Top 100 To Be Misunderstood Quotes
#1. I am under no illusions. My position, no matter how clearly stated, is likely to be misunderstood.
David Benatar
#2. I had begun with the comforting conclusion that books are the tongue of divine wisdom, and had ended only with the thin hunch that all books are grand follies, destined forever to be misunderstood.
Richard Flanagan
#3. The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
#4. Commonly, love isn't defined in the sense that it supposed to be. I find it often to be misunderstood. Love is like a principle, flowing out and in like the seasons. It's an attraction not just built by personal attachment, but by one's very presence.
Lionel Suggs
#5. Veterans will eat there too (...). She'll wish to talk with them, but she won't because any interest from her would be sure to be misunderstood. Her body as usual would get in the way of free speech.
Margaret Atwood
#6. Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.
Thomas Bernhard
#7. I'm a black man in America, so I'm going to be misunderstood.
Tracy Morgan
#8. I do not want to be misunderstood that you need a dose of persecution in order, really, to have a sense of your identity. Otherwise, you know, there would be no American Jews. Even if you're not strictly, fiercely Orthodox, you commit yourselves to a community of memory.
Simon Schama
#9. But in the meantime, you must be content, I say, to be misunderstood for a while. We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary."
"What is that, grandmother?"
"To understand other people.
George MacDonald
#10. In order not to be misunderstood, I want it perfectly clear that I believe it is incumbent on us to conduct our lives in a way that takes into account all the consequences of our actions, including the consequences to other people, and the consequences to the environment.
Michael Crichton
#11. All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of this. Theyprefer to be misunderstood rather than to come short of its exuberance.
Henry David Thoreau
#12. Like women in general, like Aries women in particular, like redheaded Aries women in greater particular, she loathed to be misunderstood. Injustice against others outraged her, injustice against herself set her to boiling like brimstone soup.
Tom Robbins
#13. There's all kinds of ways to be misunderstood, and one of them is via the interview.
Dean Wareham
#14. Jesus Christ can afford to be misunderstood; we cannot. Our weakness lies in always wanting to vindicate ourselves.
Oswald Chambers
#15. Men hate to be misunderstood, and to be understood makes them furious.
Edgar Saltus
#16. Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#17. Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood
Oscar Wilde
#19. To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.
Anatole Broyard
#20. Unpopularity is a excellent salve to the conscience; it is delicious to be misunderstood.
Stella Benson
#21. In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities ... it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
G.K. Chesterton
#22. Yeah, but if you're not doing what everyone else is doing then you're going to be misunderstood. People are going to wonder why you're trying to be different; it's just a natural instinct.
Kid Cudi
#23. Entrepreneurs must be willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
Jeff Bezos
#24. Now, admittedly, Twitter can be entertaining on occasion, as it turns out that 140 characters offers a great chance to be misunderstood - and an even greater chance one will expose his inner troglodyte.
David Harsanyi
#25. Being Christlike guarantees that you'll have the most important friend of all: the Savior. He knows what it's like to be misunderstood, lonely, and rejected.
John Bytheway
#26. Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.
Norman MacCaig
#28. I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you're going to innovate.
Jeff Bezos
#29. To be misunderstood is the shy man's fate on every occasion; and whatever impression he endeavors to create, he is sure to convey its opposite.
Jerome K. Jerome
#30. Each work has to pass through these stages - ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
Swami Vivekananda
#31. Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.
Jeff Bezos
#32. The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid. Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it. Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn't mean, because they might be criticized for it.
Seth Godin
#33. The priest looked puzzled also, as if at his own thoughts; he sat with knotted brow and then said abruptly: 'You see, it's so easy to be misunderstood. All men matter. You matter. I matter. It's the hardest thing in theology to believe.
G.K. Chesterton
#35. The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.
Edgar Allan Poe
#36. Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings.
Francois Truffaut
#37. To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand.
Henri Frederic Amiel
#39. It is also the fate of leadership to be misunderstood. It is a grave error for any leader to be oversensitive in the face of criticism, to conduct discussions as if he or she is a schoolmaster talking to less informed and inexperienced learners.
Nelson Mandela
#40. Beware! Freedom of speech also includes the freedom to be misunderstood.
Ashleigh Brilliant
#41. I think I've been a bit misunderstood; the first record was more timid than I wanted it to be. I don't like getting pinned down by sex or how I sound like because it's not who I am or what I want to be.
Lykke Li
#42. The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.
