Comprehend Quotes
More Comprehend Quotes
It would be easier for the Devil to go to church and cross himself with holy water than for these people to comprehend the ideas which are accepted facts to us today.
Adolf Hitler— speech in Berlin, 10 December 1940
The corporeal element in man is a large screen and partition that prevents him from perfectly perceiving abstract ideals; this would be the case even if the corporeal element were as pure and superior as the substance of the spheres; how much more must this be the case with our dark and opaque body. However great the exertion of our mind may be to comprehend the Divine Being or any of the ideals, we find a screen and partition between God and us.
maimonides— Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Chapter 9.
Who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend, 'tis but five days elder than ourselves.
— 1634-5 Religio Medici (published1643), pt.1, section11.
This world is bad enough maybe; We do not comprehend it; But in one fact can all agree God won't, and we can't mend it.
arthur hugh clough— 1850 Dipsychus (published1865), sc.5.
If a traveller were informed that such a man was Leader of the House of Commons, he may well begin to comprehend how the Egyptians came to worship an insect.
— 1852 Of Lord John Russell. Attributed.
In viewing the scheme of redemption, I seem like one viewing a vast and complicated machine of exquisite contrivance; what I comprehend of it is wonderful, what I do not, is, perhaps, more so still.
richard cecil— p. 422. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Clearly, we have compiled a record of serious failures in recent technological encounters with the environment. In each case, the new technology was brought into use before the ultimate hazards were known. We have been quick to reap the benefits and slow to comprehend the costs.
Barry Commoner— Quoted from "Frail Reeds in a Harsh World". New York: The American Museum of Natural History. Natural History. Journal of the American Museum of Natural History, Vol. LXXVIII No. 2, February, 1969, p. 44.
To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power; to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful workings of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more grateful than knowledge.
nicolaus copernicus— As quoted in Poland : The Knight Among Nations (1907) by Louis E. Van Norman, p. 290; also in The Language of God (2006) by Francis Collins, pp. 230-31.
It is enough for me to contemplate the mystery of conscious life perpetuating itself through all eternity, to reflect upon the marvelous structure of the universe which we dimly perceive, and to try humbly to comprehend an infinitesimal part of the intelligence manifested in nature.
— Albert Einstein in Mein Weltbild (1931), as quoted in Introduction to Philosophy (1935) by George Thomas White Patrick and Frank Miller Chapman, p. 44
Greatness by nature includes a power, but not a will to power. ... The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces , is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind , the incarnation of the spirit .
— Martin Buber, criticizing Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of "Will to Power," Between Man and Man (1965), p. 150
I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them.
ansel adams— The Negative (1981), introduction to second edition
It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depend.
friedrich hayek— "'Conscious' Direction and the Growth of Reason"p. 92
The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.
Immanuel Kant— A lecture at Königsberg (1775), as quoted in A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (1946) by H. L. Mencken, p. 955
But remember, please, the Law by which we live, We are not built to comprehend a lie, We can neither love nor pity nor forgive, If you make a slip in handling us you die! We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods! Our touch can alter all created things, We are everything on earth except The Gods!
rudyard kipling— The Secret of the Machines, Stanza 7.
Galileo wrote that 'the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics; without its help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it.'
steven pinker— p. 359 (How the Mind Works (1997))
Unless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is.
wilhelm reich— Orgonotic Pulsation in International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone-Research, Vol. 3, No. 1, (March, 1944); Reich throughout his writings seems to use the word "mysticism" in a sense strongly related to claims of "mystical authority over others" and on the impositions made by such faith, rather than in its more common use as a word denoting a respect for "mystical insight apart from others" without necessarily any claim to authority over them.
It is my meditation all the day, and more than my meat and drink, to know how I shall make the Saints of God comprehend the visions that roll like an overflowing surge before my mind.
smith, joseph, jr.— B.H. Roberts, History of the Church 5:362
A man, engaged in his simple reflections in everyday life, will comprehend neither the possibility, nor the benefits of self-sacrifice, but, when given ("qu'on lui donne", Fr.) a great cause to defend, and he will find only natural to sacrifice oneself for it.
african spir— p. 53 (Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937))
Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion . To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.
— Albert Einstein, in response to atheist Alfred Kerr in the winter of 1927, who after deriding ideas of God and religion at a dinner party in the home of the publisher Samuel Fischer, had queried him "I hear that you are supposed to be deeply religious" as quoted in The Diary of a Cosmopolitan (1971) by H. G. Kessler, p.157
The Greeks failed to comprehend the infinitely large, the infinitely small, and infinite processes. They "shrank before the silence of the infinite spaces."
— Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Oxford University Press, 1972
A problem never exists in isolation; it is surrounded by other problems in space and time. The more of the context of a problem that a scientist can comprehend, the greater are his chances of finding a truly adequate solution .
— Russell L. Ackoff (1956] The development of operations research as a science
Wyrd is too vast and too complex, for us to comprehend, for we are ourselves, part of wyrd and cannot stand back to observe it as if it were a separate force . Just as fisherman cannot see the full extent of the seas, so even a sorcerer cannot view the totality of wyrd.
— Brian Bates, in The Way of the Wyrd : Tales of an Anglo-Saxon Sorcerer (1983)
It is my meditation all the day, and more than my meat and drink, to know how I shall make the Saints of God comprehend the visions that roll like an overflowing surge before my mind.
— B.H. Roberts, History of the Church 5:362
Meekness is the grace which, from beneath God's footstool, lifts up a candid and confiding eye, accepting God's smile of Fatherly affection, and adoring those perfections which it cannot comprehend.
— James Hamilton, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 407.
A liberal education forms... a single body. Those, therefore, who from tender years receive instruction in the various forms of learning, recognize the same stamp on all the arts, and an intercourse between all studies, and so they more readily comprehend them all.
— Chapter I, Sec. 12 (Book I)
In the midst of all this great variety of subjects, an individual cannot attain to perfection in each, because it is scarcely in his power to take in and comprehend the general theories of them.
— Chapter I, Sec. 13 (Book I)
Many Hindu intellectuals are just not able to comprehend the fact that there is no human aspiration or experience which lies outside the range of Hinduism; it provides for even demon-Gods. In contrast, all religions are in the nature of sects, though they cannot be so defined because of their insistence on their separateness and, indeed, hostility to Hinduism.
— Girilal Jain, Page 5, The Hindu Phenomenon, ISBN 81-86112-32-4.
My opinion is this: the cause of the error of all these schools is their belief that God 's knowledge is like ours; each school points to something withheld from our knowledge, and either assumes that the same must be the case in God's knowledge, or at least finds some difficulty how to explain it. ...they likewise demonstrated... that our intellect and our knowledge are insufficient to comprehend the true idea of His essence. ...they came to the absurd conclusion that that which is required for our knowledge is also required for God's knowledge.
— Maimonides], in Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Ch. 20
