Personal Understanding Quotes

God is a person [in Christ]. A person can be known only by personal understanding, not impersonal understanding. Personal understanding takes place through love, caring, willingness, intimacy, and relationship. ~ Peter Kreeft

One's spirituality is about one's deepest personal understanding of and interactions with Life and God ... whatever those may be. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

He was persuaded of the reality and significance of human choice; he believed that experiential learning was a far more powerful approach to personal understanding and change than an endeavor resting upon intellectual understanding; he believed that individuals have within themselves an actualizing tendency, an inbuilt proclivity toward growth and fulfillment. ~ Irvin D. Yalom

A man who has been shaken by a two-ton blockbuster has a frame of reference. He can equate the impact of an H-bomb with his own experience, even though the H-bomb blast is a million times more powerful than the shock he endured. To someone who has never felt a bomb, bomb is only a word. An H-bomb's fireball is something you see on television. It is not something that incinerates you to a cinder in the thousandth part of a second. So the H-bomb is beyond the imagination of all but a few Americans, while the British, Germans, and Japanese can comprehend it, if vaguely. And only the Japanese have personal understanding of atomic heat and radiation. ~ Pat Frank

Ministry leadership in the twenty-first century is difficult enough when the leader maintains appropriate boundaries that flow out of personal understanding of the biblical teaching about leaders. It can be impossible if one allows others in the church, or society in general, to determine the priorities of time and commitment. ~ Mark A. Searby

Every ordinary moment, every little detail should be a celebration of your personal understanding. Your smallest act should be permeated with reverence. ~ Ming-Dao Deng

I don't personally believe in an arrived state of enlightenment. I feel that being human is a constant practice of return. We have moments of clarity, and then we're confused. We have incredibly sensitive periods of being awake, and then we're numb. Being human is a very universal and a very personal practice of learning how to return when we can't get access to what we know. ~ Mark Nepo

User-centered design means understanding what your users need, how they think, and how they behave - and incorporating that understanding into every aspect of your process. ~ Jesse James Garrett

Now, the Libertarian Party, is a *capitalist* party. It's in favor of what *I* would regard a *particular form* of authoritarian control. Namely, the kind that comes through private ownership and control, which is an *extremely* rigid system of domination - people have to ... people can survive, by renting themselves to it, and basically in no other way ... I do disagree with them *very* sharply, and I think that they are not..understanding the *fundamental* doctrine, that you should be free from domination and control, including the control of the manager and the owner. ~ Noam Chomsky

Personal power is the ability to go into other planes, to cross that threshold from one dimension to another. Why do that? Because it is there to do; knowledge, power, and beauty lie in those other worlds. ~ Frederick Lenz

What is a spouse for? Not to be your personal servant, certainly! ~ Marly Youmans

Then he shook her. "What the fuck were you doing? Since when are you suicidal? Things aren't that bad, dammit." "Hi," she said, and then she grinned impishly him. "Thanks for answering my call." "What?" He stared at her with incomprehension for a moment before understanding dawned. "You mean you faked a suicide attempt just to get me back here? ~ Eve Langlais

Personal loss is the greatest motivator to a call for action! ~ Laurence Stuart

Dear Mel:
I trust this finds you recovered. Why did you have to run off like that? But I figured you were safe arrived at home, and well, or Khesot would've sent to me here--since you wouldn't write.

And how was I to pay for sending a letter to Remalna-city? I thought indignantly, then sighed. Of course, I had managed to find enough coin to write to Ara's family, and to obtain through the father the name of a good bookseller. But the first was an obligation, I told myself. And as for the latter, it was merely the start of the education that Branaric had blabbed to the world that I lacked.

I'm here at Athanarel, finding it to my taste. It helps that Galdran's personal fortune has been turned over to us, as repayment for what happened to our family--you'll find the Letter of Intent in with this letter, to be kept somewhere safe. Henceforth, you send your creditors for drafts on Arclor House…

I looked up at the ceiling as the words slowly sank in. "Personal fortune"? How much was that? Whatever it was, it had to be a vast improvement over our present circumstances. I grinned, thinking how I had agonized over which book to choose from the bookseller's list. Now I could order them all. I could even hire my own scribe…
Shaking my head, I banished the dreams of avarice, and returned to the letter--not that much remained.

