Misunderstanding Quotes

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood. (Henry David Thoreau)
Logic: The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. View quote
Ambrose Bierce
The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. View quote
Oscar Wilde
The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross. View quote
Friedrich Nietzsche
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. View quote
John Lennon
Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding? View quote
Philip Roth
If you want that good feeling that comes from doing things for other folks then you have to pay for it in abuse and misunderstanding. View quote
Zora Neale Hurston
Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. View quote
Albert Schweitzer
The world only goes round by misunderstanding. View quote
Charles Baudelaire
The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one from another. (M. Scott Peck)
Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding. View quote
Diane Arbus
There's no more usual basis of union than mutual misunderstanding. View quote
Henry James
We are infected by our own misunderstanding of how our own minds work. View quote
Kevin Kelly (editor)
There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave. View quote
Louis Kronenberger
Not only the entire ability to think rests on language... but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself. View quote
Johann Georg Hamann
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. View quote
Martin Luther King Jr.
I'm a fatalist. ... I consider I am rejected in principle. My work is and, through my work, I am. If it's accepted, it's miraculous or the result of a misunderstanding. View quote
Arthur Miller
The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other. View quote
Franz Kafka
In South America, I heard the 8th Symphony of Beethoven. And the young conductor thought, Beethoven must be heroic. But this is piece which shouldn't be heroic. And this was such a misunderstanding, such a deep misunderstanding. View quote
Kurt Masur
I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really. (Robert Wyatt)
It may be added, to prevent misunderstanding, that when I speak of contemplated objects in this last phrase as objects of contemplation, the act of contemplation itself is of course an enjoyment. View quote
Samuel Alexander
We should leave behind discrimination, because it is narrow-minded and ignorant, denies contact and warmth, and corrodes mankind's belief that we can better ourselves. The only way to avoid misunderstanding, war, and bloodshed is to defend freedom of expression and to communicate with sincerity, concern, and good intentions. View quote
Ai Weiwei
Second, the resolution contains the blatantly false assertion that negotiating a timeline for bringing U.S. troops home with the Iraqi government undermines U.S. national security. Such a statement shows a misunderstanding of the enemy we face in Iraq. View quote
Peter DeFazio
Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. [...] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments. View quote
Stephen Jay Gould