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1 " You see, it's really quite simple. A simile is just a mode of comparison employing 'as' and 'like' to reveal the hidden character or essence of whatever we want to describe, and through the use of fancy, association, contrast, extension, or imagination, to enlarge our understanding or perception of human experience and observation. "
― Norton Juster ,
2 " Will we turn our backs on science because it is perceived as a threat to God, abandoning all the promise of advancing our understanding of nature and applying that to the alleviation of suffering and the betterment of humankind? Alternatively, will we turn our backs on faith, concluding that science has rendered the spiritual life no longer necessary, and that traditional religious symbols can now be replaced by engravings of the double helix on our alters?Both of these choices are profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate and beautiful - and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them. "
― Francis S. Collins , The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
3 " We can remove the veil that shrouds our understanding and made us forget who we truly are. When we understand the core self and live from the core self, the myth of separation, concepts of separation, color, religion, class, intelligence…all these fade away. We are not our color. We are not our religion. We are not our sexual preference. We are human beings. We are spiritual beings. "
4 " Often our understanding of ourselves can be ruined by the way we are treated, by things we have done that we are ashamed of, things we have gone through and by our inability to comprehend our own personal loveliness. You have to choose to believe the truth about you which is, you are lovable. You are not a screw up who messes everything up. You are valuable and you are not a waste of space. The world would not be better off without you, in fact, you have a gift to give the world. You have a story that someone else needs to hear. "
― Stalina Goodwin , Dear Beautiful: 31 Days of Affirmations for Women
5 " The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word " luxury. "
6 " God doesn't expect us to be a walking encyclopedia of biblical knowledge. He wants us to know Him, to be in a relationship with Him. This means not only hearing but allowing our understanding of God to change the way we live. Like the wise builder who laid the foundation of his house on the rock, we learn to let our knowledge of God change us. "
― Tyler Edwards , Zombie Church: Breathing Life Back Into the Body of Christ
7 " The argument is made that naming God is never really naming God but only naming our understanding of God. To take our ideas of the divine and hold them as if they correspond to the reality of God is thus to construct a conceptual idol built from the materials of our mind. "
― Peter Rollins
8 " Science is thus a paradigm for how we ought to gain knowledge—not the particular methods or institutions of science but its value system, namely to seek to explain the world, to evaluate candidate explanations objectively, and to be cognizant of the tentativeness and uncertainty of our understanding at any time. "
― Steven Pinker , The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
9 " That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt. For how should the faculty of knowledge be called into activity, if not by objects which affect our senses and which, on the one hand, produce representations by themselves or on the other, rouse the activity of our understanding to compare, connect, or separate them and thus to convert the raw material of our sensible impressions into knowledge of objects, which we call experience? With respect to time, therefore, no knowledge within us is antecedent to experience, but all knowledge begins with it.But though all our knowledge begins with experience, is does not follow that it all arises from experience. For it is quite possible that even our empirical knowledge is a compound of that which we perceive through impressions, and of that which our own faculty of knowledge (incited by sense impressions) supplies from itself, a supplement which we do not distinguish from that raw material until long practice and rendered us capable of separating one from the other.It is therefore a question which deserves at least closer investigation and cannot be disposed of at first sight: Whether there is any knowledge independent of all experience and even of all impressions of the senses? Such knowledge is called 'a priori' and is distinguished from empirical knowledge, which has its source 'a posteriori', that is, in experience... "
― Immanuel Kant , Critique of Pure Reason
10 " Power is the ability to bring to past a desired result. The exercise of power requires action. The key to power is in understanding how to use that which is already available to us in order to accomplish a sought after goal. The power comes from understanding and acting according to that understanding. When we live according to Truth, we thereby bring power to light. Yet we are never powerful because of ourselves, it is Truth alone that is powerful. We are, therefore, powerful only in proportion to our understanding in light of our situation. Understanding who, what, when, where, how, or why in light of our current situation is what determines the balance of power. Power is the effect of understanding. Therefore, the one who seeks to be powerful must first seek out knowledge and experience by the means of questioning and curiosity. Only through knowledge and experience may we obtain understanding. Only through understanding may we obtain power, and understanding is the power of the wise. "
11 " Loving relationships, though necessary for life, health, and growth, are among the most complicated skills. Before we can be successful at achieving relationships, it is necessary that we broaden our understanding of how they work, what they mean and how what we do and believe can enhance or destroy them. We can accomplish this only if we are willing to put in the energy and take the time to study failed relationships as well as examine successful ones. Loving relationships cannot be taken lightly. Unless we are looking for pain, they must not be forever approached in a trial and error fashion. Too many of us have experienced the cost of these lackadaisical approaches in terms of tears, confusion and guilt. "
