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[[File:Konfuzius-1770.jpg|thumb|The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell. ~ [[Confucius]]]]
[[File:Kierkegaard.jpg|thumb|One understands only in proportion to becoming himself that which he understands. ~ [[Søren Kierkegaard]] ]]
[[File:Understanding-Reid-Highsmith.jpeg |thumb|right| [[Words]] plainly [[force]] and overrule the understanding, and throw all into [[confusion]], and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies. ~ [[Francis Bacon]] ]]
'''[[w:Understanding|Understanding]]''' refers to mental ''states'' or ''processes'' (in that sense also called '''intellection''') whereby individuals are able to conceptualize abstract ideas or definable entities, such as situations, objects, persons, or messages adequately in relation to general ideas or given measures of [[awareness]] or comprehension.
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==A==
*Our No. 1 enemy is ignorance. And I believe that is the No. 1 enemy for everyone — it's not understanding what actually is going on in the world.
**[[Julian Assange]], quoted in ''Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness'' by Newton Lee, (2014)
*You have to start with the [[truth]]. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any [[decision-making]] that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.
**[[Julian Assange]], quoted in {{cite news|first= |last= |author= |title= Julian Assange, monk of the online age who thrives on intellectual battle |work= |publisher= [[w:The Guardian|The Guardian]] |pages= |page= |date=2010-08-01 |accessdate=2010-08-01 |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/aug/01/julian-assange-wikileaks-afghanistan}}
==B==
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==D==
==E==
[[File:Albert_Einstein_Head.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Quotation|If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself. <br/> ~ [[Albert Einstein]] ]]
* [[Peace]] cannot be kept by [[force]]. It can only be achieved by understanding. You cannot subjugate a nation forcibly unless you wipe out every man, woman, and child. Unless you wish to use such drastic measures, you must find a way of settling your disputes without resort to arms.
** [[Albert Einstein]], in a speech to the New History Society (14 December 1930), reprinted in "Militant Pacifism" in ''Cosmic Religion'' (1931)
* One may say "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."
** [[Albert Einstein]], from the article "Physics and Reality" (March 1936), reprinted in ''Out of My Later Years'' (1956). The quotation marks may just indicate that he wants to present this as a new aphorism, but it could possibly indicate that he is paraphrasing or quoting someone else — perhaps [[Immanuel Kant]], since in the next sentence he says "It is one of the great realizations of Immanuel Kant that the setting up of a real external world would be senseless without this comprehensibility."<br /> ''Other variants:''
** The eternally incomprehensible thing about the world is its comprehensibility.
*** In the endnotes to ''Einstein: His Life and Universe'' by Walter Isaacson, note 46 on [http://books.google.com/books?id=cdxWNE7NY6QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA628#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 628] says that "Gerald Holton says that this is more properly translated" as the variant above, citing Holton's essay "What Precisely is Thinking?" on p. 161 of ''Einstein: A Centenary Volume'' edited by Anthony Philip French.
** The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
*** This version was given in ''Einstein: A Biography'' (1954) by Antonina Vallentin, p. 24, and widely quoted afterwards. Vallentin cites "Physics and Reality" in ''Journal of the Franklin Institute'' (March 1936), and is possibly giving a variant translation as with Holton.
** The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
*** As quoted in ''Speaking of Science'' (2000) by Michael Fripp
** The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility … The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.
*** As quoted in ''Einstein: His Life and Universe'' by Walter Isaacson, [http://books.google.com/books?id=cdxWNE7NY6QC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA462#v=onepage&q&f=false p. 462]. In the original essay "The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle" appears at the end of the paragraph that follows the paragraph in which "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility" appears.
* Both churches and universities — insofar as they live up to their true function — serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill this great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force.
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* You may call me an [[agnostic]], but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional [[atheist]] whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of [[humility]] corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of [[nature]] and of our own being.
