Quotes about Comprehension

Just listen and seek to understand.

Listening involves patience, openness, and the desire to understand—highly developed qualities of character.

When I say empathic listening, I mean listening with intent to understand. I mean seeking first to understand, to really understand. It's an entirely different paradigm. Empathic (from empathy) listening gets inside another person's frame of reference. You look out through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel.

Seek first to understand. Before the problems come up, before you try to evaluate and prescribe, before you try to present your own ideas—seek to understand.

Although it's risky and hard, seek first to understand, or diagnose before you prescribe, is a correct principle manifest in many areas of life. It's the mark of all true professionals. It's critical for the optometrist, it's critical for the physician. You wouldn't have any confidence in a doctor's prescription unless you had confidence in the diagnosis.

We have such a tendency to rush in, to fix things up with good advice. But we often fail to take the time to diagnose, to really, deeply understand the problem first.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

Love follows knowledge.

He knew everything there was to know about literature, except how to enjoy it

Remind yourself that other people's jobs aren't so simple.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

To make knowledge productive, we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.