You never find yourself until you face the truth.

- Pearl Bailey

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

- Marie Curie

We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in the derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves.

- Marshall Rosenberg

The art of listening needs its highest development in listening to oneself; our most important task is to develop an ear that can really hear what we're saying.

- Sydney J. Harris

Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.

- Marge Piercy

Leadership is about creating, day by day, a domain in which we and those around us continually deepen our understanding of reality and are able to participate in shaping the future. This, then, is the deeper territory of leadership -- collectively "listening to what is wanting to emerge in the world, and then having the courage to do what is required."

- Joseph Jaworski

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

- Carl Sagan

All human eyes have longing in them.

- Ernesto Cardenal

Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person they are almost indistinguishable.

- David Augsburger

We are now at a point in time when the ability to receive, utilize, store, transform and trasmit data -- the lowest cognitive form -- has expanded literally beyond comprehension. Understanding and wisdom are largely forgotten as we struggle under an avalanche of data and information.

- Dee Hock

Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the surface of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

- Annie Dillard

The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

- Wayne Dyer

Reality is much more complex than any judgment of right and wrong encourages you to believe. When you really understand the ethical, spiritual, social, economic, and psychological forces that shape individuals, you will see that people's choices are not based on a desire to hurt. Instead, they are in accord with what they know and what world views are available to them. Most are doing the best they can, given what information they've received and what problems they are facing.

- Michael Lerner

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

- Dale Carnegie

Everything we do is in service of our needs. When this one concept is applied to our view of others, we'll see that we have no real enemies, that what others do to us is the best possible thing they know to do to get their needs met.

- Marshall Rosenberg

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



The contemplation of things as they are, without substitution or imposture, without error or confusion, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.

- Francis Bacon



Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

- Michel de Montaigne



We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.

- Talmud



Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

- Henry David Thoreau



Were we fully to understand the reasons for other people's behavior, it would all make sense.

- Sigmund Freud



I accept relationship as my primary teacher about myself, other people, and the mysteries of the universe.

- Gay Hendricks



When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely -- the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears -- when you give your whole attention to it.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti



All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

- Immanuel Kant



An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi



Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs.

- Leo Tolstoy



I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.

- Harry Emerson Fosdick



If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.

- Emerson M. Pugh



If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

- Jiddu Krishnamurti



You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

(from the character Atticus Finch)

- Harper Lee



Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill-will.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.



Keep constantly in mind in how many things you yourself have witnessed changes already. The universe is change, life is understanding.

- Marcus Aurelius



Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

- Simone Weil



The key to conversation at work is flexibility and understanding how what you say might be perceived by others.

- Deborah Tannen



If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

- Albert Einstein



But I deal with this meditating and by understanding I've been put on the planet to serve humanity. I have to remind myself to live simply and not to overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.

- Sandra Cisneros



Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding.

- Diane Arbus



Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

- Kahlil Gibran



All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

- Immanuel Kant



People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

- Samuel Richardson



Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves.

- Carl Jung



To be great is to be misunderstood.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.

- Eric Hoffer



So long as you live and work, you will be misunderstood; to that you must resign yourself once and for all. Be silent!

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe