - Jane Porter
"Perception, as we here understand it, hath always an object distinct from the at by which it is perceived; an object which may exist whether it be perceived or not. I perceive a tree that grows before my window; there is here an object which is perceived, and an act of the mind by which it is perceived; and these two are not only distinguishable, but they are extremely unlike in their natures." - Paul Reichmann
"More people praise the Bible than read it, more read it than understand it, and more understand it than follow it." - Samuel Sandmel
"It is not enough for parents to understand children. they must accord children the privilege of understanding them." - Milton R. Sapirstein
"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten." -
"The only way to judge an event in life is to look at it from high enough, to see it in the order and dimension of the timeless. When we see pain, suffering and inequalities, we don’t understand or we jump to false conclusions. We see only the broken arc of a complete circle. Instead, life is a field for progress and progressive harmony. Each one of us has a part to play which he alone can execute. This role, based on our real nature - what Hindu scriptures call svabhava - can be discovered. An individual’s aim in life must be to find out the “law of his being” and act according to his svadharma. This discovery is no easy task. Normally, we are aware of our ego, the surface self that is a bundle of contradictory impulses. But we can find the true self, our best self, by a process of standing back and surveying our needs. Abandoning desire and self-assertion, accepting the challenges of life in a state of stable, unwavering peace will result in this supreme revelation. When life’s shocks turn our eyes inward, we rise above contingencies of time and place. Our perspective changes. The greatest sorrows is transformed into a luminous vibration. We see into the life of things. Life itself, a single, immense organism, moves toward a greater and higher harmony as more and more cells become conscious of their uniqueness. Life, then, is not Macbeths’s “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is a grand orchestra in which discordant notes contribute to the total harmony." - V. S. Seturaman
"There must be some supreme, universal design. Each of us comes to life and stays in the world for predestined period. Some leave forever, sometimes without a trace; others stay for a long time, both in life and in memory. We remain longest - we make a difference - when we manage to act not for ourselves but for others. It is possible to create good and evil. The greatest and most important thing a person can do is to understand that where good exists, evil also resides; what’s more, one must strive to stay on the side of righteousness, doing one’s best to promote good in the world. Only you can make this choice. You alone will be held responsible - by other people, by your progeny and by history." - Eduard Shevardnadze