Top 100 Trying To Understand Quotes
#1. I spent my time trying to understand grand jury procedure - a topic about which I never before had the slightest interest.
Donella Meadows
#2. The mainstream has lost its way. Crime fiction is an objective, realistic genre because it's about the real world, real bodies really being killed by somebody. And this involves the investigator in trying to understand the society that the person lived in.
Michael Dibdin
#3. Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically ... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.
Win Butler
#4. Avoid people who say they know the answer. Keep the company of people who are trying to understand the question.
Billy Connolly
#5. I'm 25 and just trying to understand women. Obviously, that is a process that never ends.
Bryan Lee O'Malley
#6. I have traveled through continents, languages, and time trying to understand all that I am and all that has made me such.
Leslye Walton
#7. I think that, as African-Americans, oftentimes we have to put ourselves on pedestals as opposed to really looking at ourselves and trying to understand ourselves and become better people. We always have to be on pedestals.
Lee Daniels
#8. Kids do not appreciate subtlety in adults when they are trying to understand something.
Stan Morris
#9. When I was in high school, I became interested in cytochemistry: chemical analysis under the microscope, and trying to understand the composition of cells.
Joshua Lederberg
#10. The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself.
Louise Bourgeois
#11. Avoid judging others by trying to understand others and their concepts of love and care.
Debasish Mridha
#12. Trying to understand man without recognizing him as imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving.
J. Budziszewski
#13. In all my work, I'm interested in trying to understand the human consequences of government policies.
Laura Poitras
#14. The way I process things, they way I express myself, is in comics, just as poets process things that they are trying to understand.
Ellen Forney
#15. I have spent twenty years trying to understand the look in her eyes. Was it love or hatred, contempt or pity, bewilderment or understanding? I shall never know.
Frederick Forsyth
#16. I think obsessions happen because you're trying to understand something or some urge.
Jim Carrey
#17. As a first-time director, you act a lot like a teenager. I made decisions because I was hotheaded. My skin broke out. I was trying to understand who I am.
Gia Coppola
#18. The reason I act is because I'm trying to understand why people are as they are.
Kelly Reilly
#19. I've given up trying to understand what people think about me. It seems like a lot of people don't like the music we make and don't know me, or something.
Conor Oberst
#20. Trying to understand, inside, what it is to be Ugandan was crucial to the character, because there are Ugandan ways of doing things that I was trying to capture. Even if I had made this movie in South Africa, it would not have been the same, because it is so specific to Uganda.
Forest Whitaker
#21. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand how all the big cosmetics companies get away with the placebo science and unscientific claims.
Chris Toumazou
#22. There's no real reason for me to be so obsessed with trying to understand the true nature of things. You can live a perfectly happy life being utterly confused and not knowing.
James Mercer
#23. It is not easy for a man to be as great as a mountain or a forest. But that is why the Creator gave them to us as teachers. Now that I am old I look once more toward them for lessons, instead of trying to understand the ways of men.
Kent Nerburn
#24. Fish butchering means a lot to me as a chef; I take pride in it and get a lot of joy from filleting fish, working with fish, breaking down fish, trying to understand fish.
Wylie Dufresne
#25. Mathematicians are finite, flawed beings who spend their lives trying to understand the infinite and perfect.
Bruce Schechter
#26. Instead of trying to understand who we really are, we reach for the "Real Thing". And when the goods we buy fail to match up to those deep desires, instead of giving up on material goods, we just keep banging our heads against the wall and buying more.
James Wallman
#27. There are no limits to your understanding, only those that are due to trying to understand with the mind.
Vilayat Inayat Khan
#28. From the point of view of many scientists, gods represent an explanation for the unknown. Scientists are focused on trying to understand the unknown, so there is a fundamental conflict. That said, some scientists find religion useful and perhaps even fulfilling.
Stanley B. Prusiner
#29. I knew I was lost inside the world, watching it and trying to understand why too often I felt like I was standing just beyond the frame - of everything.
Jacqueline Woodson
#31. You cannot spend 2,000 years trying to understand God and then simply abandon the question and declare that we're not interested in it anymore.
Martin Walser
#32. Instead of trying to understand agriculture in its own terms, acknowledge that agriculture ultimately comes out of nature. Right now agriculture is the No. 1 threat to biodiversity on the planet.
Wes Jackson
#33. The real business of life is trying to understand each other.
Gilbert Parker
#34. Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have.
Yann Martel
#35. As the late earl said, 'The early bird catches birds of a like feather,'" she said.
I nodded, not even trying to understand how that would work. At the very least, the combination of proverbs made it somewhat original.
Tarun Shanker
#36. So when we're told to "move on" or "let go," we should take a look at who is saying it and why, and when we see repetition happening it's worth trying to understand it before attempting to shut it down.
Laura Mullen
#37. I'm a bit of a layman physics junkie. I don't really understand it, but I love trying to understand it.
