Quotes about Understanding

The best way to combat racism is to have blacks and whites relate to one another as individuals, rather than as racial abstractions.... It becomes much harder to make a nasty generalization about another group after you have spent time in the home of one if its members.

People greatly value knowledge and intelligence, but not wisdom.

You see, between us and God's wisdom is a valley, a place of humility. We have to lay aside worldly wisdom. We have to become fools in the eyes of the world in order that we may really enter into God's wisdom.

When you think about renouncing your own will and embracing the will of God, let me suggest you bear three truths in mind. First of all, God loves you more than you love yourself. Second, God understands you better than you understand yourself. And third, God wants only the best for you. When you truly yield to God's will, you will discover that it is what the Bible says it is: "good and acceptable and perfect" (Romans 12:2).

The prophecies and the promises of God's Word are never an excuse to cease praying. On the contrary, they are intended to provoke us to pray with increased earnestness and understanding. God reveals to us the purposes that He is working out, not that we may be passive spectators on the sidelines of history, but that we may personally identify ourselves with His purposes and thus become actively involved in their fulfillment. Revelation demands involvement.

Giving the emotion a name is the way we come to understand how what happened affected us. After we've told the facts of what happened, we must face our feelings. We are each hurt in our own unique ways, and when we give voice to this pain, we begin to heal it.

There is a certain kind of dignity we admire, and to which we aspire, in the person who refuses to meet anger with anger, violence with violence, or hatred with hatred.

We are always at our best when compassion enables us to recognize the unique pressures and singular stories of the people on the other side of our conflicts.

I would like to share with you two simple truths: there is nothing that cannot be forgiven, and there is no one un-deserving of forgiveness.

Cultivate your forgiveness with your friends, with your family, with strangers, and with yourself. Remind yourself that every person you encounter carries a sorrow and a struggle. Recognize that we all share a fundamental humanity.

A person is a person because she recognizes others as persons.

The way to understand any enemy is to realize that, from his perspective, he is not a villain but a hero.