Understanding Quotes (page 17)
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If there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along with each other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way to despise each other? Scout, I think I'm beginning to understand something. I think I'm beginning to understand why Boo Radley's stayed shut up in the house all this time. It's because he wants to stay inside.
Harper Lee
Those who understand others are intelligent Those who understand themselves are enlightened Those who overcome others have strength Those who overcome themselves are powerful Those who know contentment are wealthy Those who proceed vigorously have willpower Those who do not lose their base endure Those who die but do not perish have longevity
Lao Tzu
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy...
John Steinbeck
It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else’s shoes and understand the other’s different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them. . .
Azar Nafisi
He was just hungry, Papa. He's going to die.He's going to die anyway.He's so scared, Papa.The man squatted and looked at him. I'm scared, he said. Do you understand? I'm scared.The boy didn't answer. He just sat there with his head down, sobbing.You're not the one who has to worry about everything.The boy said something but he couldn't understand him. What? He said.He looked up, his wet and grimy face. Yes I am, he said. I am the one.
Cormac McCarthy
this is just like life must be for about 99 percent of the people in the world. You're in this place. There's other people all around you, but they don't understand you and you don't understand them, but people do a lot of pointless babbling anyway. In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, take a flyer, and go off into the wicked world, where you will be swallowed up and never heard from...
Neal Stephenson
the hippies of the 1960s did understand something. They were right in fighting the plastic culture, and the church should have been fighting it too... More than this, they were right in the fact that the plastic culture - modern man, the mechanistic worldview in university textbooks and in practice, the total threat of the machine, the establishment technology, the bourgeois upper middle class - is poor in its sensitivity to nature... As a utopian group, the counterculture understands...
Francis Schaeffer
We are not alien visitors to this planet, after all but natural residents and relatives of every living entity here. This earth is where we came from and where we'll all end up when we die, and during the interim, it is our home, And there's no way we can ever hope to understand ourselves if we don't at least marginally understand our home.
Elizabeth Gilbert