"The key to why things change is the key to everything."

Burke, James E. on understanding
5 fans of this quote   

"No person was every rightly understood until they had been first regarded with a certain feeling, not of tolerance, but of sympathy."

Carlyle, Thomas on understanding
3 fans of this quote   

"If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on understanding
3 fans of this quote   

"The fact that you are willing to say, I do not understand, and it is fine, is the greatest understanding you could exhibit."

Dyer, Wayne on understanding
7 fans of this quote   

"No man thoroughly understands a truth until he has contended against it."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on understanding   

"In youth we learn; in age we understand."

Eschenbach, Marie E. on understanding
4 fans of this quote   

"The guru, if he is gifted, reads the story as any bilingual person might. He does not translate-he understands."

Kopp, Sheldon on understanding   

"When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely -- the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it."

Krishnamurti, Jiddu on understanding
3 fans of this quote   

"The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days."

Lao-Tzu on understanding
4 fans of this quote   

"Understanding can overcome any situation, however mysterious or insurmountable it may appear to be."

Peale, Norman Vincent on understanding
3 fans of this quote   

"If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are."

Saying, Zen on understanding
8 fans of this quote   

"We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!"

Thoreau, Henry David on understanding   

"Everything that I understand, I understand only because I love."

Tolstoy, Count Leo on understanding
6 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request."

Unknown, Source on understanding   

"In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom!"

Ballard, J. G. on madness
17 fans of this quote   

"The usefulness of madmen is famous: they demonstrate society's logic flagrantly carried out down to its last scrimshaw scrap."

Ozick, Cynthia on madness
3 fans of this quote   

"Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane."

Miller, Henry on madness
7 fans of this quote   

"And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths."

Artaud, Antonin on madness
5 fans of this quote   

"No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness."

Aristotle on madness
22 fans of this quote   

"Men are mad most of their lives; few live sane, fewer die so. The acts of people are baffling unless we realize that their wits are disordered. Man is driven to justice by his lunacy."

Dahlberg, Edward on madness   

"In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices."

Delillo, Don on madness   

"Much Madness is divinest Sense -- to a discerning Eye -- much Sense -- the starkest Madness --"

Dickinson, Emily on madness
5 fans of this quote   

"Perhaps he was a bit different from other people, but what really sympathetic person is not a little mad?"

Duncan, Isadora on madness
4 fans of this quote   

"Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death."

Laing, R. D. on madness
4 fans of this quote   

"The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation."

Laing, R. D. on madness
3 fans of this quote   

"I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them."

Pound, Ezra on madness   

"It's a question to ask ourselves if we're not mad. But who are the madmen, in God's name? Those who wonder about it, or the others? If we ever began to speak out loud, what would they do with us, tell me?"

Serge, Victor on madness   

"We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!"

Shaw, George Bernard on madness
4 fans of this quote   

"Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured and far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak."

Thoreau, Henry David on purpose
60 fans of this quote   

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Twain, Mark on action
234 fans of this quote   

"We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do."

Barrett, Ethel on individuality
3 fans of this quote   

"The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are."

Campell, Joseph on individuality
5 fans of this quote   

"Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose; also the first announcement of death."

Conrad, Peter on individuality   

"Individuality is either the mark of genius or the reverse. Mediocrity finds safety in standardization."

Crane, Frederick E. on individuality   

"Our expenses are all for conformity."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on individuality   

"A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on individuality
3 fans of this quote   

"The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise."

Frost, Robert on individuality   

"It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations --past and present --are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia."

Hoffer, Eric on individuality   

"The great challenge which faces us is to assure that, in our society of big-ness, we do not strangle the voice of creativity, that the rules of the game do not come to overshadow its purpose, that the grand orchestration of society leaves ample room for the man who marches to the music of another drummer."

Humphrey, Hubert H. on individuality   

"Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves."

Huxley, Aldous on individuality