…so, outfit yourself in whatever you want, appoint someone responsible as steward, and join me here at Athana ~ Sherwood Smith

It was incredible to me that members of one community could kill members of another not for anything personal that they did but simply based on their identity. ~ Amartya Sen

I admire a contented mind. I revere enjoyment of the simple things. I can imagine that contentment has a high degree of truth. But the human tendency is to take good as normal, and one's natural right, and so no cause for satisfaction and pleasure. This is accompanied by the habit of regarding bad as abnormal and a personal outrage. ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

The purpose of my work was never to destroy but always to create, to construct bridges, because we must live in the hope that humankind will draw together and that the better we understand each other the easier this will become. ~ Alphonse Mucha

If you value information, you will value truth.
If you value truth, you will value knowledge.
If you value knowledge, you will value insight.
If you value insight, you will value understanding.
If you value understanding, you will value wisdom.
If you value wisdom, you will value enlightenment.

If you value peace, you will value contentment.
If you value contentment, you will value happiness.
If you value happiness, you will value joy.
If you value joy, you will value hope.
If you value hope, you will value faith.
If you value faith, you will value love. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

So, in spite of all apparent contradictions, this strange love of Hitler for Stefanie falls into the pattern of his character. Love was a field where the unforeseeable might happen, and which might become dangerous. How many men who had set out with great intentions had been forced off their path by irregular and complicated love affairs. It was imperative to be on one's guard!

Instinctively, the young Hitler found the only correct attitude in his love for Stefanie: he possessed a being whom he loved, and at the same time, he did not possess her. He arranged his whole life as though he possessed this beloved creature entirely. But as he himself avoided any personal meeting, this girl, although he could see that she walked the earth, remained nevertheless a creature of his dream world, towards whom he could project his desires, plans and ideas. And thus he kept himself from deviating from his own path; indeed, this strange relationship, through the power of love, increased his own will. He imagines Stefanie as his wife, builds the house in which they live together, surrounds it with a magnificent garden and arranges his home with Stefanie, just as, in fact, he did later on the Ober-Salzburg, though without her. This mixing of dream and reality is characteristic of the young Hitler. And whenever there is a danger that the beloved would entirely escape into the realm of fantasy, he hurries to the Schmiedtoreck and makes sure that she really walks the earth. Hitler was ~ August Kubizek

Most of the words we use in history and everyday speech are like mental depth charges. As they descend [through our consciousness] and detonate, their resonant power is unleashed, showering our understanding with fragments of accumulated meaning and association. ~ James Axtell

The social aspect of blogging is just as important as the content, so to borrow a phrase from the 1960s: the medium is the message. And my personal experience shows me that the potential of this medium is extra large. ~ Mark Powell

The Conservatives do not want to go into an election with the leaders' relative ratings as they are - but it is depressing to hear that plans are afoot to paint Miliband as the Michael Dukakis of British politics: part of a metropolitan elite with no understanding of mainstream concerns. ~ Michael Ashcroft

One is our tendency to give higher credences to propositions that we want to be true. This can show up at a very personal level, as what's known as self-serving bias: ~ Sean Carroll

When recruiting candidates for the House of Representatives, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) looks for aspirants to raise so much money, so early - $250,000 in the first quarter the candidate has declared - that it's almost impossible to do without a massive personal or family bank account. ~ Christopher L. Hayes

The start-up life kept me busy and surfaced the problem of not being able to stay on top of my personal finances, which led me to invent Mint.com. I was working 80-hour weeks, and had done enough preliminary work and research to know I had a big idea: To make money management effortless and automated. ~ Aaron Patzer

