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81 " It opens the mind toward an understanding of humannature and destiny. It increases wisdom. It is the veryessence of that much misinterpreted concept, a liberaleducation. It is the foremost approach to humanism,the lore of the specifically human concerns that distinguishman from other living beings. . . . Personal cultureis more than mere familiarity with the presentstate of science, technology, and civic affairs. It ismore than acquaintance with books and paintings andthe experience of travel and of visits to museums. It isthe assimilation of the ideas that roused mankind fromthe inert routine of a merely animal existence to a lifeof reasoning and speculating. It is the individual’seffort to humanize himself by partaking in the traditionof all the best that earlier generations havebequeathed. "
― Ludwig von Mises
82 " Be confident in who you are, Cherry Blossom. Confidence and an understanding of who you are is an alluring combination men won't be able to resist. "
― Red Phoenix , Socrates Inspires Cherry to Blossom
83 " The threats that resurfaced in the past 10 years were not an aberration. Al Qaeda and terrorism or one such threat, but it was actually not the most serious threat that the United States faced. The president can and should speak of foreseeing an era in which these threats don't exist, but you must not believe his own rhetoric. To the contrary, he must gradually ease the country away from the idea that threats to imperial power will ever subside, then l lead it to an understanding that these threats are the price Americans pay for the wealth and power they hold. "
― George Friedman , The Next Decade: What the World Will Look Like
84 " Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of God. Some people mature into an understanding of God’s will more quickly than others because they obey more readily; they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of God. "
― Oswald Chambers , Bringing Sons Into Glory and Making All Things New
85 " Since few people arrive at retirement with an understanding that this transition will involve a rethinking of who they are, an interim pattern has emerged, in which travel offers a way of fulfilling deferred daydreams of adventure while the next stage takes shape. [p. 31] "
― Mary Catherine Bateson , Composing a Life
86 " Incidentally, it’s easy to write prescriptions, but difficult to come to an understanding with people. "
― Franz Kafka , A Country Doctor
87 " Sleep well in my arms tonight, love, but know that we must come to an understanding of sorts--for I be a full-blooded male as this fire in my loins doth remind me--and unfortunately, not the saint ye so obviously would have me! "
88 " An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality. "
― Robert M. Pirsig , Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1)
89 " I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse -- the things which often make dialogue impossible.And after a long interval he said, 'I want you. I want you more than anything in the world. "
― Anne Rice , Interview with the Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles, #1)
90 " Yet the Narrator’s quest is not only for his own identity and vocation. He seeks an understanding of art, sexuality and worldly and political affairs: he is a snoop and a voyeur; he comments and classifies; his taxonomic impulse makes the novel appear to be a vast compendium, replete with burrowing wasps and bedsteads, military strategies, stereoscopes, asparagus and aeroplanes. "
― , The Cambridge Introduction to Marcel Proust
91 " He hadn’t asked to become a leader, but did that absolve him of responsibility? People needed him. The world needed him. And, with an understanding that cooled in him like molten rock forming into a shape, he realized that he wanted to lead. If someone had to be lord of these people, he wanted to do it himself. Because doing it yourself was the only way to see that it was done right. "
― Robert Jordan , Towers of Midnight (The Wheel of Time, #13)
92 " Not darkness, for that implies an understanding of light. Not silence, for that suggests a familiarity with sound. Not loneliness, for that requires knowledge of others. But still, faintly, so tenuous that if it were any less it wouldn’t exist at all: awareness. Nothing more than that. Just awareness—a vague, ethereal sense of being. Being . . . but not becoming. No marking of time, no past or future—only an endless, featureless now, and, just barely there in that boundless moment, inchoate and raw, the dawning of perception . . . "
― Robert J. Sawyer , WWW: Wake (WWW, #1)
93 " Empathy requires us to step outside of our own agendas long enough to develop an understanding of the other person's perspective. It can be rightly stated that no relationship will be whole without ongoing displays of empathy. "
94 " The environment is not an " other" to us. It is not a collection of things that we encounter. Rather, it is part of our being. It is the locus of our existence and identity. We cannot and do not exist apart from it. It is through empathic projection that we come to know our environment, understand how we are part of it and how it is part of us. This is the bodily mechanism by which we can participate in nature, not just as hikers or climbers or swimmers, but as part of nature itself, part of a larger, all-encompassing whole. A mindful embodied spirituality is thus an ecological spirituality. An embodied spirituality requires an aesthetic attitude to the world that is central to self-nurturance, to the nurturance of others, and to the nurturance of the world itself. Embodied spirituality requires an understanding that nature is not inanimate and less than human, but animated and more than human. It requires pleasure, joy in the bodily connection with earth and air, sea and sky, plants and animals - and the recognition that they are all more than human, more than any human beings could ever achieve. Embodied spirituality is more than spiritual experience. It is an ethical relationship to the physical world. "
95 " And though history sadly doesn't credit the man who first thought of tilting a bicycle's steering axis, it is more likely to be because of feet striking the wheel than an understanding of stability. "
― , It's All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels
96 " The problem is that without an understanding for their meaning and purpose, most relationships quickly become little more than vehicles for the pursuit of selfish and individual goals. Disagreements then become a battle between conflicting interests, rather than a search for a mutually satisfying resolution. "
― Matthew Kelly , The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved
97 " Our Negro problem, therefore, is not of the Negro's making. No group in our population is less responsible for its existence. But every group is responsible for its continuance.... Both races need to understand that their rights and duties are mutual and equal and their interests in the common good are idential.... There is no help or healing in apparaising past responsibilities or in present apportioning of praise or blame. The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem--a magnanimous understanding by both races--is the first step toward its solution. "
― Isabel Wilkerson , The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America's Great Migration
98 " Many „pathogens“ (both chemical and behavioral) can influence how you turn out; these include substance abuse by a mother during pregnancy, maternal stress, and low birth weight. As a child grows, neglect, physical abuse, and head injury can cause problems in mental development. Once the child is grown, substance abuse and exposure to a variety of toxins can damage the brain, modifying intelligence, aggression, and decision-making abilities. The major public health movement to remove lead-based paint grew out of an understanding that even low levels of lead can cause brain damage that makes children less inteligent and, in some cases, more impulsive and aggressive. How you turn out depends on where you´ve been. So when it comes to thinking about blameworthiness, the first difficulty to consider is that people do not choose their own developmental path.It´s problematic to imagine yourself in the shoes of a criminal and conclude, „Well, I wouldn´t have done that“ – because if you weren´t exposed to in utero cocaine, lead poisoning, or physical abuse, and he was, then you and he are not directly comparable. "
― David Eagleman
99 " Whenever a journalist wrote an article about him that was critical in nature... he would invite them to a meal and at first they assumed they were in trouble for being critical of him. But they soon learned after arrival at his house for a meal that he merely wanted to engage with them to get an understanding of they criticism... Madiba didn't attempt to change their minds. He would have an informed opinion after having engaged with them, and even though he occasionally changed an opinion by offering correct information, they never parted feeling hostile. "
― Zelda la Grange
100 " Don't you agree? Swordplay is a dance of sorts, an understanding of the logical, most sophisticated next step. Except that in a fight, one must take the unexpected step. In dance it is all about taking the right, expected step. "
― Lisa Tawn Bergren , Waterfall (River of Time, #1)
