Incomprehension Def Quotes

The quality of life depends upon the ability of society to teach it's members how to live in harmony with their environment-def ined first as family, then the community, then the world and its resources. ~ Ellen Swallow Richards

My presence speaks volumes before I say a word. ~ Mos Def

I still wasn't convinced that tossing a shoe didn't mean you harbored an anger-management problem, but I did understand love now. How it wrapped around you and made you more aware of the prickles on your skin, the roots of your hair, the intensity of every touch and every inch of you. It was like life on hi-def. Everything was sharper. ~ Erin McCarthy

Hi-def is merely the latest in a string of evolutional leaps that have transformed the way we sit slumped in front of a box wishing we were dead. ~ Charlie Brooker

I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product, not a person, so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family, but now I'm declaring it openly. ~ Mos Def

To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming. ~ Mos Def

As we charge the night we leer at pedestrians, the harder I stare, the faster they walk and we skip and jive in their shadows. They pull their coats round as a barrier, faces burning, I could crush their bones in the treads of my trainers, but I let them scamper away. We collect items to aid us in our quest, a shopping trolley, a brick, a single shoe. One petulant husk mutters,

"There must be something meaningful you can do with your time," and we soak up his words and shudder with complete incomprehension – we are walking with the Gods, what is more meaningful than that? ~ Petra Jacob

This great artist is a man whose life-time is consumed by struggle : partly against material circumstances, partly against incomprehension, partly against himself ... In no other culture has the artist been thought of in this way. Why then in this culture? We have already referred to the exigencies of the open art market. But the struggle was not only to live. Each time a painter realized that he was dissatisfied with the limited role of painting as a celebration of material property and of the status that accompanied it, he inevitably found himself struggling with the very language of his own art as understood by the tradition of his calling.
...
Every exceptional work was the result of a prolonged successful struggle. Innumerable works involved no struggle. There were also prolonged yet unsuccessful struggles. (P.104) ~ John Berger

I believe the projects were a social experiment; we were laboratory rats stacked on top of each other, and people just knew, inherently, that there was something wrong. There's not a lot of regard for the property by the residents. ~ Mos Def

Recall Part 3c's mention of how Cantor took what had been regarded as a paradoxical, totally unhandlable feature of (Infinity)-namely that an infinite set/class/aggregate can be put into a one-to-one correspondence with its own subset-and transformed it into the technical def. of infinite set. Watch how he does the same thing here, turning what appear to be devastating objections into rigorous criteria, by defining a set S as any aggregate of collection of discrete entities that satisfies two conditions: (1) S can be entertained by the mind as an aggregate, and (2) There is some stated rule or condition via which one can determine, for any entity x, whether or not x is a member of S. ~ David Foster Wallace

The passage that he had found in the book had been riddled with ambiguities and contradictions only reserved for those most valiant in overriding their legalistic forbearance into a necessary frenzy that would allow them to suitably work up a case for one side or the other on how the Law, without the possibility of misinterpretation, states If ABC, then DEF - or for the sake of acknowledging the counterargument first as a courtroom tactic, the case might also be made that the Law states the antithesis of the aforementioned If ABC, then DEF, but gives allowance within reasonable parameters for a provisional XYZ to be granted in exceptional cases. And thus, it was a matter not so much of making one's case in a clear and logical sense, but one for the lawyers to battle out in the arena of pathos, as it was clearly the emotional pleas that could evoke a sense of sympathy in the courtroom and overturn otherwise painstaking endeavors at using the tools at hand to make pleas based upon incontrovertible facts. ~ Ashim Shanker

I'm retiring the Mos Def name after 2011. I'm actually doing it. ~ Mos Def

I think that Mos Def is the best actor, but when you talk about rappers in films, I don't really think the quality of the acting is most important because most rappers are put in movies because of the personality and people want to see that. ~ Morris Chestnut

The test in life nowadays is just trying to keep yourself charged up with enough good feeling. It's like, "OK what am I going to do to feel really good today?" Not like, some chick or a drink ... ~ Mos Def