Jean Cocteau
#43. You could be the Mega Mage of wizards. You could rule Minionfire.
Do you really think so?'
Yeah, but you'd have to make a deal with the wood elves.'
I don't like the wood elves.'
They're okay. They're misunderstood.
Janet Evanovich
#44. Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool.
Criss Jami
#45. To be human is to be broken and broken is its own kind of beautiful.
Drake
#46. 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
#47. How little commoners understood, Eshram thought, shaking his head. Most witches were good people, harmless. They only wanted to be one with nature, and were simply misunderstood.
David Bernstein
#48. I never stopped being attracted to women. Bisexuality is misunderstood; the adage is that you're either straight or gay or lying, but that's not my experience. To call me anything other than bisexual would be inaccurate.
Clive Davis
#49. A writer who is in a hurry to be understood today or tomorrow runs the danger of being misunderstood the day after tomorrow.
Johann Georg Hamann
#50. If you're not sure about whether to support Mitt Romney, whether you're liberal, or whether you're very conservative, you ought to be excited, because he's been on your side at one time or another. So I'm not completely misunderstood. I'm not as excited as I am desperate.
Louie Gohmert
#51. Turkeys are misunderstood. Once I adopted turkeys, I understood this large bird to be a great companion.
Linda Blair
#52. In public relations, you live with the reality that not every disaster can be made to look like a misunderstood triumph.
Christopher Buckley
#53. Let's be clear: unless I have profoundly misunderstood its position, I pretty much despise American Libertarianism. Have these people seriously looked at the problems of the world and thought, 'Hmm, what we need here is a bit more selfishness'? . . . I beg to differ.
Iain Banks
#54. Unfortunately, mental health is so misunderstood that some people think you have to be crazy to need to speak to a therapist.
Nicole Curtis
#55. I know of no scholar more dedicated to bringing a thorough and accurate portrayal of America's involvement in Vietnam than Mark Moyar. Everyone who is interested in a full picture of that oft-misunderstood war should be grateful for his effort.
Jim Webb
#56. We all have times when we go home at night and pull out our hair and feel misunderstood and lonely and like we're falling. I think the brain is such that there is always going to be something missing.
Jude Law
#57. Few things are more commonly misunderstood than the nature and meaning of theocracy. It is commonly assumed to be a dictatorial rule by self-appointed men who claim to rule for God. In reality, theocracy in Biblical law is the closest thing to a radical libertarianism that can be had.
R.J. Rushdoony
#58. 'Studying the Way' is just a figure of speech, a method of arousing people's interest in the early stages of their development. In fact, the Way is not something which can be studied. Study leads to the retention of concepts, and so the Way is entirely misunderstood
Huangbo Xiyun
#59. Did Soren agree to be part of a system to protect Skench and Spoorn and the others?" Barren, the other Snowy monarch, asked in her soft voice.
He did indeed, madam," Ezylryb replied. "Soren is a much-misunderstood owl these days. Believe me, Soren will do whatever is required in this invasion.
Kathryn Lasky
#60. That it has pleased God to make Holy Scripture obscure in certain places lest, if it were perfectly clear to all, it might be vulgarized and subjected to disrespect or be so misunderstood by people of limited intelligence as to lead them into error.
Pope Gregory VII
#62. Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own - "
"That's enough, Phineas," said Dumbledore.
J.K. Rowling
#63. Playing the misunderstood character has been really interesting to me. But I think after too long, that also becomes a little bit of a cliche. Or that's all you're expected to do. I didn't want that to be the totality of what my career was.
Anne Dudek
#64. It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.
Karl Popper
#65. Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.
H.L. Mencken
#66. The Colonel grunted. "In my experience, those things don't have to try to scare the shit out of anyone. If she wanted you dead or broken, you would be. Vampires have - idiomatic speech patterns. You may have simply misunderstood her." "She called me a cold cut.
Peter Watts
#67. I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
Audre Lorde
#68. The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#69. If you follow the ancient maps written on the stars, no person will ever understand you. So if you could read these maps, would you follow them? And forever be misunderstood? Or would you close your eyes tightly and pretend to be like everyone else?
C. JoyBell C.
#70. Our forbearance should never be misunderstood. Our reluctance for conflict should not be misjudged as a failure of will. When action is required to preserve our national security, we will act.
Ronald Reagan
#71. My commands are ordinarily short, clear, and precise; and I would rather be obliged to repeat my words twice, or even three times, than they should be misunderstood.