** [[Albert Einstein]], in a letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in ''Skeptic'' magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997)
* If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.
** [[Albert Einstein]]
==F==
* The Lord ... said: ''Unless a man shall eat my flesh, he shall not have in himself eternal life''. Certain of his disciples, the seventy to wit, were scandalised, and said: ''This is a hard saying; who can understand it?'' And they departed from him, and walked with him no more. His saying ... seemed to them a hard one. They received it foolishly: they thought of it carnally. For they fancied, that the Lord was going to cut from his own body certain morsels and to give those morsels to them. Hence they said: ''This is a hard saying''. But they themselves were hard: not the saying. For, if, instead of being hard, they had been mild, they would have ... learned from him what those learned, who remained while they departed. For, when the twelve disciples had remained with him after the others had departed, ... he instructed them, and said unto them: ''It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words, which I speak unto you, are spirit and life''. As if he had said: ''Understand spiritually what I have spoken. You are Not about to eat this identical body, which you see; and you are Not about to drink this identical blood, which they who crucify me will pour out. I have commended unto you a certain sacrament. This, if spiritually understood, will quicken you. Though it must be celebrated visibly, it must be understood invisibly.''
** [[George Stanley Faber]] pp. 144-147
*What I cannot create, I do not understand.
**[[Richard Feynman]], on his blackboard at the time of death in February 1988; from a [http://archives.caltech.edu/pictures/1.10-29.jpg photo in the Caltech archives]
[[File:BuckminsterFuller1.jpg|thumb|Our school systems are all nonsynergetic. We take the whole child and fractionate the scope of his or her comprehending... to become preoccupied with elements or isolated facts only... the historical beginnings of schools and tutoring were established, and economically supported by illiterate and vastly ambitious warlords who required a wide variety of brain slaves with which to logistically and ballistically overwhelm those who opposed their expansion of physical conquest... The warlord made all those about him differentiators and reserved the function of integration to himself. ~ [[Buckminster Fuller]]]]
*We are in an age that assumes the narrowing trends of specialization to be logical, natural, and desirable. Consequently, society expects all earnestly responsible communication to be crisply brief. . . . In the meantime, humanity has been deprived of comprehensive understanding... It has also resulted in the individual's leaving responsibility for thinking and social action to others. Specialization breeds biases that ultimately aggregate as international and ideological discord, which, in turn, leads to war.
**[[Buckminster Fuller]], ''Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking'' (1975)
*Lack of [[knowledge]] concerning all the factors and the failure to include them in our integral imposes false conclusions.
**[[Buckminster Fuller]], ''Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking'' (1975)
==G==
* But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
** [[Book of Genesis|Genesis]] 11:5-7
* Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary, sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge.
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* The human desire to be understood is never quite sincere. It is on our own terms that we desire to be understood, not on the terms of truth.
** [[
==H==
* The Imagination that is raysed in man (or any other creature indued with the faculty of imagining) by words, or other voluntary signes, is that we generally call ''Understanding;'' and is common to Man and Beast. For a dogge by custome will understand the call, or the rating of his Master; and so will many other Beasts. That Understanding which is peculiar to man, is the Understanding not onely his will; but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequell and contexture of the names of things into Affirmations, Negations, and other formes of Speech: And of this kinde of Understanding I shall speak hereafter.
* '''We may change the [[name]] of things; but their nature and their operation on the understanding never change.'''▼
**[[Thomas Hobbes]], ''Leviathan'' (1651), Chap. 2 : Of Imagination
** [[David Hume]], in ''[[An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding]]'', (1748), Ch. VIII: Of Liberty and Necessity, Part I ▼
▲*
▲** [[David Hume]], in ''[[An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding]]'', (1748), Ch. VIII: Of Liberty and Necessity, Part I
* [[Eloquence]], when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding.
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==K==
*Learning a [[language]] stretches a long way to help create trust, to strengthen our ability to communicate and to understand another people. It also signals willingness to give up centrality.
