Quotes about Understanding

Self-judgment may be the greatest barrier to self-understanding. If we want to understand other human beings, there is no better way than to listen to them with empathy like a close friend would. If you wish to understand yourself, the same rule applies: listen with empathy. Instead of talking negatively to yourself, try to listen to yourself with respect and positive attention. Instead of judging yourself, accept yourself just as you are.

Accepting him, I find, is the best way to tame him.

How can we get what we truly want while satisfying the needs and concerns of others in our lives—family members, work colleagues, clients, and others?

Instead of attacking, focused on taking away the stick.

If you open a door, however, as Diane Nash did with her persistent questions, you offer the other a way out and all your power can be deployed in persuading them to take it. In short, rather than working to frustrate the other, focus on redirecting their attention to a positive outcome.

You can empathize without sympathizing.

Wisdom is oft-times nearer when we stoop Than when we soar.

God's revelation was not a mystic secret for the initiated, but a light to guide every member of God's community.

Our psalmists were not Judaizers, nor were they Calvinists, Arminians, Theonomists, Dispensationalists, Legalists or Antinomians. They were worshipping believers, members of a people who knew themselves to be in a unique covenant relationship with the LORD their God, redeemed by God's saving grace, and privileged to have been given a land to live in and a law to live by. Let us, then, do our best to understand and appreciate the law through their eyes.

So then, we must not read Lamentations without the rest of the Bible. But equally, we should not read the rest of the Bible without Lamentations (as Christians have habitually tended to do).

Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know.

The best Bible teaching is not that which dazzles people with the profound intellect of their teacher, but that which puts its truth squarely in their hands.