Orson Scott Card Quotes on Understanding
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'I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature,' he said, irritated at my failure to respond. 'Nature's virtue is intact,' I reassured him. 'I just know some different laws.'
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I'm very good at that. Understanding what other people think.
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His eyes were seductive with understanding
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I speak to everyone in the language they understand. That isn't being slick. It's being clear
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There's so much that we don't understand. And so much more that you don't understand. We should tell each other more
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When you really know somebody you can't hate them Or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristao says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes I don't think it has anything to do with truth, it's just cause and effect. We can never sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except the first cause - knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is the final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you know what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.
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In all [my] life, you are the first person [I've] known that wasn't [myself]. [I] never had to be understanding because [I] always understood.
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I think you can't possibly know the truth about somebody unless you love them.
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He is dangerous, he is beautiful, I could drown in his understanding.
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If only we were wiser or better people perhaps the gods would explain the mad, unbearable things they do
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He saw them with such better understanding that they took on power and meaning beyond anything in his experience before.
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[He] didn't know what to say. He didn't even know the name for what he was feeling. 'I think that I don't know you.' she looked at him, a little perplexed. 'No that's wrong. I think that I didn't know you before, even though I thought I knew you, and know that I finally know you, I don't really know you at all.'
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She understands my heart better than you do, and I can speak her thoughts almost before she speaks them
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I know what you do... I know why you do it. I can name you more truly than you can name yourself
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Is there any hope that you can explain to me why this makes sense?
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More than likely, mother would simply go enigmatic on him, give him one of her inscrutable smiles, and tell him that if he didn't already understand, he never would
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You know nothing at all about men like me
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In the absence of understanding, that was a good a reason as any for living together and making babies and raising them up and throwing them out of the house and then going through the long slow decline together until one of them died and left the other alone again, understanding as little as ever about what their spouses really wanted, who they really were. Was that tragedy? Or was that comedy? Was there really any difference?
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[He] said nothing, but nodded to [her] as he shook her hand, as if to say that he understood her grief and approved of the strength of her commitment, even if he didn't share her faith
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You have just described the relationship between males and females. Two completely different species, completely unintelligible to each other, living side by side and thinking they're really the same. The fascinating thing is that the two species persist in marrying each other and having babies, sometimes of one species, sometimes of other, and the whole time they can't understand why they can't understand each other.
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At last I was able to explain that I hadn't understood the implications of my statement in their language, that I was transliterating and certain words had different meanings and so on and so on
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How dare they suppress the truth, I thought. But in the months since then I have come to understand that there are different kinds of truth
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What is this thing between women, like men are a joke that woman all told each other long ago but men never get it.
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For the first time Lared did not fear her and did not hate her, for the first time he understood what lay behind her choice, and though he thought that it was wrong, he realized it was not justice's fault
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When you really know somebody, you can't hate them...or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them.
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I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. '(Ender's Game) Spoken by Ender
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You can't defeat a powerful enemy unless you understand him completely, and you can't understand him unless you know the desires of his heart, and you can't know the desires of his heart until you truly love him.