Laura San Giacomo
#38. Standing side by side children with our heads together, we are trying to understand their learning based on what we observe as they use the social, technical, symbolic, and material resources at their disposal.
Denny Taylor
#39. I'm extremely worried. I'm worried about the survival of our species, worried about what we're doing, worried about being Americans, worried about depletion of resources. On the other hand, we are trying. We are trying to understand our impact on the environment.
T.C. Boyle
#40. We moved together very slowly toward the house, trying to understand its ugliness and ruin and shame.
Shirley Jackson
#41. Behavioral science looking at the criminal, is trying to understand the person's motivation.
David Webb
#42. No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it.
J.R.R. Tolkien
#43. Stop trying to understand people. Love them instead.
Mensah Oteh
#44. People always want to know how you know. And knowing in your heart is very hard to describe. I think so often, we're trying to understand something with our mind. But, actually, the Bible teaches us that much of what God does in our life will be difficult to understand with the mind.
Joyce Meyer
#45. In 1981, while doing postdoctoral field work in cultural anthropology, Bonnie A. Nardi lived with villagers in Western Samoa, trying to understand the cultural reasons that people there have an average of eight children.
Katie Hafner
#46. Rather than trying to master nature we should start with the basics of trying to understand nature, cooperate with nature.
Bryant McGill
#47. 37 is a lumpy number, a bit like porridge. Six is very small and dark and cold, and whenever I was little trying to understand what sadness is I would imagine myself inside a number six and having that experience of cold and darkness. Similarly, number four is a shy number.
Daniel Tammet
#48. I handle emotional pain by trying to understand that it's going to be painful and to allow for it instead of fighting it. Doesn't make it any easier, though.
Tricia Helfer
#49. When you're teenager, your hormones and your emotions are so tumultuous and so unpredictable. You're just trying to understand yourself.
Penelope Mitchell
#50. One story I've been trying to write for years, and haven't been able to finish, is about a face I saw, just a glimpse of a face, in a max security prison in North Carolina. I'm still trying to understand what I saw in that guy's face.
Peter Orner
#51. I'm still trying to understand the wearing off high heels at the airport.
Godfrey
#52. In the process of trying to understand others' difficult behaviour, I've found it is very helpful to realise that no one chooses to be unhappy. If someone is unhappy, they will be so because they genuinely cannot see how to do otherwise.
Torey L. Hayden
#53. Listening to what people in other countries are saying and trying to understand how they perceive their place in the world is essential to a future of peace and security at home and abroad.
Hillary Clinton
#54. One reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one s mistress.
Marcel Proust
#55. I'm trying to understand how time works. And that's a huge question that has lots of different aspects to it.
Sean M. Carroll
#56. Once you start to look at the gospels one by one, you realize that followers of Jesus were trying to understand what had happened after he was arrested and killed. They knew Judas had handed him over to the people who arrested him.
Elaine Pagels
#57. There are two things that people [are surrounded by and] avoid trying to understand. One is music, and the other is electricity.
Frank Oppenheimer
#58. They stood there, King of the Hill, Top of the Heap, Ruler of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs and Presidents, trying to understand what it meant to own a world and how big a world really was.
Ray Bradbury
#59. To enhance your experience and consciousness, your mind is always trying to understand everything that is going on around you.
Debasish Mridha
#60. The organic fundamental error of humanism was that it desired to educate the common people (on whom it looked down) from its lofty stance instead of trying to understand them and to learn from them.
Stefan Zweig
#61. She knew what he was thinking: if she was asking questions like these, she was trying to understand. Trying to forgive him. He was right.
Chris Pavone
#62. We create our own omens, I think, and then mystify ourselves trying to understand their significance.
Steven Brust
#63. But how can you understand a war without any knowledge of the society where it happens? It's like trying to understand birth without knowing anything about pregnancy or conception. Or like trying to understand our current economic collapse without knowing what a derivative is.
Annia Ciezadlo
#64. What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I'm someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.
Paulo Coelho
#65. The attempt of trying to solve a problem without analyzing responsibilities is like trying to understand why a gun was shot without talking to the one using it.
Robin Sacredfire
#66. I'm just trying to understand what's around me as much as anyone else is, really. To draw a bead on a moving target.
Dylan Moran
#67. People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become.
Dan Chaon
#68. Rushing to my side, he palms my face before I can protest. "That's exactly the issue, though. You don't know your own mind. It's full of the secrets of your past, and instead of trying to understand that, you are charging pig-headed down the wrong path.
Siobhan Davis
#69. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken (Ecclesiastes 4:12). Obeying God is too hard. Trying to understand, and obey, the Scriptures will break you. If you go it alone.
Ben Reed
#70. When we allow ourselves to feel what we are feeling-without trying to understand it, explain it, or judge it-we reach a point where the true wisdom reveals itself.
