The Quatermass Xperiment 1955 - William Shakespeare - John Dee - Duck Soup 1933 - Albert Einstein - Proverbs 23:23 - Richard Dawkins - Anslem of Canterbury - Peter Abelard - Beautiful Minds: Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell TV - Peter Ackroyd - Immanuel Kant - Carl Sagan - Marie Curie - Richard Feynman - Bram Stoker - David Deutsch - Galileo Galilei - Vanna Bonta - Baruch Spinoza - Jacques Monod - Upton Sinclair - Douglas Adams - Carl Jung - Rene Descartes - Ian McEwan - Doris Lessing - Phillip Done - Clifford Stoll - Antoine de Saint-Exupery - Bertrand Russell - Leon: The Professional 1994 - Inside the Mind of Leonardo & Peter Capaldi TV - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Isaac Newton - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - Mme de Stael - Henry Newman - I Kings 4:27-33 - Job 12:12 - Job 15:8&9 - Job 28:20 - Job 28:28 - Proverbs 2:7&8 - Proverbs 3:13 - Proverbs 9:9&10 - Proverbs 10:13&14 - Proverbs 10:23 - Proverbs 11:12 - Proverbs 15:7&14 - Proverbs 16:16&21-23 - Proverbs 17:24 - Proverbs 18:1&2 - Proverbs 19:8 - John Steinbeck - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Thomas Pynchon - John Locke - Oscar Wilde - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Ray Donovan TV - Mahatma Gandhi -
Almost beyond human understanding. The Quatermass Xperiment 1955 starring Brian Donlevy & Jack Warner & Margia Dean & Thora Hird & Gordon Jackson & David King-Wood & Harold Lang & Lionel Jeffries & Sam Kydd & Richard Wordsworth et al, director Val Guest, Quatermass
I pray thee, understand a plain man in his plain meaning. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice III v 63
Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent. John Dee, The Hieroglyphic Monad
Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child; I can’t make head nor tail of it. Duck Soup 1933 starring Groucho Marx & Harpo Marx & Chico Marx & Zeppo Marx & Margeret Dumont & Louis Calhern & Raquel Torres & Edgar Kennedy & Edmund Breese & Edwin Maxwell & William Worthington et al, director Leo McCarey, Rufus in Chamber of Deputies
One may say, ‘The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.’ Albert Einstein, article ‘Physics & Reality’, attributions & variations inc Kant
Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding. Proverbs 23:23
I am against religion because it teaches us to be satisfied with not understanding the world. Richard Dawkins
Queerer than we can suppose: what is it that makes us capable of supposing anything? Does this tell us anything about what we can suppose? Are there things about the universe that will be for ever beyond our grasp, but not beyond the grasp of some superior intelligence? Are there things about the universe that are in principle ungraspable by any mind however superior? Richard Dawkins 2007
I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe – that unless I believed, I should not understand. Anselm of Canterbury
cf.
I must understand in order that I may believe. Peter Abelard
Science is a quest for understanding. A search for truth it seems to me is full of pitfalls. Beautiful Minds: Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, BBC 2010
To watch King Lear is to approach the recognition that there is indeed no meaning in life, and that there are limits to human understanding. Peter Ackroyd
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason. Immanuel Kant
Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking. This is central to its success. Science invites us to let the facts in, even when they don’t conform to our preconceptions. It counsels us to carry alternative hypotheses in our heads and see which ones best match the facts. It urges on us a fine balance between no-holds-barred openness to new ideas, however heretical, and the most rigorous skeptical scrutiny of everything – new ideas and established wisdom. We need wide appreciation of this kind of thinking. It works. It’s an essential tool for a democracy in an age of change. Our task is not just to train more scientists but also to deepen public understanding of science. Carl Sagan, ‘Why We Need to Understand Science’ Skeptical Inquirer 14:3
The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous. Carl Sagan
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. Marie Curie, attributed & disputed
What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school ... It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it ... That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does. Richard Feynman, QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, 1985
Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men’s eyes, because they know – or think they know – some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all; and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. Bram Stoker, Dracula
The extraordinary thing is not that there are laws but that we can understand them. Why should we be able to understand them? David Deutsch
To command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is ... to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand. Galileo Galilei
Looking up and out, how can we not respect this ever-vigilant cognizance that distinguishes us: the capability to envision, to dream, and to invent? The ability to ponder ourselves? And be aware of our existence on the outer arm of a spiral galaxy in an immeasurable ocean of stars? Cognizance is our crest. Vanna Bonta
I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them. Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, 1677
[A] curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he can understand it. Jacques Monod, On the Molecular Theory of Evolution
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair, ‘I, Candidate for Governor’
I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day. Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth. Carl Jung
The two operations of our understanding – intuition and deduction – on which alone we have said we must rely in the acquisition of knowledge. Rene Descartes
Shakespeare would have grasped wave functions, Donne would have understood complementary and relative time. They would have been excited. What richness! They would have plundered this new science for their imagery. And they would have educated their audiences too. But you ‘arts’ people, you’re not only ignorant of these magnificent things, you’re rather proud of knowing nothing. Ian McEwan, The Child in Time 1987
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way. Doris Lessing
The main reason I became a teacher is that I like being the first one to introduce kids to words and music and people and numbers and concepts and idea that they have never heard about or thought about before. I like being the first one to tell them about Long John Silver and negative numbers and Beethoven and alliteration and ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning’ and similes and right angles and Ebenezer Scrooge ... Just think about what you know today. You read. You write. You work with numbers. You solve problems. We take all these things for granted. But of course you haven’t always read. You haven’t always known how to write. You weren’t born knowing how to subtract 199 from 600. Someone showed you. There was a moment when you moved from not knowing to knowing, from not understanding to understanding. That’s why I became a teacher. Phillip Done, 32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny: Life Lessons from Teaching
Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom. Clifford Stoll
Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Le Petit Prince, 1943