History has proven that it's impossible to crush the artist. There's always gonna be a need for somebody to write a poem or sing a song about something, about life - that makes it real. There's the word that goes beyond the word. ~ Mos Def

I don't wanna be def. Death. Dead. This Burger Twin nappykin just got served as my will, BEOTCH! The fries here suck, by the way. If I die, don't feed my son your shitty fries. Don't give my son to the creepy child molester king you put in your commercials either. What the fuck is wrong with that guy? He's got a normal body and a plastic face that is always smiley. It's not right, man. It's just not right. My ears feel funny. ~ Tara Sivec

It is the tragedy of a distinguished mind and a generous nature that have gone unappreciated in a conventional, unimaginative world. A victim of men's incomprehension of women, a symptom of women's mistrust of men. ~ Francis Wyndham

I've always loved Def Leppard, ever since I was little. ~ Taylor Swift

I thought everybody got into rock 'n' roll because they didn't want to follow instructions. ~ Mos Def

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead. ~ Tom Stoppard

I haven't seen anyone for years," he said, "not anyone. I can hardly remember how to speak. I keep forgetting words. I practise, you see. I practise by talking to ... talking to ... what are those things people think you're mad if you talk to? Like George the Third."
"Kings?" suggested Ford.
"No, no," said Arthur. "The things he used to talk to. We're surrounded by them for Heaven's sake. I've planted hundreds myself. They all died. Trees! I practise by talking to trees. What's that for?"
Ford still had his hand stuck out. Arthur looked at it with incomprehension.
"Shake," prompted Ford. ~ Douglas Adams

Rincewind switched to High Borogravian, to Vanglemesht, Sumtri and even Black Oroogu, the language with no nouns and only one adjective, which is obscene. Each was met with polite incomprehension. In desperation he tried heathen Trob, and the little man's face split into a delighted grin. ~ Terry Pratchett

It started off really ... claustrophobic. I feel like I was really really protected. Really guarded with myself. I feel like they [Def Jam] were giving me the blueprint and I couldn't get with that ~ Rihanna

Their attitude seemed to result from incomprehension rather than cruelty, but as Tolstoy would have said, what's the difference in the end? ~ Atul Gawande

We lie to ourselves in order that we may still have the excuse of ignorance, the alibi of stupidity and incomprehension, possessing which we can continue with a good conscience to commit and tolerate the most monstrous crimes. ~ Aldous Huxley

I stretched my arms towards the sky like blades of tall grass
The sun beat between my shoulders like carnival drums
I sat still in hopes that it would help my wings grow
So then I could really be fly
And then she arrived
Like day break inside a railway tunnel
Like the new moon, like a diamond in the mines
Like high noon to a drunkard, sudden
She made my heart beat in a now-now time signature
Her skinny canvas for ultraviolet brushstrokes
She was the sun's painting
She was a deep cognac color
Her eyes sparkled like lights along the new city
She lips pursed as if her breath was too sweet
And full for her mouth to hold
I said, "You are the beautiful, the stress of mathematics."
I said, "For you, I would peel open the clouds like new fruit
And give you lightning and thunder as a dowry
I would make the sky shed all of it's stars, light and rain
And I would clasp the constellations across your waist
And I would make the heavens your cape
And they would be pleased to cover you
They would be pleased to cover you
May I please, cover you, please ~ Mos Def

Most ignorances are vincible, and in the greater number of cases stupidity is what the Buddha pronounced it to be, a sin. For, consciously, or subconsciously, it is with deliberation that we do not know or fail to understand-because incomprehension allows us, with a good conscience, to evade unpleasant obligations and responsibilities, because ignorance is the best excuse for going on doing what one likes, but ought not, to do. ~ Aldous Huxley

Every time you ask yourself where hip-hop's going, ask yourself where you're going; how are you doing? ~ Mos Def

A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual incomprehension. ~ Marilynne Robinson

I feel like I was the only person who was capable of making this type of music in this type of way. I don't rap like nobody, I don't try to sound like nobody. ~ Mos Def