**[[Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz]] “Nine Suggestions For Radicals, or Lessons From the Gulf War” in The Issue is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence and Resistance (1992)
* One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else (''[[w:gnocchi seauton|gnocchi seauton]]''). Not until a person has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his [[life]] gain peace and meaning.
** [[Søren Kierkegaard]], in ''Journals'' (1 August 1835)
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* When rashness lives in the [[heart]], a person is quick to discover the multiplicity of [[sin]], then he understands splendidly a fragmentary utterance, hastily comprehends at a distance something scarcely enunciated. When [[love]] lives in the heart, a person understands slowly and does not hear at all words said in haste and does not understand them when repeated because he assigns them good position and a good meaning. He does not understand a long angry and insulting verbal assault, because he is waiting for one more word that will give it meaning.
** [[Søren Kierkegaard]], in ''Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Soren Kierkegaard 1843-1844'' (1990) by Howard V. Hong
* Experience certainly has long known how to think of some cheer for the troubled, but, as is natural, it does not know a joy that passes all understanding. Experience knows all the many inventions of the human heart, but a rapture that did not arise in any man’s heart it does not know.
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* What feelings, understanding and will a person has depends in the last resort upon what imagination he has — how he represents himself to himself, that is, upon imagination.
** [[Søren Kierkegaard]], in ''The Sickness unto Death'' (1849), as translated by Alastair Hannay (1989), Part One: The Sickness unto Death is Despair
* Give to [[God|Your]] servant an [[understanding]] heart to [[judge]] Your people, that I may discern between [[good and evil]].
** [[Solomon]], 1 Kings 3:9 (NKJV)
* [[Love]] is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.
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** [[Martin Luther King, Jr.]], in [http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_loving_your_enemies/ "Loving Your Enemies" Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama, (17 November 1957)]
* '''What brings understanding is love.''' When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. But we do not know how to look for it. Our minds and hearts are filled with other things than understanding of "what is".
** [[Jiddu Krishnamurti]], in [http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=270&chid=4600&w=%22What+brings+understanding+is+love%22 "Ninth Talk in Bombay, (14 March 1948)], ''J.Krishnamurti Online'', JKO Serial No. BO48Q1, published in ''The Collected Works'', Vol. IV, p. 200
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==L==
==M==
[[File:Marvin_Minsky_at_OLPCb.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Quotation|If we understood something just one way, we would not understand it at all.<br/> ~ [[Marvin Minsky]] ]]
* He who has ears to hear, let him hear. ... He who has a [[mind]] to understand, let him understand.
** [[W:Gospel of Mary#Authorship|Mary]], [[Berlin Codex]], ''{{w|Gospel of Mary}}'', Chapter 4 [http://www.gnosis.org/library/marygosp.htm]
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==O==
==P==
[[File:Suman_Pokhrel_00543.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Quotation| Generally, poem is understood and liked on the basis of the 'sphere of intellect' of an individual.<br/> ~ [[Suman Pokhrel]] ]]
* Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honor, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?
** [[Plato]], ''Apology'', 29e
* Generally, poem is understood and liked on the basis of the 'sphere of intellect' of an individual.
** [[Suman Pokhrel]], ''Interview with Birat A. for Lokantar''
* Every assimilation of any poem is a translation.
** [[Suman Pokhrel]], ''Translator's Note'' in ''Bhaarat: Shashwat Aawaj'' (2019)
==Q==
==R==
* '''[[Understanding]] is a two-way street.'''
** [[Eleanor Roosevelt]], As quoted in ''Modern Quotations for Ready Reference'' (1947) by Arthur Richmond, p. 455
*A message is given to many, but those who are meant to understand, understand.
