96 Misunderstanding Quotes

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood.

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.

I suppose if I had said television was more popular than Jesus, I would have gotten away with it. I'm sorry I opened my mouth. I'm not anti-God, anti-Christ, or anti-religion. I wasn't knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's true more for England than here. I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this.

What's really hurting me, the name Islam is involved, and Muslim is involved and causing trouble and starting hate and violence. ... Islam is not a killer religion. ... Islam means peace, I couldn't just sit home and watch people label Muslims as the reason for this problem.

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

On our way home we were waiting for the bus when a very fat, pompous-looking woman reeled out of a pub shouting, 'Melancholia? Ad nauseam.'

'I got confused. I thought it was a K.Y. scare, so I bought 2000 jars of personal lubricant. I still have some.'

My father told me all about the birds and the bees, the liar - I went steady with a woodpecker till I was twenty-one.

There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market Place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.

Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong.

In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.

I never liked being touched ever. People used to say that I held my breath when they were hugging me. I still do. But I've never liked...Everybody thought I was really sexual.

A girl called me the other day and said 'Come on over, there's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was home.

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?

This book is for ALL: for every man, woman, and child. My former work has been misunderstood, and its scope limited, by my use of technical terms. It has attracted only too many dilettanti and eccentrics, weaklings seeking in 'Magic' an escape from reality. I myself was first consciously drawn to the subject in this way. And it has repelled only too many scientific and practical minds, such as I most designed to influence. But MAGICK is for ALL.

It's funny--when I showed up for my first book signing at Barnes & Noble, I got there and the place was empty. I turned to the manager and said, 'Hey, I'm really sorry that no one showed up,' and he points to the mezzanine level above us where there were 770 people and goes, 'They're all here to see you.' I was floored. I turned to my wife and said, 'You know, maybe the book doesn't suck so bad after all.

Now my education, life and consciousness are talked about by those who cannot understand what I wrote, what I think, what is my life. They make me up from their subjective imagination and attack me publicly as well as secretly. Because my novels completely obscure my behaviour and ideas, and result in a lot of misunderstandings, my name is related to nihilism or humanism, although I have written a book of over three hundred pages to explain my ideas (this book is very easy to understand and without a metaphysical term). Those who talk about me never read it. They judged my ideas according to one of my short stories, then deduced a variety of strange conclusions and decided which doctrine I belong to. I have been caught in this predicament all these years and cannot get rid of it...

Some physicians who have called him excessively permissive just didn't understand and gave his understanding approach to child rearing a negative label. He was blamed for the radical behavior of the youth in the '60s. But that didn't emerge from Spock's teachings. It was far more a reflection of the social and political climate. ~ Dr. Marvin Drellich, professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College.

A friend Alan and I ended up in an Outback pub in a place called Daly Waters and apparently, he says, in the course of this very lively evening we spent there I offered to do a house swap with a family from Korea. We weren't sure whether they were from North Korea or South Korea.

Everyone has a misguided perception of my brain. When people ask me questions about being sad, or thinking sad, or wanting to be sad, or do I listen to sad songs, it makes me think that I must be sad.

What you do if someone doesn't understand your song, is to keep on singing your song.

With my equipment, I walked toward a thatched cottage from which I saw smoke emerging. I was scarcely within pistol-shot range when I was surrounded by a large number of savages. They were very surprised to meet me, because I think I was the first they had seen dressed in bottles. And, to confound even more all the interpretations they might have given to this attire, I walked almost without touching the ground. They could not know that any jostling of my body raised me off the ground because the dew was heated by the noonday sun and that more bottles of dew might have taken me upwards into the air.

A security chief who was of the impression that the policing functions of his Gestapo and SD were somewhat on the order of directing traffic.

In many ways I still resent the wretched yellow journalism that was clearly evident in (the media's) treatment of the game - 60 Minutes in particular. I've never watched that show after Ed Bradley's interview with me because they rearranged my answers. When I sent some copies of letters from mothers of those two children who had committed suicide who said the game had nothing to do with it, they refused to do a retraction or even mention it on air. What bothered me is that I was getting death threats, telephone calls, and letters. I was a little nervous. I had a bodyguard for a while.

Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede - not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can't count above fourteen.

I said that wherever these people, meaning the Soviet leadership, confronted us with dangerous hostility anywhere in the world, we should do everything possible to contain it and not let them expand any further. I should have explained that I didn't suspect them of any desire to launch an attack on us. This was right after the war, and it was absurd to suppose that they were going to turn around and attack the United States. I didn't think I needed to explain that, but I obviously should have done it.

It's viewed as an anti-Russian device. Well, it's not.

What exasperated her was Charles's total unawareness of her ordeal. His conviction that he was making her happy she took as a stupid insult: such self-righteousness could only mean that he didn't appreciate her.

The clerk assured her warmly that idealistic natures were rarely understood.

