Top 100 Human Understanding Quotes
#1. But the velocities of the velocities - the second, third, fourth, and fifth velocities, etc. - exceed, if I mistake not, all human understanding ...
George Berkeley
#2. I am the bridge that connects these two ever- separated banks of human understanding.
Abhijit Naskar
#3. The greatest issue is to raise the question of birth control out of the gutter of obscenity ... into the light of intelligence and human understanding.
Margaret Sanger
#4. We must start human society from scratch; as Francis Bacon said, we must recreate human understanding.
Nicolas Chamfort
#5. In an infinite universe, there were too many things that escaped human understanding.
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
#6. The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
Francis Bacon
#7. The stars of eternal truth and right have always shone in the firmament of human understanding. The process of bringing them down to earth, remolding them into practical forms, imbuing them with vitality, and then making use of them, has been a long one.
Bertha Von Suttner
#8. Art should take what is complex and render it simply. It takes a lot of skill, human understanding, stamina, courage, energy, and heart to do that.
Anna Deavere Smith
#9. In the sick room, ten cents' worth of human understanding equals ten dollars' worth of medical science.
Martin H. Fischer
#10. Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.
Georg C. Lichtenberg
#11. Aristotle can be regarded as the father of logic. But his logic is too scholastic, full of subtleties, and fundamentally has not been of much value to the human understanding. It is a dialectic and an organon for the art of disputation.
Immanuel Kant
#12. The majesty of God in itself goes beyond the capacity of human understanding and cannot be comprehended by it..
We must adore its loftiness rather than investigate it, so that we do not remain overwhelmed by so great a splendor.
John Calvin
#13. There are Arthurian legends in 14 or 15 medieval European languages. They are the product of no one time or place. On the contrary, in sum they represent a tremendous mine of human understanding, rather as the Bible does.
Kevin Crossley-Holland
#14. I had not yet learned that one cannot really be superior without humility and tolerance and human understanding. I did not yet know that in order to belong to a rare and higher breed one must first develop the true power and talent of selfless immolation.
Thomas Wolfe
#15. Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly. Any religion is a shadow of God. But the shadows of God are not God.
Margaret Atwood
#16. It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives.
Francis Bacon
#17. It has an unhappy effect upon the human understanding and temper, for a man to be compelled in his gravest investigation of an argument, to consider, not what is true, but what is convenient.
William Godwin
#18. The conviction grows in me that we shall discover laws of personality and behavior which are as significant for human progress or human understanding as the law of gravity or the laws of thermodynamics.
Carl R. Rogers
#19. If we're able to identify our own ignorance, we can identify someone else's expertise. We learn how to listen to each other. And that is the foundation of human understanding.
Ted Koppel
#20. If I actually believed that the progress of human understanding depended on our crop of contemporary novelists, I would shoot myself.
Annie Dillard
#21. Leadership is the sum of those qualities of intellect, human understanding, and moral character that enables a person to inspire and control a group of people successfully.
John A. Lejeune
#22. The human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature.
David Mitchell
#23. The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.
Francis Bacon
#24. The realm of human understanding is the only realm most of us have access to, I said.
Roland Merullo
#25. It has been said that love is a function of communication. I believe that to be true. I believe, by extension, that human understanding is a function of communication. And the better human beings understand one another, the higher the level of functioning.
Dan Pallotta
#26. Certain levels of human understanding cannot be attained, it is claimed, until the brain can work in more than one way.
Idries Shah
#27. If the unit of human understanding is the story, the story at least in this part of the world includes the cow.
James Maskalyk
#29. False gods - the gods of human understanding - despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do. But of course this is almost too incredible for us to accept.
Brennan Manning
#30. For the infinite glorious Creator of all things, to become a creature, is a mystery exceeding all human understanding.
John Flavel
#32. I'm saying that Nexus may defy human understanding because it is not the product of normal human thought,"Holtzman said. "It is the product of posthuman thought.
Ramez Naam
#33. The human understanding, from its peculiar nature, easily supposes a greater degree of order and equality in things than it really finds.
Francis Bacon
#34. Each work of criticism is supposed to build on the body of work, to increase the total sum of human understanding. It's not like filling your house with more and more beautiful wicker baskets. It's supposed to be cumulative - it believes in progress.