**Rwandan proverb, as quoted in [http://archive.is/RFw7W#selection-789.199-789.277 "Killer Songs"] (17 March 2002), by Donald G. McNeil, Jr., ''The New York Times''
==S==
[[File:Sanu_Sharma.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Quotation| One who intends to understand grasps even the slightest hint, but the one who has no intention to understand never comprehends, no matter how loudly you shout.<br/> ~ [[Sanu Sharma]] ]]
* The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit, without any affectation of added superfluities.
** [[Friedrich Schlegel]], “Ideas,” ''Lucinde and the Fragments'', P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5
* One who intends to understand grasps even the slightest hint, but the one who has no intention to understand never comprehends, no matter how loudly you shout.
** [[Sanu Sharma]], ''Lockdown''
* We cannot exert our understanding without from time to time understanding something of importance; and this act of understanding may be accompanied by the awareness of our understanding, by the understanding of understanding, by ''noesis noesos'', and this is so high, so pure, so noble an experience that [[Aristotle]] could ascribe it to his God.
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==V==
==W==
[[File:Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), by Elliott and Fry, March 19 1881.jpg|thumb|right|alt=Quotation|I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying. <br/> ~ [[Oscar Wilde]] ]]
* It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of [[power]] are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation.
** [[Simone Weil]], in ''Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation'' (1943), as translated by Richard Rees
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* In the history that [[w:John Hope Franklin|Franklin]] writes, '''knowledge and understanding are complementary: One without the other is incomplete.''' His contribution has been to make history a field of wisdom, devoid of the cult of fictitious glorification of a whole society or the cant of quantitative reductionism that analyzes parts out of context.
:* [[Charles V. Willie|Charles Vert Willie]], [https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22knowledge+and+understanding+are+complementary%22&num=10 ''Five Black Scholars: An Analysis of Family Life, Education, and Career''], Abt Books, 1986, p. 13
* I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
** [[Oscar Wilde]], ''The Happy Prince and Other Stories''
* ''Not sure I understand<br>This [[role]] I've been given''
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** [[Zhuangzi]] Book XXIII, ¶ 7,as rendered in the epigraph to Ch. 3 of ''[[w:The Lathe of Heaven|The Lathe of Heaven]]'' (1971) by [[Ursula K. Le Guin]], based upon the 1891 translation by [[w:James Legge|James Legge]], Le Guin was subsequently informed that this was a very poor translation, as there were no lathes in China in the time of Zhuangzi. The full passage as translated by Legge reads:
:: He whose [[mind]] is thus grandly fixed emits a Heavenly light. In him who emits this heavenly [[light]] men see the (True) man. When a [[man]] has cultivated himself (up to this point), thenceforth he remains constant in himself. When he is thus constant in himself, (what is merely) the [[human]] element will leave him, but Heaven will help him. Those whom their human element has left we call the people of Heaven. Those whom Heaven helps we call the Sons of Heaven. Those who would by learning attain to this seek for what they cannot learn. Those who would by effort attain to this, attempt what effort can never effect. Those who aim by reasoning to reach it reason where reasoning has no place. '''To know to stop where they cannot arrive by means of knowledge is the highest attainment. Those who cannot do this will be destroyed on the lathe of Heaven.'''
* You wouldn't ask a blind man to appreciate a scene of beauty, nor a deaf man to enjoy the sounds of drums and bells. But it is possible to be blind and deaf in one's deep understanding, as well as physically.
** [[Zhuangzi]], ''[[w:Zhuangzi (book)|The Book of Chuang Tzu]]'', as translated by M. Palmer, et. al. (Penguin: 1996), p. 4
== See also ==
{{col-begin}}
{{col-2}}
*[[Ageless Wisdom teachings]]
* [[Awareness]]
*[[Consciousness]]
* [[Insight]]
* [[Intellect]]
* [[Intelligibility]]
* [[Knowledge]]
* [[Mind]]▼
{{col-2}}
▲* [[Mind]]
*[[Philosophy]]
* [[Reason]]
* [[Thought]]
{{col-end}}
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