'I did not want to share her with the world or break the mood, So before she woke I went out and brought us both some food. I came back with my paper bag, to find out she was gone. She'd left a six word letter saying 'It's time that I moved on.''

I thought that I saw your name on a bag of bread but when I reread it, it said 'Thick Cut'.

I was gonna get a BMW and rang my dad who knows a bit about cars. He said, 'You can't get a German car after what your granddad went through in the war.' Now I didn't know about this but apparently, during the Second World War, my granddad had a succession of very unreliable German cars.

You never really understood me. You never really tried.

You can't hear me. You can't hear me. You can't hear what I'm saying. You can't hear what I'm saying to you.

She's unafraid, too, of tackling more problematic areas of sexuality, as for instance when she dealt with cradle-snatching in 'The Infant Kiss' and incest in 'The Kick Inside'. But not all that seems erotic in her music is about sex, as an EMI employee discovered when he found her working on the hypnotic 'out-in-out-in' chant section of 'Breathing' (from 1980's Never For Ever), and expressed outrage at EMI's young pop princess making such an overtly sexual record. The song is, of course, about breathing. Duhhh!

Oh, get ahold of yourself. Nobody's proposing that we parse English.

There are no dialogues, only intersecting monologues.

I don't think that Mr [Jarvis] Cocker truly understood what I was doing. It wasn't like I was saying 'I am Jesus', I was just drawing some parallels between Christ and me, like maybe I was sent here to spread the good news through dancing. I wouldn't say I have a messiah complex. ~From a statement released after Cocker nearly interrupted his performance of Earth Song during the 1996 Britt Awards.

I interpreted all you did as weakness - but I should have known that it was wisdom and strength, freely shared with all of us, even the ones who don't deserve it.

Why can you be so deeply understanding of her, and so completely incapable of understanding me? ... You never needed me the was [she] needs me. You never needed anybody. If you had ever bothered to come to know me, you'd know that that is the exact opposite of the truth. Well, well. So we part in utter ignorance of each other.

The other night I woke up and my wife was saying sexy things. I looked over and she was on the phone.

When I was a kid, I asked my Mother for a Bubble Bath, so she brought the water to a boil!

'You one of those right wing nut outfits?' inquired the diplomatic Metzger. Fallopian twinkled. 'They accuse us of being paranoids.' 'They?' inquired Metzger, twinkling also. 'Us?' asked Oedipa.

Chater: You insulted my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening! Septimus: You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the gazebo. She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere, I dare say I could find it for you, and if someone is putting it about that I did not turn up, by God, sir, it is a slander.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me How you suffered for you sanity How you tried to set them free They would not listen they're not listening still... Perhaps they never will...

Knights of Columbus that hurt!

Oop... I almost forgot. I won't be able to make it fellas. Veronica and I trying this new fad called uh, jogging. I believe it's jogging or yogging. it might be a soft j. I'm not sure but apparently you just run for an extended period of time. It's supposed to be wild.

This hero and villain no more understand Krazy Kat than the mythical denizens of a two dimensional realm understand some three dimensional intruder. The world of Offissa Pupp and Ignatz Mouse is a knowledgeable power-world, in terms of which our unknowledgeable heroine is powerlessness personified. The sensical law of this world is might makes right; the nonsensical law of our heroine is love conquers all. To put the oak in the acorn: Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Puppers all. To put the oak in the acorn: Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Pupp (each completely convinced that his own particular brand of might makes right) are simple-minded - Krazy isn't - therefore, to Offissa Pupp and Ignatz Mouse, Krazy is. But if both our hero and our villain don't and can't understand our heroine, each of them can and each of them does misunderstand her differently. To our softhearted altruist, she is the adorably helpless incarnation of saintliness. To our hardhearted egoist, she is the puzzlingly indestructible embodiment of idiocy. The benevolent overdog sees her as an inspired weakling. The malevolent undermouse views her as a born target. Meanwhile Krazy Kat, through this double misunderstanding, fulfills her joyous destiny.

The girls always think we're going to throw them over a table or toss them in the air. Their muscles tense up right away. So Fred and I go and sit in a corner and pretend we're talking business

That was what she knew of love. No wonder [he] never recognized her love when she gave it to him. Even now, if he knew that she had loved him, it would break his heart

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

I will call I've heard that line before No you haven't. That's the guy's line, so I know you haven't heard it, and I don't think you've even said it

The answer was so obvious to her that she clearly didn't understand a word he was saying

Until I was nine years old I thought 'cunt' was a term of endearment

It doesn't say that. Where are you at? Right there... oh. I didn't say that. That's not what it says. -Tupac

