Quotes about Understanding

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what is will be tomorrow

What can be explained can also be predicted, if one knows the initial events and the laws covering their succession.

Explanation sets the need for further inquiry aside; narrative invites us to rethink what we thought we knew.

If men will not understand the meaning of judgement, they will never come to understand the meaning of grace.

In the terms in which you set it, the problem is unanswerable; but in the Kingdom of Heaven, those terms do not apply. You have asked the question in a form that is much too limited; the 'solution' must be brought in from outside your sphere of reference altogether.

We are so made that we soon grow weary of ornament for sake of ornament, and even of beauty that makes no appeal to the heart or the understanding.

He has the valuable quality of being fond of people without wanting to turn them inside out.

in the first part, the master-faculties are Observation and Memory, so in the second, the master-faculty is the Discursive Reason.

We cannot really look at the movement of the Spirit, just because It is the Power by which we do the looking.

Yes—but your luck will come more at the end of life than at the beginning, because the other sort of people won't understand the way your mind works. They will start by thinking you dreamy and romantic, and then they'll be surprised to discover that you are really hard and heartless, they'll be quite wrong both times—but they won't ever know it, and you won't know it at first, and it'll worry you.

Men of science spend much time and effort in the attempt to disentangle words from their metaphorical and traditional associations;

But once you've got the How, the Why drives it home.