It is absolutely a good thing that she [Angelina Jolie] helped to educate the world about the existence of this mutation; hopefully, as a result, more compassionate understanding exists regarding the choices BRCA carriers must face.
I just want to open up the avenues for people to express themselves. That's what the media ought to be. It shouldn't just be a conveyer belt of shiny products to buy. It should be a way that we're all communicating and understanding each other.
There's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.
There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.
Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.
Many traditional religions foster attitudes that ought to have disappeared as biological understanding accumulated over the last century.
There is no wisdom without mastery over the mystery of our internal world, the world that opens the door to understanding others.
Conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress. On the other hand, it is of little use to take criticism in a slavish spirit and to act on it without understanding it.
We have been taught to keep the commandments, and we have kept them all too well. We have enshrined them like religious relics in sealed containers on the altar. Thus, it could be said that one lives by the commandments in much the same way as many persons live by a neighbor, never learning his name, let alone having any understanding communication with him.
Self-worth is an understanding on the intellectual level, trusting at the heart level, and accepting at the soul level that you are worthy just because you believe that you are. Your worthiness is proven by your existence. Your breathing. The beating of your heart. Your mere presence is all that is needed to establish your worth.
When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.
The Japanese have a word - aware - which, in my understanding is, again, that full range - both the joy and the sorrow of our life. One does not exist without the other. And I really feel that.
By taking a look at your anger it can be transformed into the kind of energy that you need - understanding and compassion.
In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.
Art is the closest we can come to understanding how a stranger really feels.
Objectivity consists in understanding that the only one who never makes a mistake is the one who never does anything.
There is a widespread understanding among the people of this nation, and probably among the people of the world, that there is no safety except through the prevention of war.
The idea is that what an artist lives through should broaden his notion of what it is possible for a human being to live through, and that new understanding should then get into and expand the work.
The great philosophers and the great works are standards for the selection of what is essential. Everything that we do in studying the history of philosophy ultimately serves their better understanding.
If you come to fame not understanding who you are, it will define who you are. It shouldn't change you. If you're a jerk, you just get to be a bigger jerk. What fame does is magnify who you are and puts that on a platter for the whole world to see.