Alexandre Dumas
#72. It was feminism that made it possible for women to go to the Ivy League and women to be astronauts and women to have their own TV shows. What happened, though, was that the generation after feminism, which is my generation, misunderstood what feminism was saying.
Debora Spar
#73. The man who stands by and says nothing, when the peril of his government is discussed, can not be misunderstood. If not hindered, he is sure to help the enemy.
Abraham Lincoln
#74. I can be vilified. I can be misunderstood. I didn't come here to be liked. I came here to make a difference.
Kanye West
#76. Love is misunderstood by many.
Love is to be in the state of calmness even when everything is getting destroyed of you & around you.
Love is to be Permanent in the law of impermanence.
Chetan M. Kumbhar
#77. Now, Richard Pryor was unique. Many misunderstood his humor. He lit up the hallway, but they didn't understand his use of profanity. He didn't use it just to be using it; he used it in the context of his satire.
Bill Cosby
#78. Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.
Karl Popper
#79. He must master or be mastered; while to show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the primordial lite. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of times he obeyed.
Jack London
#80. If we're genuinely interested in a book we can even bring ourselves to be greatful when others draw our attention to things we've missed or misunderstood.
Ian Watt
#81. It isn't easy being a brilliant inventor, always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can't be fixed.
-Hephaestus
Rick Riordan
#82. To the mind that could dream and shape our beaconed universe, what is injustice to us may be unfathomable tenderness, and our horror only loveliness misunderstood.
William Alexander Percy
#83. Perhaps one day I will be fortunate enough to be upset over how I misunderstood I am. A girl can dream.
Desiree Akhavan
#84. I guess I should warn you, if I turn out to be particularly clear, you've probably misunderstood what I've said.
Alan Greenspan
#85. The humble sinner will sometimes be interpreted as one of the filthiest in the eyes of man yet immersed in the eyes of God, and this is due to the volition of honesty regarding his own corruption.
Criss Jami
#86. Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored
the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.
Austin Kleon
#87. If we communicated with something like music, we would never be misunderstood, because there is nothing in music to understand ... But until we find this new way of speaking, until we can find a nonapproximate vocabulary, nonsense words are the best thing we've got. Ifactifice is one such word.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#88. I think this is often misunderstood in the West, where people feel that there can be no justice unless everything is the same. This is part of why I feel we have to relearn how we think about love, because we think about love so much in terms of the self.
Bell Hooks
#89. When we are misunderstood it is always our own fault. What the reader wants most of all is to be able to grasp what we think; but you loftily refuse to comply.
George Sand
#90. Cezanne was fated, as his passion was immense, to be immensely neglected, immensely misunderstood, and now, I think, immensely overrated.
Walter Sickert
#91. I should like to preface my remarks with a personal statement in order that my later remarks will not be misunderstood. I consider myself an atheist.
Subrahmanijan Chandrasekhar
#92. The problem with merely writing so that you can be understood is that the wrong people, in advancing their agendas, are only too ready to misunderstand you. Writing so that you cannot be misunderstood anticipates and preempts those who would willfully distort what you are trying to say.
William A. Dembski
#93. In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.
Criss Jami
#94. I think that most artists scorned would prefer to be known as the one with the genius brain risking no career over the one with the good brain and great career.
Criss Jami
#95. I know I am in danger of being misunderstood by those people, all too numerous, who cannot distinguish a statement of belief in what is the case from an advocacy of what ought to be the case.
Richard Dawkins
#96. Laurel wondered whether perhaps a person reached an age when so much was kept from them, so many details of life discussed and decided elsewhere,misheard or misunderstood, that to be surprised was no longer disconcerting.
Kate Morton
#97. We can't let it be controlled by the sorts of people who believe Voldemort was just some misunderstood sweetie who wanted everybody to be pals.
G. Norman Lippert
#98. The whole question of imagination in science is often misunderstood by people in other disciplines ... They overlook the fact that whatever we are allowed to imagine in science must be consistent with everything else we know.
Richard P. Feynman
#99. Records can be destroyed if they do not suit the prejudices of ruling cliques, lost if they become incomprehensible, distorted if a copyist wishes to impose a new meaning upon them, misunderstood if we lack the information to interpret them. The past is like a huge library, mostly fiction.
Henry Ford
#100. I do have shout-outs to bands and musicians I like in my books, but the musical references can be misunderstood. Often, I have people listening to music that I would never listen to personally, because it fits and defines their character.
George Pelecanos