Elif Batuman
#35. If we possessed the facility to fully plumb the depths of the Creator's thoughts, He would not be God, because God's thoughts are beyond the range of human understanding - unimaginably far beyond anything we could ever imagine.
Leary Bonnett
#36. you ever stop believing in yourself, you must know that all you have to DO is lean on your faith and not your own human understanding and God will pull you through the rest of the way!
Monique Hall
#37. The divine process of change manifests itself to our human understanding ... as punishment, torment, death, and transfiguration.
Carl Jung
#38. All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance
and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not
to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is
supported by no appearance of probability.
David Hume
#39. I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend,
that together we may succeed in building a better world
through human understanding and love,
and that in doing so we may reduce
the pain and suffering of all sentient beings.
Dalai Lama XIV
#40. Tell them this: somehow our two worlds stand linked again by some dark power of Tsurani origin. It moves against the Kingdom. It is power beyond human understanding, perhaps power to challenge the gods themselves.
Raymond E. Feist
#41. Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses.
Michel De Montaigne
#42. It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand ...
Soren Kierkegaard
#43. I'm afraid that, in this chapter we must talk about sex in a very explicit manner, because we want to expand the Frontiers of Human Understanding and also we want to sell as many books as possible to adolescent boys.
Dave Barry
#44. The process of translating comprises in its essence the whole secret of human understanding of the world and of social communication.
Hans-Georg Gadamer
#46. Define logic as the science which treats of the operations of the human understanding in the pursuit of truth.
John Stuart Mill
#47. We should not expect too much from faith," he said. "Human understanding is fallible, and we see through a glass, darkly.
Margaret Atwood
#48. Unlike her judges, she suggested that words do not have set meanings, that there is a gap between speaker and listener, and that human understanding always "falls short of absolute truth.
Eve LaPlante
#49. The eye of the human understanding is not a naked organ of perception (lumen siccum), but an eye imbued with moisture by Will and Passion. Man always believes what he determines to believe.
Francis Bacon
#50. I was to discover that the quest for human understanding is a lifetime one that has no end in sight.
Margaret Bourke-White
#51. No matter how bad things become, they will eventually get better. In the end, the innate desire of all people for truth, justice and human understanding must triumph over ignorance and despair. So if the Chinese oppressed us, it could only strengthen us
Dalai Lama XIV
#52. Platitudes and generalities roll of the human understanding like water from a duck
Claude C. Hopkins
#53. Apparent contradictions between religion and science often have been the basis of bitter controversy. Such differences are to be expected as long as human understanding remains provisional and fragmentary.
Henry Eyring
#54. It would be a serious oversight to limit our understanding of the impact of theology to strictly religious art, and overlook its pervasive role in shaping human understanding and artistic expression thereof within any given culture-regardless of the subject matter at hand.
John Walford
#55. The mystery of the humanity of Christ, that he sunk himself into our flesh, is beyond all human understanding.
Martin Luther
#56. To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding.
Peter Ackroyd
#57. Our souls speak a language that is beyond human understanding. A connection so rare the universe won't let us part.
Nikki Rowe
#58. The merit of Locke's 'Essay Concerning Human Understanding' is its adequacy, and not its consistency ... He should have widened the title of his book into 'An Essay Concerning Experience.
Alfred North Whitehead
#59. In the end, the innate desire of all people for truth, justice, and human understanding must triumph over ignorance and despair.
Dalai Lama XIV
#60. We're long on high principles and short on simple human understanding.
Vernor Vinge
#61. The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds.
Francis Bacon
#63. I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life.
Anthony Perkins
#64. Self-denial is a necessary aspect of a Christian life; that the cross is central to human understanding; and that, without the atonement, every one of us would stand forever in the role of Judas.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#65. Survivors of atrocity of every age and every culture come to a point in their testimony where all questions are reduced to one, spoken more in bewilderment than in outrage: Why? The answer is beyond human understanding.
Judith Lewis Herman
#66. As parents, we're human beings, too, but sometimes we're not as understanding as we'd like to be.
Gregory Hines
#67. The progress of the human race in understanding the universe has established a small corner of order in an increasingly disordered universe.
Stephen Hawking
#68. Your emotional understanding about the preciousness of your human birth comes through conscious, repetitive mind training.
Tsoknyi Rinpoche
#69. This "human thing" is the permanent process of seeking the sacred through revealing what is hidden. It is an ever ongoing and indefinite process of understanding and interpretation.