― Leo F. Buscaglia , Loving Each Other
12 " Metaphysical speculation is independent of the physical validity of the Big Bang itself and is irrelevant to our understanding of it. "
― Lawrence M. Krauss , A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing
13 " We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. "
― Ursula K. Le Guin
14 " …there is also an underlying, less specific fear - what some might call an ontological or existential anxiety - that shrouds our days and seeps into our dreams. We feel empty and seek meaning. We feel empty and seek meaning. We yearn and know not what we yearn for. There is a black hole at the center of our understanding that engulfs and crushes our every attempt to explore it. Something is missing. "
15 " The ignorant frighten children with ghosts, and the better educated assure them there is no such thing. Our understanding may believe the latter, but our instincts believe the former; so that, out of this education, we retain the terror, and just believe enough to make it very troublesome whenever we are placed in circumstances that awaken it. "
― Catherine Crowe , The Night Side of Nature
16 " Maybe we’ll evolve to a point where fear as an experience is no longer instinctual, but rather an emotion we use to enrich our understanding of why our human ancestors killed each other when they could have loved each other. One day we’ll be holding hands instead of grudges; we’ll eliminate our territorial circuits and know what love is. One day we’ll be holding hands instead of M-16s. "
17 " Homecoming is a single word, and we use it to describe a single event. But true homecoming requires more time. It seems to be a process rather than a moment. Perhaps we come home the way the earth comes home to the sun. It could be that homecoming is always a return and our understanding of home deepens with each encounter. "
― Christie Purifoy , Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons
18 " The story of the Fall tells us in mythical language that " original sin" is not simply a stigma arbitrarily making good pleasures seem guilty, but a basic inauthenticity, a kind of predisposition to bad faith in our understanding of ourselves and of the world. It implies a determined willfulness in trying to make things be other than they are in order that we may be able to make them subserve, at any moment, to our individual desire for pleasure or for power. But since things do not obey our arbitrary impulsions, and since we cannot make the world correspond to and confirm the image of it dictated by our needs and illusions, our willfulness is inseparable from error and from suffering. Hence, Buddhism says, deluded life itself is in a state of Dukkha, and every movement of desire tends to bear ultimate fruit in pain rather than lasting joy, in hate rather than love, in destruction rather than creation. (Let us note in passing that when technological skill seems in fact to give man almost absolute power in manipulating the world, this fact is no way reverses his original condition of brokenness and error but only makes it all the more obvious. We who live in the age of the H-bomb and the extermination camp have reason to reflect on this, though such reflection is a bit unpopular.) "
19 " Holding as we do that, while knowledge of any kind is a thing to be honoured and prized, one kind of it may, either by reason of its greater exactness or of a higher dignity and greater wonderfulness in its objects, be more honourable and precious than another, on both accounts we should naturally be led to place in the front rank the study of the soul. The knowledge of the soul admittedly contributes greatly to the advance of truth in general, and, above all, to our understanding of Nature, for the soul is in some sense the principle of animal life. Our aim is to grasp and understand, first its essential nature, and secondly its properties; of these some are thought to be affections proper to the soul itself, while others are considered to attach to the animal owing to the presence of soul. To attain any knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world. As the form of question which here presents itself, viz. the question 'What is it?', recurs in other fields, it might be supposed that there was some single method of inquiry applicable to all objects whose essential nature we are endeavouring to ascertain (as there *is* for incidental properties the single method of demonstration); in that case what we should have to seek for would be this unique method. But if there is no such single and general method for solving the question of essence, our task becomes still more difficult; in the case of each different subject we shall have to determine the appropriate process of investigation. If to this there be a clear answer, e.g. that the process is demonstration or division, or some other known method, many difficulties and hesitations still beset us—with what facts shall we begin the inquiry? For the facts which form the starting-points in different subjects must be different, as e.g. in the case of numbers and surfaces. First, no doubt, it is necessary to determine in which of the *summa genera* soul lies, what it *is*; is it 'a this-somewhat', a substance, or is a quale or a quantum, or some other of the remaining kinds of predicates which we have distinguished? Further, does soul belong to the class of potential existents, or is it not rather an actuality? Our answer to this question is of the greatest importance." ―from_On the Soul: Book I_ "
20 " Reading is important. It’s not primarily escapism (though it can be, and there’s nothing wrong with some of that in good measure) and it’s not primarily a way of passing the time. Reading is important to the good life because it stokes the furnaces of our intellect, allows us to expand our understanding of the universe, both inner and outer, for practical gain and simple pleasure. It can induce awe, inspire respect, excite, piss off, and intrigue. These are things that make life worth living. "
― Robert Wringham , Escape Everything!