Michael Eisen
#71. Like other Americans, U.S. journalists have often neglected the study of history; they have much remedial work to do in trying to understand who did what to whom, why and when - and who did it first.
Henry Grunwald
#72. Yes, they think we're dumb. They call us the "common people." But I've been sitting here listening and looking and trying to understand what's so common about us. I think they're guilty of a gross mis-statement of fact-we are the uncommon people-
Ralph Ellison
#73. I think the pursuit of trying to understand things is really a critical issue. I see the issue of life and death in everything I do. I'm trying to find answers. It can be quite frustrating.
Robert Longo
#74. One reason why people are unable to understand great Christian classics is that they are trying to understand without any intention of obeying them.
J. Oswald Sanders
#75. That's why we have practice rounds. We make the adjustments as we go around, try and find out how to play the golf course the best we can. No big deal, it's nothing to me, it's the same for me as it is to everybody and we're all trying to understand it.
Greg Norman
#76. It's a lifetime effort, trying to understand the way our minds work, and make it work in your favor and not against you.
Luis Gerardo Mendez
#77. Listening and trying to understand the needs of those we would communicate with seems to me to be the essential prerequisite of any real communication. And we might as well aim for real communication.
Fred Rogers
#78. [W]hen trying to understand the character of the modern mind, it is impossible to separate the effects of genes and the developmental environment.
Steven Mithen
#79. They're trying to understand what space is. That's tough for them. They break distances down into concentrations of chemicals. For them, space is a range of taste intensities.
Greg Bear
#80. Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.
V.S. Naipaul
#81. Trying to understand God's will for anything without reading the Bible is like jumping into the middle of a cricket match without knowing any of the rules and never having watched a game.
Vance C. Kessler
#82. Don't fret, boy. I'm not so foolish as to ridicule the myths and legends of other people. For countless generations, people, no matter where they're from, have been trying to understand this world of ours.
Nahoko Uehashi
#83. It's been one of the most painful things I've ever been through in my whole life: trying to understand the degree to which behaviors that I thought were totally appropriate were destructive.
Newt Gingrich
#84. A long time ago, I gave up trying to understand how other people think.
Margaret Aranda
#85. Not being categorized is like keeping your mouth shut. Categorization is linguistic, people trying to understand each other. Words are misty, language is a fog. I want to be in as many boxes as possible, describe myself as thickly as possible.
Kalan Sherrard
#86. I no more believe in simplistic solutions than I do in simplistic identieties. The world is a complex machine that can't be dismantled with a srewdriver. But that shouldn't prevent us from observing, from trying to understand, from discussing, and sometimes suggesting a subject for reflection.
Amin Maalouf
#87. In order to become a master, you need to emulate. If you're going to be as big as Warhol has become in art, then you have to have younger generations who are exploring your work and trying to understand it like a language.
Mike Bidlo
#88. What is the universe? Is it a great 3D movie in which we are the unwilling actors? Is it a cosmic joke, a giant computer, a work of art by a Supreme Being or simply an experiment? The problem in trying to understand the universe is that we have nothing to compare it to.
Heinz Pagels
#89. By trying to understand everything, everything makes me dream
Gustave Flaubert
#90. Man is, without doubt, the defacer, the destroyer. But spending at least the last three years in trying to understand the enemy has almost seduced me to his side.
Elizabeth Smart
#91. Without understanding yourself, what is the use of trying to understand the world?
Ramana Maharshi
#92. But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you. Like a puzzle. Vous comprenez? Like you have missed the beginning of a story and now you are in the middle of it, trying to understand.
Khaled Hosseini
#93. I believe in discovering the love that exists and then trying to understand it. Not to invent a love and try to make it exist, but to find what does exist, and then to see what it is.
Jesse Ball
#94. I think that what most artists are trying to do is trying to understand. I think what distinguishes creative people and/or artists from another type of person is perhaps a willingness to go headlong into that uncertainty.
Brandon Boyd
#95. Trying to understand her teenage daughter's behavior was like trying to listen to a recording of a symphony whose volume vacillated unpredictably from barely audible to deafening. She couldn't hear the music, and all she wanted to do was leave the room.
Sonja Yoerg
#96. I don't think anything's ever simple. Everyone's just trying to understand each other, and whether that's because you're in a relationship or because you're meeting their friends or because their meeting your brother or whatever it is, nothing like that is ever smooth running.
Imogen Poots
#97. I do theoretical particle physics. We're trying to understand the most basic structure of matter. And the way you do that is you have to look at really small distances. And to get to small distances, you need high energies.
Lisa Randall
#98. I veer away from trying to understand why I act. I just know I need to do it.
Ralph Fiennes
#99. Ultimately, the reward is the process - the process of photographing and discovering and trying to understand why and what am I photographing.
Alex Webb
#100. So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?
Haruki Murakami
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