#understand

Olivier took a deep breath, then turned and bowed in farewell. Gersonides nodded in return, then thought of something. "The manuscript you brought me, by that bishop. It argues that understanding is more important than movement. That action is virtuous only if it reflects pure comprehension, and that virtue comes from the comprehension, not the action." Olivier frowned. "So?" "Dear boy, I must tell you a secret." "What?" "I do believe it is wrong. ↗

— Iain Pears

#comprehension #philosophy #right #understanding #virtue

There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome." "And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody." "And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them. ↗

— Jane Austen

#defects #dislike #education #hatred #misunderstanding

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. ↗

— Baruch Spinoza

#attain #because #being #free #highest

If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. 'Green fingers' are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart. ↗

— Russell Page

#green-thumb #growth #understanding #verdant #education

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors. ↗

— Maya Angelou

#education #knowledge #life-lessons #understanding #education

I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#effort #frustration #respect #understanding-others #education

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love. ↗

— Meister Eckhart

#god #knowledge #love #medieval #mysticism

Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm. ↗

— Criss Jami

#conceal #equality #evil #expose #good

Human beings have always been an unfinished species, a story in the middle, a succession of families, tribes, and societies in transition to new awarenesses. Although we have always prided ourselves on our willingness to adapt to all habitats, and on our skill at prospering and making ourselves comfortable wherever we are -- in a meadow, in a desert, on the tundra, or out on the ocean -- we don't just adapt to places, or modify them in order to ease our burdens. We're the only species that over and over again has deliberately transformed our surroundings in order to stretch our capacity for understanding and provoke new accomplishments. And our growing and enhanced understanding is our most valuable, and our most vulnerable, inheritance. ↗

— Tony Hiss

#evolution #expansion #growth #humanity #intergenerational

...'fundamentalism' and 'liberalism' and terrorism.' These labels only tell us partial truths. We must use them humbly, guardedly, Niebuhr would say, aware of the limitations of our own vision and of our own capacity for misunderstanding and self-deception. ↗

— Krista Tippett

#liberalism #misunderstanding #niebuhr #self-deception #terrorism