Rulers and generals muster their troops. Magnates muster the sums of money which give them power. The fascist dictators muster the irrational human reactions which make it possible for them to attain and maintain their power over the masses. The scientists muster knowledge and means of research. But, thus far, no organization fighting for freedom has ever mustered the biological arsenal where the weapons are to be found for the establishment and the maintenance of human freedom. All precision of our social existence notwithstanding, there is as yet no definition of the word freedom which would be in keeping with natural science. No word is more misused and misunderstood. To define freedom is the same as to define sexual health. But nobody will openly admit this. The advocacy of personal and social freedom is connected with anxiety and guilt feelings. As if to be free were a sin or at least not quite as it should be. Sex-economy makes this guilt feeling comprehensible: freedom without sexual self-determination is in itself a contradiction. But to be sexual means - according to the prevailing human structure - to be sinful or guilty. There are very few people who experience sexual love without guilt feeling. 'Free love' has acquired a degrading meaning: it lost the meaning given it by the old fighters for freedom. In films and in books, to be genital and to be criminal are presented as the same thing.

'When I, a thoughtful and unblessed Presbyterian, examine the Koran, I know that beyond any question every Mohammedan is insane, not in all things, but in religious matters. When a thoughtful and unblessed Mohammedan examines the Westminster Catechism, he knows that beyond any question I am spiritually insane. I cannot prove to him that he is insane, because you never can prove anything to a lunatic - for that is a part of his insanity and the evidence of it. He cannot prove to me that I am insane, for my mind has the same defect that afflicts his... When I look around me, I am often troubled to see how many people are mad.'

Oh, now I get it. You think I was battling my pony, now is it?

The guy was pitching a tent, okay, man?

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

Most quarrels amplify a misunderstanding.

'Valttelevista lausunnoista on ymmarrettavasti syntynyt epajohdonmukainen kuva. Uskon, etta nyt esittamieni tietojen valossa muodostuu oikea kuva.' ('It's understandable that the avoiding statements have created an illogical image. I believe that the information I will now present will be helpful to form a correct image.')

What did he say had entered the world? - A Neevil - What's a Neevil? - No, he didn't say a Neevil, he said a weevil - Well, what's that? (ch. 10)

And they know neither sect nor idolatry, with the exception that all believe that the source of all power and goodness is in the sky, and they believe very firmly that I, with these ships and people, came from the sky, and in this belief they everywhere received me, after they had overcome their fear.

As much as people pretend 'I fit in, I understand, I get the rules,' there are always times spent away from that where you go, 'I thought I knew. It seemed so clear to me, and then...' That sense of loneliness, or the sense of not fitting in or being out of depth, is probably the most common denominator.

It didn't seem to work, cause no matter how much make up I wore people just kept saying, 'Yes, Sir!, Would you like tea with that Sir?!' 'Yes, I would like tea, why don't you put it on my breasts?' 'Certainly, tea for this man's breasts! Anything else, sir?' 'No, just fuck off'

I always wanted a beautiful loving wife and she always wanted to be a citizen.

I was with this girl the other night and from the way she was responding to my skillful caresses, you would have sworn that she was conscious from the top of her head to the tag on her toes.

The very word 'Christianity' is a misunderstanding - in truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.

I chased a girl for two years only to discover that her tastes were exactly like mine: We were both crazy about girls.

How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person on the other end shouts back 'What?'

No one would talk much in society, if he knew how often he misunderstands others.

I never meant 'Come up and see me some time' to be sexy.

Be warned in time, James, and remain, as I, do, incomprehensible: to be great is to be misunderstood.

I am but too conscious of the fact that we are born in an age when only the dull are treated seriously, and I live in terror of not being misunderstood.

I'm not the kind of person you think I am, I'm not the anti-Christ, or the iron man.

Scarcely had I entered the sitting-room when I found ... what appeared at first sight to be the Devil, A closer scrutiny informed me that it was Gussie Fink-Nottle, dressed as Mephistopheles.

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A. B. Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn't.

Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?

When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination-indeed, everything and anything except me.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity. His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds - or on persons devoted to them - have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life. When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a 'dirty little atheist' he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished.

I do not ordinarily make prophecies, but about this I am absolutely prophetic: the coming hundred years are going to be more and more irrational, and more and more mystical. The second thing: After a hundred years people will be perfectly able to understand why I was misunderstood - because I am the beginning of the mystical, the irrational. I am a discontinuity with the past. The past cannot understand me; only the future will understand. The past can only condemn me. It cannot understand me, it cannot answer me, it cannot argue with me; it can only condemn me. Only the future : as man becomes more and more available to the mysterious, to the meaningless yet significant : After a hundred years they will understand. Because the more man becomes aware of the mysterious side of life, the less he is political; the less he is a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian; the less is the possibility for his being a fanatic. A man in tune with the mysterious is humble, loving, caring, accepting the uniqueness of everybody. He is rejoicing in the freedom of each individual, because only with freedom can this garden of humanity be a rich place.

I'm just a Rock and Roll Rebel, I tell you no lies, they say I worship the devil, they must be stupid or blind