#standing

The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs. ↗

— Immanuel Kant

#nature

[L]ife is a phenomenon in need of criticism, for we are, as fallen creatures, in permanent danger of worshipping false gods, of failing to understand ourselves and misinterpreting the behaviour of others, of growing unproductively anxious or desirous, and of losing ourselves to vanity and error. Surreptitiously and beguilingly, then, with humour or gravity, works of art--novels, poems, plays, paintings or films--can function as vehicles to explain our condition to us. They may act as guides to a truer, more judicious, more intelligent understanding of the world. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#art #criticism #desire #films #gravity

They didn't understand what they were doing. I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race. ↗

— Michael Crichton

#humanity #science #understanding #science

We understand more than we know. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#science #understanding #wisdom #science

If other people do not understand our behavior—so what? Their request that we must only do what they understand is an attempt to dictate to us. If this is being "asocial" or "irrational" in their eyes, so be it. Mostly they resent our freedom and our courage to be ourselves. We owe nobody an explanation or an accounting, as long as our acts do not hurt or infringe on them. How many lives have been ruined by this need to "explain," which usually implies that the explanation be "understood," i.e. approved. Let your deeds be judged, and from your deeds, your real intentions, but know that a free person owes an explanation only to himself—to his reason and his conscience—and to the few who may have a justified claim for explanation. ↗

— Erich Fromm

#freedom #life #understanding #art

I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#understanding-others #youth

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. ↗

— Frank Herbert

#order #princess-irulan #reality #understanding #logic

We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer. ↗

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#empathy #kindness #suffering #understanding-others #suffering

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand. ↗

— Ernest Hemingway

#writing-advice #understanding

Angel... I don't think you understand the lengths I would go to if it means keeping you here with me.' -Patch (PG 262) ↗

— Becca Fitzpatrick

#nora-grey #patch-cipriano #understanding