#understand

But you will understand by yourselves that the matter applies equally well to the organization of the officials of justice, of administrative officials, etc; these are likewise organized instruments of power in certain societies. ↗

— Ferdinand Lassalle

#applies #certain #equally #etc #instruments

Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle. ↗

— Sam Levenson

#been #each #easy #first #lifetime

My mom calls me an older soul because, growing up, she taught me stuff real early. Now I spend most of my time chasing wisdom, chasing understanding. ↗

— Ray Lewis

#calls #chasing #early #growing #growing up

Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something. ↗

— Robert Ley

#explain #something #sometimes #understanding

Ideals are an imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible. ↗

— Walter Lippmann

#ideals #imaginative #possible #understanding #which

We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it. ↗

— Barry Lopez

#courage #our #place #simply #understand

God transforms, so to speak, this air into words, into various sounds. He makes you understand these various sounds through the modifications by which you are affected. ↗

— Nicolas Malebranche

#air #god #into #makes #modifications

I have a friend who's an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don't agree with very well. He'll hold up a flower and say "look how beautiful it is," and I'll agree. Then he says "I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing," and I think that he's kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is ... I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it's not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there's also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#knowledge #mystery #philosophy #science #understanding

You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you. ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#earth #heaven #life #reason #truth

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings. We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in. ↗

— Oliver Sacks

#day-to-day #escape #explanation #freedom #future