Not to understand is profound; to understand is shallow. Not to understand is to be on the inside; to understand is to be on the outside.

But understand them, people say. And one does. But sometimes understanding is not comforting or flattering to the understood.

If you cannot understand something, then you have understood it incorrectly.

It is only the things we don't understand that have any meaning. Man woke up in a world he did not understand, and that is why he tries to interpret it.

Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word 'understanding.

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.

The only way to communicate is to understand what it is like not to understand. It is at that moment that you can make something understandable.

It is very frustrating not to be understood in this world. If you say one thing and keep being told that you mean something else, it can make you want to scream. But somewhere in the world there is a place for all of us, whether you are an electric form of decoration, peppermint-scented sweet, a source of timber, or a potato pancake.

People who do not understand themselves have a craving for understanding — a thing which is rather surmised and never spoken than known and clothed in words.

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...

Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will. [Nicht eine Schwierigkeit des Verstandes, sondern des Willens ist zu überwinden.]

Being able to communicate with someone doesn’t necessarily mean that you understand them.

They didn't understand it, but like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so.