Anyone can visit the Astral plane by the mechanism of Astral projection. As a citizen of the universe, you
have the absolute right to go anywhere within the Creation for the purpose of personal enlightenment. The
point here is "look, don't touch". In order to successfully visit the Astral plane in an alert state you must have
no desires and total emotional control. Any desires would be immediately fulfilled and so trap you. And,
since you navigate with emotion, you will need to be able to precisely direct it. ~ W.C. Vetsch

There is order in the universe, even though it looks like chaos. We separate the world into categories: this is good and this is bad. But life is set up to trick us. It's a series of illusions we invest in. And ultimately those investments don't serve our understanding, because physicality is always going to let you down, because physicality doesn't last. ~ Madonna Ciccone

The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears. ~ Erich Fromm

The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It is one that changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations. It penetrates to the deepest layers of their soul. ~ Dallas Willard

Idolatry is huge in the Bible, dominant in our personal lives, and irrelevant in our mistaken estimations ~ Os Guinness

With my personal preparation at the piano, I can afford to hum at half voice. ~ Placido Domingo

Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders. - LAW AND GOVERNANCE THE SPACING GUILD MANUAL W ~ Frank Herbert

I began to expand my personal service in the church, and to search more diligently for a closer relationship with God among my different business, professional and political interests. ~ Jimmy Carter

It's meaning that is of no meaning. That paradox is the key to the meaning of meaning. To look for meaning
or the lack of it
in things is a game played by beings of limited consciousness. Behind everything in life is a process that is beyond meaning. Not beyond understanding, mind you, but beyond meaning. ~ Tom Robbins

I am simply the most conspicuous part of a large, thoroughly dedicated and professional staff that extends from just behind these cameras, across this country and around the world, in too many instances, in places of grave danger and personal hardship. They're family to me. ~ Tom Brokaw

You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think. ~ Marianne Williamson

My first album is a lot of my personal experiences. I wanted people to relate to what I've been through. ~ Rebecca Ferguson

[The humanities] invite - they compel - us to confront the truth about ourselves and help us to inhabit with greater understanding the disjointed condition of longing and defeat that defines the human condition. Achilles' reflections on honor and memory and the fleeting beauty of youth; Shakespeare's defense of love against the powers of "sluttish time" Kant's struggle to put our knowledge of certain things on an unchallengeable foundation so as to place the knowledge of others forever beyond reach; Caravaggio's painting of the sacrifice of Isaac, which depicts a confusion of loves that defeats all understanding; and so on endlessly through the armory of humanistic works: the subject is always the same. The subject is always man, whose nature it is to yearn to be more than he is. ~ Charles Murray

People tend to personalize technology so they can't get to the systemic analysis. They say, "Oh, I can't give up my personal computer." Or, "I just love radio too much." ~ Chellis Glendinning

Lachlan frowned as he misjudged the distance and his forehead hit Cormag's head with a bump. He wrapped his arms around his neck to steady himself, two big hands reaching up to hold onto his arms as if to offer extra support. "You," he began, talking quietly into his ear, "are so beautiful," he confessed, resting his heavy skull against Cormag's for a moment.
He meant it as well. Cormag was stunning. He was taller and broader than he was, very much the fine figure of hotness. His dark hair was well kept, but a little messy, he had amazing bone structure; the type that made him look more like a model than a museum manager. A chiselled jaw, nicely defined cheekbones and a rugged quality that
made him so appealing. He had never noticed how handsome a male face could be until those eyes drew him in.
"And so are you," his companion chuckled, "but we discussed this…I've ruined every relationship I've ever had. I get needy, possessive and my baggage gets in the way.
Besides," he lowered his voice to a whisper and brushed his hand over his upper arm, "You're not gay," he protested, reminding him yet again that they were different.
"Nope. Not gay," he agreed with that, nodding his head as he pulled back a little to see him better. "But that doesn't make you any less beautiful. Why is it wrong that I can see how special you are?" he asked, having difficulty understanding why part of his brain
was telling him he was being a drunken idiot and that the man be ~ Elaine White