Curtis White
#70. You can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love, and the community to produce a kind of human paradise.
Terence McKenna
#71. Is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of Independence bear no relation to half of the human race?
Harriet Martineau
#72. In a human development sense, our understanding of leadership has essentially "grown up" and moved past personal ego and a self-centered view of things.
Linda Fisher Thornton
#73. As I come to understand Vietnam and what it implies about the human condition, I also realize that few humans will permit themselves such an understanding.
Alan Moore
#74. I wanted to put a human face on anxiety disorders. I thought people who suffer from anxiety might recognize themselves and gain some comfort from my story and for those who don't suffer from anxiety disorders gain some understanding.
Scott Stossel
#75. Ordinary human laws are the means
however imperfect
by which we express our understanding of the enduring moral law.
Russell Kirk
#76. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind and the most to be distrusted.
Thomas De Quincey
#77. I am just a human being trying to make it in a world that is rapidly losing its understanding of being human.
John Trudell
#78. 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
#79. The equation of evolution with progress represents our strongest cultural impediment to a proper understanding of this greatest biological revolution in the history of human thought.
Stephen Jay Gould
#80. Our understanding of the human brain can be dramatically accelerated if we collect and share research data on an exponentially wider scale.
Tan Le
#81. Religion has endured since the dawn of human consciousness precisely because it encompasses so much of being human. No idea has endured so long, gathered up so many disparate needs and wants and feelings, and inspired so many different paths towards understanding it.
Robert Winston
#82. The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the anti-slavery cause to be ... the school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught than in any other.
Angelina Grimke
#83. To judge individuals before understanding them is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself.
Stephen Covey
#84. Writing made it tolerable to be human in a way nothing else ever had. It gave me a place to thrive, to exorcise, to cultivate some understanding of aspects of being human that were otherwise confounding.
Camilla Gibb
#85. The highest civilizations
the longest to last and I believe the most successful in human terms
are those which have come the closest to achieving real understanding and mutual appreciation between men and women.
Pearl S. Buck
#86. Adolescence is the time to enlarge the natural sentiments of pity, friendship, and generosity, the time to develop an understanding of human nature and the varieties of human character, the time to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of all men and to study the history of mankind.
Louise J. Kaplan
#87. Doormats. It was true that actors had a perception, an understanding of human motive, that normal people lacked. It had nothing to do with intelligence, and very little to do with education.
Josephine Tey
#88. Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself.
John Berger
#89. How can we be such fools as to go on senselessly taking human life in this way? Why the women in every nation do not rise up and refuse to bring children into a world of this kind is beyond my understanding.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#90. Be kind, be decent, be generous, be tolerant, compassionate, and understanding. Be fast to praise, slow to judge. Remember, we're all human, and don't cast the first stone.
Allen Drury
#91. Above all we need, particularly as children, the reassuring presence of a visible community, an intimate group that enfolds us with understanding and love, and that becomes an object of our spontaneous loyalty, as a criterion and point of reference for the rest of the human race.
Lewis Mumford
#92. An appreciation of animals is good for a human, it can lead to a better understanding and respect for all living things.
Henry Rollins
#93. A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego.
Muhammad Iqbal
#94. I think that stories, and the telling of stories, are the foundations of human communication and understanding. If children all over the country are watching films, asking questions and telling their stories, then the world will eventually be a better place.
Beeban Kidron
#95. Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.
Maurice Merleau Ponty
#96. History's peddler, chapman, drummer, canvasser, commercial traveler, hawker, and packman may be gone from our roadways. But their indomitable spirit and unflagging optimism, along with an understanding of human nature, will endure in each of us who choose to follow their lead.
Ronald Solberg
#97. To truly live by faith, one must be willing to live in the tension of not knowing. Not understanding certain things. Not having all the answers. A person must walk humbly, bearing the mystery of a God who far surpasses any human capacity to fully define Him.
Jamie George
#98. The truth, in so far as a human being is able to attain such a thing, lies in a statement which it seems impossible to disprove. It is by finding out what something is not that one comes closest to understanding what it is.
Alain De Botton
#99. With earth's burgeoning human population to feed we must turn to the sea with understanding and new technology. We need to farm it as we farm the land.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau
#100. I try to give myself passionately, totally, to whatever I'm observing, with as much affectionate curiosity as I can muster, as a means of understanding a little better what being human is.
Diane Ackerman
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