That was kind of a joke. It gave her hope for the night that he was making a joke. Sam had been the first man she ever dated who immediately and instinctively grasped the complexities of her friendship with Erika. He'd never reacted with impatience or incomprehension; he'd never said, 'I don't get it, if you don't like her, don't hang out with her!' He'd just accepted Erika as part of the Clementine package, as if she were a difficult sister. ~ Liane Moriarty

I don't read my own press, so I don't know what's being reported on a daily basis - I only hear about things when they reach a sort of Def-Con status, and my publicist calls me because we have to do some damage control. ~ Megan Fox

She heard music. Angels singing? she thought, dizzy. It seemed odd for angels to sing after table sex. She managed to swallow on a throat wildly dry. "Music," she murmured.
"My phone. In my pants. Don't care."
"Oh. Not angels."
"No. Def Leppard. ~ Nora Roberts

Ya better come inside
when you're ready to
but no chance if ya don't wanna dance
you like four letter words when you're ready to
but then you won't 'cos you know that you can
~ Def Leppard

You weasel, good-for-nothing, scumbag, swine,
sleazebag, scumbucket, scoundrel, son-of-a-bitch!"
In the midst of everything, we all looked at Rosina,
who smiled sheepishly.
"Sorry. I was reading the Dictionary the other day."
I stared at her with incomprehension. ~ Kelly Batten

The way we speak and think of the Puritans seems to me a serviceable model for important aspects of the phenomenon we call Puritanism. Very simply, it is a great example of our collective eagerness to disparage without knowledge or information about the thing disparaged, when the reward is the pleasure of sharing an attitude one knows is socially approved. And it demonstrates how effectively such consensus can close off a subject from inquiry ... Unauthorized views are in effect punished by incomprehension, not intentionally and not to anyone's benefit, but simply as a consequence of a hypertrophic instinct for consensus. ~ Marilynne Robinson

I don't have advice for people on how to dress. People should dress based on what they find beautiful. My best advice: Keep your clothes clean. ~ Mos Def

It was May of my senior year at Leighton Gage and on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons we sat in an air-conditioned hourglass and savored our own total incomprehension as an assistant professor charted the poems of Dryden, Lovelace, Fanshawe and Suckling. They were all so incomparably dead, the Penguin poets, and we loved them because their lines meant less to us than the dark side of the moon. ~ Don DeLillo

I love the word Quetzalcoatl.'
'The word!' he repeated.
His eyes laughed at her teasingly all the time.
'What do you think, Mrs Leslie,' cried the pale-faced young Mirabal, in curiously resonant English, with a French accent. 'Don't you think it would be wonderful if the gods came back to Mexico? our own gods?' He sat in intense expectation, his blue eyes fixed on Kate's face, his soup-spoon suspended.
Kate's face was baffled with incomprehension.
'Not those Aztec horrors!' she said.
'The Aztec horrors! The Aztec horrors! Well, perhaps they were not so horrible after all. But if they were, it was because the Aztecs were all tied up. They were in a cul de sac, so they saw nothing but death. Don't you think so?'
'I don't know enough!' said Kate.
'Nobody knows any more. But if you like the word Quetzalcoatl, don't you think it would be wonderful if he came back again? Ah, the names of the gods! Don't you think the names are like seeds, so full of magic, of the unexplored magic? Huitzilopochtli!--how wonderful! And Tlaloc! Ah! I love them! I say them over and over, like they say Mani padma Om! in Tibet. I believe in the fertility of sound. Itzpapalotl--the Obsidian Butterfly! Itzpapalotl! But say it, and you will see it does good to your soul. Itzpapalotl! Tezcatlipocá! They were old when the Spaniards came, they needed the bath of life again. But now, re-bathed in youth, how wonderful they must be! ~ D.H. Lawrence

I tapped Boz on the shoulder and said, "Hey, gorgeous." His face twisted in complete surprise, turning to stare in blank incomprehension at mine. I winked at him, and whispered, "Boo. ~ Jim Butcher